Petitioning Myths
(All photos sourced from: www.cargocollective.com) What is it about Borth that attracts geomyths I wonder? There is a brand new one this week, regarding the proposed artistic sculpture by Robert Davies. The new myth takes the form of an online petition. Petitions are tricky things, they actively seek to condense what can be extremely complex issues, into an easy to understand short account – which is no easy task. The petitioners need to have no position of authority from whi
Expedition Unknown
Last week I attended a public viewing of a television programme I was involved in with the Travel Channel. The show is 'Expedition Unknown', the episode is 'England's Vanished Crown Jewels.' It's about the medieval King John, who allegedly lost his baggage train in The Wash, Anglia, shortly before he passed away amidst riotous politics. My role was as geomythologist and geoscientist, the former involved much untangling of the original latin (thanks to all who helped!) which w
ELF on the (temperature controlled storeroom) Shelf
As part of the 'Europe's Lost Frontiers' project, headed by Professor Vince Gaffney at Bradford, the Doggerland sea cores have come to us in Lampeter to be processed. We recently had a team meeting in the labs, including across Skype, resulting for me in the sketch below (there may have been a few, crucial, logistical decisions made by the others as well!). I'd also been challenged to produce a cut out poem from one of the core descriptions I had been collating, which turned
White Poppies
(A Macalla, After a Century's War) From Flanders Fields the poppies grow Inside our houses, row on row, They pierce our breasts with scarlet wings And mark the place where still larks sing Faintly in the century's woe. These are the dead, their name is Hedd. Their graves file the past in serried Ranks of stone, pale in the morning of Flander's fields. Take up no quarrel with your foe, The flame of flowers in your hand. Tread lightly on the soil we share With shadows who will
Mustard Gas, Mud and Maiden Castle
The other day, my daughter asked me what my favourite WW1 poem was. I was unable to answer. How does one pick a favourite out of war?
I muttered a generic reposte, handing her a copy of Hedd Wyn and falling back on my usual default of Yeats. She gave me a withering look. A day passed - I wrote 'White Poppies' and looked through my photographs from Flander's Fields. I'd visited Belgium because I have family from there - and it also seemed right to take Peace Mala Dove Number
