Vu is French for ʻseen,ʼ and refers to what a reader sees in the mind’s eye when reading. Brendan McKelvey writes in Foreword magazine: “Epic in scope, the literary novel, Vu, is made up of woven-together historical tales used to deliver a thorough picture of the past.”

What did Sinclair intend?

What did Sinclair himself have in mind when he conceived Vu? A pioneer who thinks outside the box, his aspiration was to attempt experimental fiction: a new form. An avid reader, he wanted to bear witness to the terror, the tragedy, the beauty and the wisdom of two thousand years of world culture as it has reached him through books. His approach is to isolate fragments, but he needed to find a frame to put them in: “After a lifetime of reading, looking at art and listening to music, I found myself searching for a form in which to express the things that most impressed me. Having been brought up on the Thousand and One Nights, it struck me: here was a way. But I wanted to reverse the gender roles. Out of this arose Vu.”

A captive storyteller

Gabriel is a captive storyteller who narrates to the Princess Scheherazade in order to see her through the nights “those interminable nights” with a tale. We follow him down torchlit corridors to the Princessʼs apartments where we find her reclining on her juniper couch. In between, we catch a glimpse of him in a courtyard conversing with Scheherazadeʼs former storyteller, an old man seated cross-legged beneath a palm, fingering prayer-beads. Then we come upon Gabriel in his cell where he has: “leisure to reflect on those French writers who might have been attracted to a fate similar to mine. Gérard de Nerval had conjured with a history, mingling memories of his studies with fragments of dreams. And had not Huysmans contemplated the fascinating prospect of writing a novel concentrated to a few sentences, that would open vistas where the reader could muse.”

A frame within a frame

Post-modern experimental fiction, Sinclair sets his frame narrative within a further frame, and we see the author slipping in and out of his story with his blue pen poised above his pad and his dog patiently waiting for a walk. Or the telephone rings. Or childhood scenes are recalled, and we catch a glimpse of a tousel-haired boy playing with a model stage-set or building a house of cards. We watch with this same boy as he watches through the deepening dusk while the lamp-lighter makes his rounds. Finally—opaque, unless you know—Sinclair signals his birth with the circling of an osprey over the Ythan.

How to read Vu

How to read an experimental fiction book like Vu? It reaches back into antiquity and forward to the end of the twentieth century. Each chapter contains a number of sections which are grouped thematically. Even Susie Helme found this “exhausting.” But Sinclair did not imagine readers taking Vu as a continuous read. Rather he imagined his readers dipping in, like swallows swooping over a pool, taking a beak-full of water, a little here and there, pausing to ponder and dream. Passages may also inspire research. I for one have found myself devouring Wikipedia articles, finding Vu an intriguing springboard, a window on the world. And I have given readings of whole chapters, when the poetry of the writing held my audience spellbound.

The ambiguity of the human condition

Although, in Vu, you will not be carried along by the intricacies of plot and character-development needed for long, continuous reading, there is a little of each. Scheherazade is an archetype of mystery and glamour, but she self-reveals as well-read in her own right and slowly unbends towards her captive storyteller “dark and hazel eyes meeting.” Meanwhile, Gabriel demands to know when he will be freed. The enigmatic old storyteller questions the meaning and value of the word, and readers may recall this when, in the closing chapter, Gabriel himself seems ambiguous about his fate. Just like a human being! 

Gillian Paschkes-Bell

Editor, Pantolwen Press

Pantolwen Press is a publishing house bringing out a small number of high quality books

VU COMES OUT 19 DECEMBER 2024

Order direct from Gwales, the on-line shop of the Books Council of Wales

Read more about Kenneth Sinclair

PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS

The Seaborne and The Priestʼs Wife by A G Rivett

first books of the time-slip fantasy, the Isle Fincara Trilogy

PUBLICATIONS PENDING

The Shareg by A G Rivett

Heart Explosions the poems of Barbara Loveland

Gillian is also working on her own novel.

The post Experimental Fiction – What Kind of Book is VU? appeared first on Bryn Glas Books.

Of course, the city is best-known for its cathedral, which holds so much history, going back to the pre-Christian sacred site that was here before. For one thing, it’s the only church building I’ve come across that’s not oriented east-west.  Chartres cathedral faces the rising sun at summer solstice, like Stonehenge.

While staying in Chartres, we visited the Proust museum in nearby Illiers-Combray. With Proust, we enter the extraordinarily detailed world of Marcel’s personal history. And with it, his sense that all other people are strangers to us: for each, our own mind the only one we can truly know. I dip into the monumental work, off and on. To get a sense of the sweep of the whole, I’m indebted to Kenneth Sinclair’s and his novel, Vu, which I’m proud to be publishing this coming December. He devotes almost a chapter to Proust.

Then we drove to Giverny to visit Monet’s famous garden. The water lilies had finished flowering, but so much else was in bloom. I read that Monet saw his garden as his greatest achievement. Visiting his house, and perching a few minutes on the one chair you can sit down on, I took in the generous table in his dining room imagining the animated conversations that must have taken place there. Everything’s painted yellow. A happy colour!  We may only be able to see inside our own minds.  But we can also journey convivially alongside others to share the joy of life, when we get the chance.  I have no doubt that Jean Moulin did, when he still could.

Gillian PB

Gillian Paschkes-Bell

Editor, Pantolwen Press

Pantolwen Press is a publishing house bringing out a small number of high quality books

PUBLICATIONS TO DATE

The Seaborne and The Priestʼs Wife by A G Rivett

first books of the time-slip fantasy, the Isle Fincara Trilogy

PUBLICATIONS PENDING

Vu an experimental novel by Kenneth Sinclair

The Shareg by A G Rivett

Heart Explosions the poems of Barbara Loveland

Gillian is also working on her own novel.

The post From Jean Moulin to Giverny, via Chartres. And Proust. appeared first on Bryn Glas Books.

My personal conference highlight was Ian Mortimer, the medieval historian and author of the Time Traveler series, talking about ‘free history.’ By chance I was seated beside Dr Mortimer, up in the gods of the gallery overlooking Dartingtonʼs Great Hall, listening to the previous speaker. We exchanged words and when I spotted his name tag and said, “Youʼre on next,” he said he had something ‘really important’ to say. He’s since put his talk on his website.

So I listened with interest as Ian Mortimer debunked ‘traditional history’ stuffed with ‘facts’ to clear the way for ‘free history.’ But free history is not the kind of ‘free’ in which anything goes. With free history as Ian Mortimer understands it, novelists and dramatists are free to use their imaginations to suggest the motivations of characters or paint a scene with sounds and sights and smells. But to do this properly they must respect two disciplines: the framework of absolute facts, and the likelihoods suggested by the mass of evidence available. And the only absolute facts are well-attested instances of things that need no interpretation—like the fact that Queen Victoria came to the throne on 20 June 1837. If we fail to respect these, we’re no longer doing history: “We cannot do a ‘Braveheart’ and suggest William Wallace fathered Edward III, who was born seven years after Wallace was publicly executed,” Mortimer stated roundly. 

One reason why I agree that Ian Mortimerʼs address is important now is because of the clear thought and rigour with which he presents his approach to assessing truth. The world would be a better place if more people took on board what he has to say. In essence it is this: spot the difference between events witnessed by multiple believable sources and those that arenʼt. Don’t fall for assertions of ‘fact’  that fail the multiple believable sources test. Then make sure your theories about what may have happened fit the available evidence, knowing they can never be more than probabilities; maybe only possibilities. Once you’ve done all that, you’re free to use your imagination and bring a historical narrative to life.

I can illustrate this with a case in point. Not about novel writing, but about making categorical statements about novels. Around the time of the conference, I was reading Gabriel Garcia Marquesʼ historical classic, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Itʼs an immensely complex magical realist work that follows a family through six generations, beginning at a time before the railroads arrived and continuing into a time after. Itʼs not set within a framework of dates, but I found myself musing on the period covered and looked to see what pundits on the internet might say about this. 1820s to 1920s, said one—rather to my surprise, as the arrival of electricity to the fictional town of Macondo suggested a later period. The writer gave no evidence for the assertion. I turned to Wikipedia, and noticed there is one absolute fact in the novel: the Treaty of Neerlandia signed on October 24 1902 brought the Thousand Days War fought in Colombia between Conservatives and Liberals to an end. Back to the novel, and Colonel Aureliano Buendia fought all through this war. But he was the son of a founding father of Macondo, the first person to be born in Macondo, and a member of only the second generation out of six in the novel. So the 1820s to 1920s date simply doesn’t fit the absolute fact.  If the colonel had been born in the 1920s, or even the 1930s, he’d have been too old to take part.

In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marques uses another historical event, the massacre of striking workers of the United Fruit Company that took place in 1928 in the Colombian town of Cienaga. Details of this atrocity are clouded by attempts to suppress knowledge of the event, and it is uncertain how many people were killed. In an article by Maria R Estorino, we read that, “After the event, a ‘conspiracy of silence’ was created around the actual facts of the incident, especially concerning the number dead.” Unlike the Treaty of Neerlandia, which remains a point of reference, Marques fictionalises the massacre, presenting it as taking place in Macondo with over 3000 dead. But he bears witness in his fiction to the ‘conspiracy of silence’ mentioned by Maria Estorino through a later Aureliano who is alone in knowing and believing the story of the massacre while others living in Macondo have forgotten it. They have also forgotten the memory of Aureliano’s ancestor, Colonel Aureliano Buendia, even though a street in the town was once named after him. Macondo becomes a town where the people have lost their history. And, at the close of the book, it is wiped from the face of the earth.

Further to this theme of truth vs post-truth—or truth vs sloppy thinking—it happened that shortly after the HNS conference the world witnessed the presidential debate between Harris and Trump. It’s clear that any concern about holding to a framework of ‘absolute facts’ is on the agenda of only one out of the two candidates. So whatever the political persuasion of voting Americans, the choice that lies before them in November is between a leader who cares about such matters and one who does not. Ian Mortimer has his finger on one of the key issues of our times. How can we know if a statement is true? How should we regard matters that can’t be proven either way? And does it matter? That these issues have come to lie at the heart of this yearʼs American presidential election make it surely more radical and more important than any that have taken place in the United States before.

Gillian PB

Gillian Paschkes-Bell

Editor, Pantolwen Press

Pantolwen Press is a publishing house bringing out a small number of high quality books

PUBLICATIONS TO DATE

The Seaborne and The Priestʼs Wife by A G Rivett

first books of the time-slip fantasy, the Isle Fincara Trilogy

PUBLICATIONS PENDING

Vu, an experimental novel by Kenneth Sinclair

The Shareg by A G Rivett

Heart Explosions the poems of Barbara Loveland

Gillian is also working on her own novel, inspired by the phrase the long defeat

The post How to use history appeared first on Bryn Glas Books.

Models of masculinity and the challenge of the feminine

The film takes place at the end of WW2 when Franco, though in power, faced pockets of resistance. Captain Vidal, a small-scale dictator of the army troop he commands, has brought his pregnant wife, Carmen, to a house in some woods where Francoʼs soldiers are opposing socialist guerillas. Here she is to give birth to their son. (It must be a son: ”Donʼt fuck with me,” he tells the doctor who questions how he can know.) For Vidal, only the masculine has value, and his interpretation of the masculine is the ruthless, uncompromising wielding of power.

But Carmen is a widow and the mother of Ofelia, a young girl who sees fairies and follows their invitation to enter the otherworld of the Labyrinth. A narrator tells us that really Ofelia is the daughter of the King of the Underword, and repeatedly we see her disappearing into the woods to descend stone steps, where she meets an otherworldly goat/man, who says he is a faun. Earthy and fey, he is an entirely different representation of masculinity from that of Captain Vidal. But is the faun to be trusted? Ofelia asks this question as he presents her with challenges that test all her reserves of courage and strength.

What price obedience? What price disobedience?

Obedience and disobedience is a powerful theme running through the film. The Captain demands obedience, and is ready to torture or kill anyone who dare thwart him. The faun demands it too. At first, Ofelia complies. But as his demands become more and more extreme, they reach the point where, first, she makes a minor digression, and at last holds firm, refusing to comply with what she sees as an unacceptable demand. Her resistance leads to her death, the same death with which the film opens. But this becomes the portal through which she enters the underworld and is reunited with her true father, the king.

I was told a few years ago about the narrative of ‘the long defeat,’ which I interpret as the truth that if you behave in a Christ-like way—with disinterested courage, free from the bondage of fear and its compromises—you will be crucified in this world in one way or another. Yet through the willingness to stand, silent but uncompromising, for what is of greatest value, something that cannot be killed is born: it rises, freed from its moorings, sailing beyond the reach of the everyday world of self-interest and heartless calculations. Surely this is the essential meaning of the resurrection.

Duende

Spanish culture holds the idea and active influence of Duende, a spirit that resides in both death and beauty. Every work of art worthy of the name is shot through with Duende, wrote playwright, Garcia Lorca, in his essay on this theme. Every work of art is held in a tension between apparent opposites.

Head and Heart

This being human is a balance. The Sufi poet, Rumi knew this. (Iʼve borrowed the phrase from a translation of his poem, The Guest House.) Itʼs a balance, at times precarious and difficult, between alternative ways of being, the way of the head and the way of the heart. To embrace either to the exclusion of the other is psychosis. To hold both together is a tension that can sometimes seem unbearable.

Gillian PB

Gillian Paschkes-Bell

Editor, Pantolwen Press – bringing out a small number of high quality books

PUBLICATIONS TO DATE

The Seaborne and The Priest’s Wife by A G Rivett

first books of the time-slip fantasy, the Isle Fincara Trilogy

PUBLICATIONS PENDING

Vu an experimental novel by Kenneth Sinclair

The Shareg by A G Rivett

Heart Explosions the poems of Barbara Loveland

Gillian is also working on her own novel, inspired by the phrase the long defeat.

The post This Being Human – Panʼs Labyrinth appeared first on Bryn Glas Books.

Sometimes a place calls to a person and draws them there, and becomes the place where something essential happens.

Marianʼs mother, Stella, was an artist who had lived in St Ives through WW2 and been part of the artistic community there. Then suddenly, she moved away. It seemed to Marian, growing up, that Stella put art before everything, including herself. This was what it had felt like for her, through a childhood in which her mother always seemed to be questing for a place to paint. There’s a poignant scene in which she remembers Stella setting a canvas on an easle, and then offering her a paintbrush which she instantly declines.

Was Marian right in her assumptions about Stellaʼs priorities? Right to refuse the brush? This question of what to prioritise is replayed in Marianʼs daughter, Alice, a musician who risks her place in a string quartet because she abandons rehearsals when she feels summoned by the call of family—ironically, at the time of her artist-grandmotherʼs final illness. As Alice contemplates her choice and its consequences, we are told: “…the problem in life, she saw now, was not so much doing what you wanted as doing what you wanted MOST.”

Succeeding generations of the same family, working with the same issues.

This question of priorities. Putting art first? Putting children first? Putting something else first? Such questions have to be asked again and again. Different priorities emerge at different times and itʼs not always easy to decide between competing claims. What child would want to be the constant focus of a parentʼs attention? Or how would that be healthy if they did? Thereʼs a key exchange when Marian declares to her daughter: “But Alice thatʼs what love is like. I have put you and Toby first from the moment you were born.” And Alice returns: “Didnʼt you ever think it might be the wrong place to put children? That it might ask too much of us? That it was hard enough, finding our own reason for living, without being yours as well.”

But thereʼs a crucial distinction between putting your childʼs needs first, and making them your reason for living. In all questions of priorities, discernment is needed. And that requires looking closely, deeply; looking below the surfaces to find hidden layers of truth. This matter of making choices lies at the very heart of the soul journey. The deeper we dive, the more is asked of us. But the greater the liberation that may be reached.

The Serpentine Cave shows us Marianʼs process of looking deeply and peeling off the layers to find a truth that challenges her assumptions about her mother, and becomes a gateway she can pass through to reach a new possibility. We leave Marian in St Ives, paintbrush in hand, knowing that a new life is opening before her, one that will be a journey of seeing; of looking every more deeply, more closely, into the heart of things. We leave her with this comment: “But what she wanted to see was truth naked, like the rocks in the tide…”

The author concludes: “…It was not something that could be suddenly accomplished.”

Gillian PB, June 2024

Gillian Paschkes-Bell is an interfaith minister and small publisher, bringing out a small quantity of quality fiction through her publishing imprint, Pantolwen Press. To date she has published the first two books of the Isle Fincara Trilogy by A G Rivett and is preparing to publish Vu by Kenneth Sinclair later in the year.

The post Truth and Priorities: The Serpentine Cave appeared first on Bryn Glas Books.

Thereʼs some controversy about the Netflix documentary about this find and its implications. The scientists involved have been accused of making claims without adequate supporting evidence. But how much supporting evidence can you expect from 250,000 years ago? I’ve recently been attending a series of seminars on Celtic Religions by the archaeologist Dr Ralph Heussler. After presenting the evidence thatʼs been dug up, the matter of interpreting it becomes one of speculation. No doubt there are better and worse-informed guesses. But, so often, there just isnʼt enough evidence to be definite about exactly what went on all those years ago, let alone why. Tom Stoppardʼs play Arcadia illustrates this, showing us scenes in the life of a country house in the early 19^thcentury, interspersed with scenes of late 20^thcentury academics speculating about what happened—but never discovering what we, the audience, have been shown. Time and again in Ralphʼs Celtic Religions seminars, when we had laid out all the possibilities that occurred to us, someone turned to him in the hope of hearing received opinion. He never rose to this. We long for definite answers, but so often are left with mystery.

Iʼve been watching Neil Oliverʼs three-part series, Sacred Wonders of Britain, on the BBC IPlayerArchive. The first of these goes back to the times of the earliest human settlers of the British Isles and the traces they left behind of their lives. One of the sites Neil Oliver focuses on is a Neolithic flint mine in present-day Norfolk, known as Grimes Graves. But, he points out, nobody needs to carve out a mine to get flints. They’re readily available on the surface. So why the mine? Itʼs been suggested that people went down there at the cusp of adult life to find the flint they would use as a cutting instrument for the rest of their lives. Did they go alone? Or were they, like Morag, taken down and left there for a limited time? We cannot tell. But it seems likely, if there was no practical need to mine for flints, the purpose of the mine was on another level. Was it created to provide an ordeal of initiation into adult life?

Adult life in those times would have required very considerable qualities of courage, endurance and skill that we, in our more comfortable times, can hardly imagine. I mean—how ready might you or I have been aged, say, twelve, for our first mammoth hunt? Naming the mammoth immediately brings up for me the regret that our ancestors hunted it to extinction, suggesting that our forefathers werenʼt necessarily wiser in their dealings with the creatures they shared the land with than we are now. But, for sure, to survive into adulthood in the times before farming, hunting as well as gathering would have been essential. For me, Carlos Castenedaʼs shamanic books set in New Mexico make that kind of a world more imaginable as, with the viewpoint of a twentieth century man, he details the level of skill needed to read a landscape and tell of the comings and going of its occupants.

What are our initiatory rights? In these days of compulsory school attendance for all, the one provided by society is the public examination system. These certainly are an ordeal—particularly for those who put their all into doing the best they can. Exams hone and test qualities of cognitive understanding, but also our determination, mental stamina, willpower and application. Depending on the area being examined, other qualities may also come to the fore. But nothing that the public exam system tests is on a par with the initiatory ordeal suggested by Grimes Graves when it comes to facing and managing sheer fright and physical endurance.

In The Priestʼs Wife, Morag chooses to endure the ordeal of being left alone in the Womb of the Mountain. In the society of the Island itʼs a challenge usually undertaken only by the Islandʼs spiritual Guardians. But Morag feels an inner summons to it and it becomes the gateway to her deeper self-knowledge and thereby, later on, her ability to step into a public role beyond the expectations of her society.

I think for all of us it’s worthwhile to look back over our lives at events that have marked us. For myself, being left alone was an early ordeal. I was left for two weeks in a hospital when aged only six months, at a time when parents were not allowed to remain with their children. Six years later, I was left at a boarding school, surrounded by strangers, with no prospect of seeing a dear, familiar face for a period that was immeasurable to me. To survive these situations psychologically, it was necessary to reach inside for an inner resource I did not know I had, and which still seems mysterious to me. But I did not emerge unscathed, and a priority for my adult journey, when it came, was inner healing.

Major ordeals need careful preparation. Dropping people into extreme situations unprepared leads to damaged human beings and if cave ordeals were indeed a feature of the lives of some of our ancestors, I imagine they would have been the culmination of a careful initiatory process. But if this has been well-handled, the individual emerges strong and better able to withstand the unexpected ordeals life may throw at them later.

Gillian PB

May 2024

Gillian runs Pantolwen Press, a small independent publishing house

Recent publications: The Seaborne and The Priest’s Wife by A G Rivett—first books of the Isle Fincara Trilogy

The post Initiation Rites – The Womb of the Mountain appeared first on Bryn Glas Books.

Shock, grief and condemnation followed. The question Why would anyone do this? has been asked repeatedly. There seems no answer. And yet, there must have been a clear and deliberate motive. Itʼs not easy to cut down a huge tree. Whoever did it, planned it, and had the ability to carry it out.

I found myself thinking back to the planes that flew into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre back in 2001. An act of extreme violence, expressing condemnation of Western capitalism. If there was any message in the felling of the sycamore, it was harder to read. But we may reflect that beautiful trees are felled daily. That this goes on routinely, without the outrage stimulated by the loss of a tree that has captured the imagination of thousands.

In her meditation, Bishop Helen-Ann did not seek to read meaning into the motive for the felling, but rather to draw meaning from heart-felt and creative responses to loss. She took us to Newcastle Cathedral, and the Storytelling Chair in the crypt, crafted from an oak that came down in a storm. This chair was made in response to women who, having suffered, had found healing in telling their stories before compassionate witnesses. It was crafted in keeping with their requests. The women wanted the chair to reflect the interweaving of the shards of their stories. And to have a firm, substantial seat to support whoever plucks up courage to take the Storytelling Chair.

The tree of the Sycamore Gap has been cut down, but not killed. Today a notice stands beside it to that effect. If left to heal, it has the potential to shoot and re-grow. All the worldʼs stories are about the interplay of opposing tendencies: the tendency to create, construct, grow, and the tendency to destroy. The Easter story is an archetypal example. Its protagonist, who had become known for challenging hypocrisy and standing up for the underdog, changes. One day he is angry, overturning the money-dealers tables in the Temple, opposing the greed they represent. But then, at the culmination of the story, he stops. No more words. No more actions. A surrender. An allowing. But not a compromise. Rather, a conscious acknowledgement of inevitable outcomes. By surrendering to those outcomes, in some way he enters right into them. And the story tells us that this entering changes the way things are—not on the outer, but on the inner. It brings about a new possibility for the one who walks that path.

I think of Fernando Meirelles’ outstanding 2019 film, The Two Popes, in which both Ratzinger and Bergoglio, who became Popes Benedict and Frances, are also shown to change, radically, at pivotal points in their lives. In this film Benedict initially resists change, dismissing it as compromise; through the course of his profound exchange with Bergoglio, he learns to look upon things differently. The Easter story of crucifixion and resurrection acknowledges that there is a time for protest and opposition. But it moves on from there. It places the focus on a time for transformation. It is a story about transcending evil and pain through entering right into it without being spiritually corrupted by it.

In his short 1929 film, Un Chien Andalou, (An Andalusian Dog) Luis Bunuel depicted a dogsʼ home. But however many dogs were rescued, the problem of stray dogs remained, for there was always another. There will always be evils in the world. Some arise from greed, and the desire for power and control. Others, from carelessness or mischance. (Over the week-end we happened upon an account of the only time Concorde crashed, causing 113 fatalities—because of a piece of metal that had dropped, un-noticed, off the previous plane that took off from the same runway.) Some evils defy categorisation. The Easter story starts in the everyday world of time and space, where bad things inevitably happen. Then it moves into another dimension: one that can only be reached through a kind of surrender that is not compromise.

We went through the days of Easter with all its dynamic of sorrow and joy. We rose on Easter Sunday to see a most beautiful dawn breaking over the hill that rises behind our house: pink clouds stretching out under a pellucid pale blue sky. And, after an eggy breakfast, we set off to join the 600 worshippers gathered in St Davidʼs Cathedral. We were seated near the entrance, and so—all through the service—saw people arrive, stop, stare and slip out again. It probably hadnʼt occurred to most of those brief visitors that a service would be going on. Like my young relatives, who thought it would be nice to go to Rome in late March, and booked the last week-end, with no thought that thousands would celebrating Easter there. “Weʼll steer clear of the Vatican,” they announced, when this was pointed out to them. But what they couldnʼt steer clear of was the procession that wound through the ancient city from the Colisseum, honouring the lives of the martyrs. (The very people noted for having the courage to face evil and surrender without compromise.) We couldnʼt help but smile.

Gillian PB

April 2024

Gillian runs Pantolwen Press, a small independent publishing house.

Recent publications: The Seaborne andThe Priest’s Wife by A G Rivett—first books of the Isle Fincara Trilogy

The post Sycamore Gap appeared first on Bryn Glas Books.

He took us east, valley by valley, into the Cambrian Mountains, where he invited us to stop to hear the pure call of the curlew, before travelling back in time … Eighty years … More … Until we arrived at Mynedd Appoint.

Euros lingered on the name Epynt. A name, he told us, older than the Welsh language. Even older than the Brethonic language it came from. One that goes right back to the ancient pan-European Celtic culture of ancient times. I learned later how the Goddess Epona—usually seen on horseback—was widely revered in ancient Celtic culture. The name, he said, meant a pathway for horses. It implied that the mountain belonged to the ponies that used to roam there.

When our story began, Euros told us, a community of tenant farmers was spread over the mountain, a chapel, a school and the Droverʼs Arms the only public buildings. Early in the school year of 1939 came a day when the schoolchildren’s eyes were drawn away from their teacher, towards to a strangely-coloured car that had drawn up outside: the colour, they told one other, of a new-born calfʼs shit. An army officer got out, and came into the school to consult Miss Williams. He wanted to visit the local farms. There were fifty-two in all.

Here Euros paused his tale, inviting us to linger with that community, learn something of its ways. The chapel was the only centre where all could meet under a roof. But many was the meeting in a farmhouse kitchen. Outside, they gathered to work together in the rhythms of the great annual tasks of lambing, shearing, and the cutting of the grasses that would become winter feed and bedding. At those times all hands were called to the task, or to the feeding of those engaged in it. So it is in the fallow times between, that people could get together to celebrate. As they did at New Year 1940, the young lads racing from farm to farm, eager to be the first to cross a threshold wishing those inside Blwyddyn Newydd Dda—Happy New Year! They did not know how hollow their wishes would soon seem. 

It was just after St Davidʼs Day that a letter was delivered to each of the fifty-two farms. Dated 4 March and written in English—not their native tongue—it came from the Ministry of Defence. Euros held one of those letters up to read from it. The farms were all to be requisitioned. Mynydd Epynt would cease to be a place for ponies, or sheep, or a farming community. The military required the area for firing practice. The farmers must be out by 30 April.

Representations were made. But every argument failed except that of the pregnant sheep who had lambs to deliver and raise, and were never going to do that by the end of April. The stay of execution was deferred to 30^thJune. In the meantime, the community found the heart to gather one last time, for the local Eistedfodd, the annual competition of performing arts. It was remembered as a good one, that Eisteddfod of 1940 in Mynydd Epynt.

On the last day of June, Iorwerth Peate, who later became curator and founder of the Saint Fagan Folk Museum, went to bear witness to the exodus. He found himself standing by an elderly woman, matriarch of her farm. She was seated in the farmyard while the last things were being loaded, staring, not seeing. Then she turned her distracted gaze towards the visitor and asked: O ble dychiʼn dod? From where do you come? And when he told her, she returned: “Then youʼd better get back there. Because here, itʼs the End of the World.”

The threat of Nazi domination weighed heavier in the balance than the world of 250 souls. The community of Mynydd Epynt and its way of life became effectively a casualty of war.

Waunifor is the Welsh Centre of the Template Foundation, and Euros was present at a storytelling weekend they held in September 2023, which attracted storytellers from the Netherlands, Israel and Iran as well as the UK. The philosophy of the Template Foundation begins with the idea that creation is continuously evolving and sees each human life as an opportunity to find purpose within that evolution. 

Epynt is one of very many stories of the loss and change of communities broken up as a consequence of conflict. To recognise this is to recognise that there is a balance to be struck between individual responsibility and common responsibility. The Wikipedia account of the eviction details individuals who kept returning to take care of their homes and land, which some believed they would return to after the war. But the land has not been returned. Today the Sennybridge Training Area (SENTA) is one of the largest military training areas in Britain.

To find purpose requires finding meaning. How hard is the challenge to do that, when everything you recognise as giving meaning to your life is in your past. Yet … life goes on. Our hard-working MP, Ben Lake, is the grandson of Beryl Lake, the last baby to have been born on the Epynt. He commented: “My grandmother named her new home in Llanddewi Brefi Beili Richard after the farm she was born on, and so as a family we are fortunate that a part of the Epynt will always stay with us.”

Gillian PB

February 2024

Gillian runs Pantolwen Press, a small independent publishing house.

Recent publications: The Seaborne and The Priest’s Wife by A G Rivett – the first books of the Isle Fincara Trilogy

The post World’s End appeared first on Bryn Glas Books.

*****

Seen on a tee-shirt emblazoned across someone’s chest: Is it over yet?

Yes, it’s over: Christmas, New Year, Epiphany, and we can get back to normal life. And for me, as I guess for many of us, it’s something of a relief. High streets have been lit up with fancy lights since late November. Houses soon followed, and the first Christmas songs were detected in early December. Now the decorations have come down and the cards, kindly meant, gladly received, have been consigned to the recycling bin.

A relief, yes. Yet something remains: some sense of – may I call it Otherness?

The year has turned. In the garden a camellia is opening its rose-pink flowers and the first yellow threads of the witch-hazel are showing. Even, unbelievably, an early crocus is emerging, full of hope.

Here in rural West Wales the seasons are clearly marked, moving from one into the other with changes in the plants all around, and in the animals that we live amongst. Soon the frogs will be croaking around the pond and the woodpeckers will be drumming, and before we know it the chiff-chaffs will be calling from the copse.

Our societies have developed with ceremonies to mark these changes. Going back to pre-Christian days we marked the solstices and equinoxes and the cross-quarter days of Samhain and Imbolg, Beltain and Lammas. Today, there is an increasing interest in marking these ceremonies once more. Back then as the missionaries began to arrive from Rome in the seventh century, these festivals were Christianised. Now we have Easter and Christmas, Harvest Festival and All Saints’ Day. But as people have massively turned from the Church, we’re in danger of losing our festivals. For many, all that is left is Halloween, with its trick-or-treat, its pumpkins and ghosts, followed by Christmas, a nebulous fog of reindeer and snowmen, holly and robins, to try and persuade us to buy more tat.

We need our ceremonies, to mark not only the turning of the year, but the stages of our lives: welcoming a new-born child; coming of age; forming a life-partnership; saying goodbye. We need the occasional change from routine to mark something Other.

It’s my belief that almost everyone has a ‘religious’ sense – although some prefer to call it ‘spiritual.’ It’s part of being human. And while the God-word is a big turn-off for many, still the sense of otherness remains. Why else do we say to each other: Look! There’s a rainbow!

The other day I was reading a book by A.C.Grayling, The God Argument: an attempt to disprove religion by logic. He was quite right: this religious sense is not logical. Every attempt to prove God by reasoning fails. But as every Trekkie knows, Spock becomes comical when he pursues his reasoning to its logical end, for we are more than mere logicians.

So I make no apology for bringing a sense of Otherness into my writing. The people of my imaginary Isle Fincara have a variously developed sense of this: it may be nothing like as strong in people like Murdogh and Padragh as it is among the Guardians, that mysterious body of thirteen who take counsel for the good of the Island. Ceremonies are an important part of what keeps this sense of Otherness alive among the Islanders. And they have plenty of them: not only the quarter-days and cross-quarters and Easter, but ceremonies for the rising of the moon, for marking the righting of a wrong.

But their view of the Other is distinct from what we commonly call God. For in many people’s minds it remains difficult to separate ‘God’ from a picture of an anthropomorphic super-ego: a Big Daddy in the sky wagging a finger at bad people while smilingly beckoning the good to join him on a cloud. Except what’s bad or good seems to differ according to where and among whom you were born. No wonder people reject such a scene!

The islanders in my imaginary world see God as the masculine side of the Mystery of Being, balanced by Ghia or Earth Mother, the feminine face.

In the Prologue of The Priest’s Wife I wrote of the sidhe, the other-worldly manifestations of the Divine, that ‘more and more, people are closing their minds to us. In the meadows of Caerster they no longer bless the fields on Bride’s Day. We are forgotten, or denied, or denounced…’ So these Islanders too, as they forget the sacredness of heaven and earth, are losing their ceremonies.

Yes, it’s over: that splurge of candied confection that has become Christmas. Yet in all that sugar-sweet bath-water there’s a baby of very real value. I won’t mourn if we lose our commercial Christmas altogether. But that sense of Otherness that is the essence of the Christmas story is a part of being human; and when we lose that element in our ceremonies, we lose an important part of our humanity.

*****

A G Rivett is the author of the Isle Fincara Trilogy. The first two books, The Seaborne and The Priest’s Wife, are out, published by Pantolwen Press. He’s still writing the third book, The Shareg.  This morning we were thrilled to learn that The Seaborne gained a starred review from the prestigious Blue Ink Review site in the USA, meaning they rate it as ‘exceptional.’ It’s also got a good rating on Goodreads.

With all good wishes,

Gillian PB

17 January 2024

The post A Sense of Otherness appeared first on Bryn Glas Books.

Where does any story start? Wherever you choose to begin, there will be something that came before. So itʼs a matter of discerning the dramatic entry point which, in this case, I deem to be a winterʼs day in northern Scotland. I was living in a house called Heatherfield which I had built at Findhorn – not the village, but the nearby spiritual community. I’d designed the house for community living on a small scale and was sharing it with Duncan and Chrisanthe (who became my friends) and Andrew (who became my husband). It must have been the winter of 2012/13 when this story begins, and every winter, with monotonous regularity, Andrew used to go down with a Very Bad Cold. On this occasion the bad cold was keeping him in when he longed to be out doing something, and I said, “Why donʼt you get on with that novel you told me about?” I was referring to an idea heʼd had years before, holidaying in Ireland. Heʼd written a bit and put it on one side. Now he began work in earnest.

You can read more about how Andrew wrote The Seaborne on his own website. But my part in it began when he asked me if Iʼd draft a scene with a group of young women. From that point I became involved, eventually as his editor, with an eye particularly to matters of consistency, historicity and bringing out the emotional depth and intelligence inherent in the narrative. And here I will pause for a backward look to comment that when the two of us got together, we had no idea we were going to be creating a writing partnership.

We moved to Wales.The Seaborne was picked up by a Cardiff-based publisher called Wordcatcher and came out in November 2019, just before the covid lockdowns. The first reader review on Amazon set the tone for those that followed: “Just beautiful,” wrote Dr D Morris. “I hope this writer writes more.”

It had become clear to Andrew that the story begun in The Seaborne was asking to be expanded into a trilogy and he was well into drafting The Priest’s Wife when we learned that Wordcatcher was going to cease trading. A long moment of consternation. What to do? A small but appreciative group of readers was looking forward to the next book. But how long would it take to find a new publisher? Wordcatcher had also been planning to publish another book I was editing: Vu by Kenneth Sinclair. This is an ambitious experimental novel and, beautiful though the book undoubtedly is, it was never easy to imagine a commercial publisher taking it on. I took a deep breath and decided I would publish these books myself. My publishing imprint would be called Pantolwen Press.

In taking this decision, I was plunging into a deep pool. I had some of the skills needed, but not all. Iʼm a sensitive and exacting editor and can bring a book to a high standard. Iʼve got some publicity experience, but that was developed in the years before social media. And as for computer skills… Once you get beyond word-processing and email Iʼm quickly out of my depth. So I entered into contracts with Publishing Push to get the books designed and made available, and Dash Media to put together a website and get me going with social media.

By this time weʼd been living in Wales long enough for me to become aware of Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru, the Books Council of Wales. A perusal of their website told me of the literary grants they offer. I applied, and my little publishing venture received a big boost when they gave a grant for publication of The Priest’s Wife and offered to distribute all my books. The reader reports were also of immense value in helping us rework aspects of the books. As was a further grant to help with marketing, which led to features, interviews and reviews. For example, this one on the Historical Novel Society website.

The other day, I found myself speaking on the phone to someone who had called me by accident. We knew one another from the Findhorn community, and so started talking about the huge changes happening there since the Findhorn Foundation announced closure and stopped offering education courses in September 2023. As a member of the wider Findhorn Community, I was aware of the recent impetus at Findhorn to gather in silence to seek guidance. Now I heard my unexpected caller speak of her sense of a return to the spiritual values that created the community in the first place. We found ourselves discussing its core values of honouring spirit and nature together. The talk ranged into esoteric areas, envisaging our planet as having a particular role to play, a crucial part of that role being connected with the sacrifice of Christ, its effect penetrating deep into the earth, into each being of Earth: the Earth, that is alive with spirit, out of which we humans emerge, along with the rest of life. We reflected on the unfashionable thought that self-sacrifice is a fundamental and necessary dynamic of life.

As I listened to what my caller was saying, I thought about the books I am publishing.The Seaborne ends with an ordeal and a sacrifice. The Priestʼs Wife begins with the voice of the Sidh of the Island,* remembering how the faery beings once danced in service to the Chrisht (the Island word for Christ), but are finding themselves driven underground as humans deny them. And I realised that these, the books of the Isle Fincara Trilogy, which began in earnest in Findhorn, reflect Findhornʼs values and are themselves of worth precisely because what they express is urgent and essential for life today. My first blog post was called Nature and Us. The fuller picture is Nature and Spirit and Us.

*You can read the voice of the Sidh of the Island passage by scrolling down to The Prologue, here.

Wishing You Blessings at Advent

Gillian PB

The post How I Became a Publisher – Nature and Spirit and Us appeared first on Bryn Glas Books.