(for Kornelia Struzyna) Wood represents trees whose growth rings portray the fullness of branches, a road going across a hillside nearly obscures the steep slope of a house untouched by war; one can smell dust on the frame which contradicts…
(for Richard Burdett) A sketch of an etching emphasizing the outline nature of experience, scarce white vertical lines on paper denoting light, the face facing us unclear against it, limbs and dress scarcely delineated, the lack of colour but an…
(for Jules Riley) translation of the libretto by Mary Burdett-Jones Storyteller (soprano)Melangell (mezzo soprano)Cufwlch, Melangell’s father, an Irish king (bass)Ethni, Melangell’s mother, an Irish queen (contralto)Warrior (tenor)Brochfael, a Welsh king (baritone)Chorus (courtiers, huntsmen, nuns) OVERTURE(back projection of ghostly shapes…
The composer Jules Riley asked me to provide him with a few poems suitable to set as a song cycle to celebrate the 30th birthday of the Tabernacl, the home of MOMA Machynlleth, where there are a number of galleries…
Poems by Mary Burdett-Jones set to music by Jules Riley for baritone, clarinet and piano Clyde Holmes’s Cwm Hesgin (for Marion Löffler) There is a doppelgänger, a double cloud in the landscape. There is peace: the sedges are not listless…
I was asked to write the libretto for an opera on the theme of the Welsh saint Melangell by the composer Jules Riley, who had been very impressed by the church and its setting at Pennant Melangell. I chose to…
(in memoriam Rowan Malcom) ‘Be thou my vision’ must have been your prayer. We sang the lorica to the sweet tune of Slane. You patterned stones as a wheel on a beach and took a picture of the sea washing…
(in memoriam Elizabeth Coare) From the valley you watched the silent notes of sheep on a green sheet, their paths the lines of the stave. From the beach you collected pebbles and polished and varnished them into landscapes; you gave…
The crooked oak is dead, now blind to the colours of lichen, deaf to the striking wood pecker, doesn’t feel the stir of starlings’ wings twisting and turning before roosting, nor sense the inclination of pines towards her. After words…
After being forced to give birth prematurely, did you lie on a bed of railway sleepers, drawn there by a train rushing towards you? After hard labour that did not give birth to freedom, you were murdered. Your ash still…