Red Door #28 - The TYPEWRITTEN issue

BY DOMINIC WILLIAMS
I live in a small fishing village in west
Wales, Glan y fferi, or Ferryside. The
village lies on the edge of the mudflats
of the Tywi estuary. Steep hills
rise quickly from the east and west
banks of the river’s mouth. The sunset
silhouetted Llansteffan castle
imposes its view from the headland
across from Ferryside and above my
village perched on the top of the hill
is another, Llansaint. Over centuries
the location of Llansaint has been
as impermanent to the pencil of the
cartographer as the tide from Carmarthen
Bay, into which three rivers
flow, the Taf and the Gwendraeth
being the sisters of the Tywi. This
landscape limits internet access
in our village as it does in much of
rural Wales. During the pandemic
in 2020 the spoken-word open-mic
that I have hosted in The Queens
pub in Carmarthen took to the airwaves,
the poetry and zoom revolution,
not in Llansaint however.
Llansaint is the home of one of my
dearest friends, the poet Laurence
James. Laurence has been one
of the most stalwart supporters of
our spoken word events since they
began in 2010. Weaving his way by
foot in summer and by public bus in
winter.
Laurence is not a traditional poet;
he is the tradition. As a young man
he travelled to the Greek island of
Paros where he served an apprenticeship
with his hero and mentor
the Irish poet and translator Desmond
O’Grady. O’Grady … was arguably,
with the exception of Yeats,
the most international of twentieth
century Irish poets. (Obituary: Irish
Independent August 2014). Laurence’s
bardic education, an immersive
lived experience on Paros and
across mainland Europe finally led
him to an extended creative period
in Berlin.
Laurence has never owned a computer
or a smart device, never had
an email address and is a long-time
devotee of the radio. He has a career
in translation and poetry publication
outside Wales and the village
that has been his home for so many
years, but his craft is analogue; his
communication the postal service,
I am the owner of several precious
letters; his poetic tools longhand
and his typewriter.
Making unreliable connections
at cross-roads of narrow winding
Welsh lanes, travelling ten miles to
arrive at the event with just enough
time to spare for a cwrw bach, a
small beer. The concept of ‘poems
and pints‘ was not new to Laurence,
he already had over a decade’s history
of organising a monthly poetry,
story-telling and folk music night at
The Kings pub in Llansaint. What
is alien to Laurence is the notion of
social media, email and word processing
packages.
054