EXCITING COLLABORATION -see blog for details

EVENT CANCELLED

Further events are planned

Aberystwyth Arts Centre/Theatr Gron/Round Theatre,

https://aberystwythartscentre.co.uk/

Darlleniadau am yr Hinsawdd /Climate readings 

with Robert Minhinnick, John Barnie, Katie Gramich, Samantha Wynne Rhydderch, Laura Wainwright, Matthew Francis. 

Event free/Rhad ac Am Ddim but discretionary. Croeso cynnes i bawb.

GREEN ROOM, FRIDAY, 21 APRIL 2023

8pm

James Roberts

& Open Mic + Film+ Music

James Roberts is a writer who lives in Kington on the Wales/England border.

His latest book is

‘Two Lights: Walking Through Landscapes of Loss and Life’

‘Searching for the wildness left in our world – spanning continents and geological eras…

Angela Graham is a BAFTA Cymru-winning film-maker and journalist. She has produced programmes for BBC, ITV, S4C and Channel 4 and was Development Producer of The Story of Wales.  She produced and co-wrote the Oscar entrant cinema feature Branwen (6 BAFTA Cymru nominations and Best Film at the Celtic Media Festival), and was a screenwriter on drama projects set in Italy, Romania and Ireland. She began her career in ITV, and spent eight years as a producer at one of Britain’s rare production co-operatives, Teliesyn.

She turned to writing full time in 2017. Her poetry has appeared in The North, The Honest Ulsterman, Poetry Wales, The Ogham Stone, The Open Ear, The Interpreter’s House and other journals. An award-winning short story writer, she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2019. She is currently finishing a novel and engaged in a prose/poetry project on Place and Displacement in the context of urban violence.

“A necessary and urgent response to the world’s increasing crises…” – Robert Minhinnick

Sanctuary is – urgent. The pandemic has made people crave it; political crises are denying it to millions; the earth is no longer our haven. This theme has enormous traction at a time of existential fear − especially among the young − that nowhere is safe. Even our minds and our bodies are not refuges we can rely on. Truth itself is on shaky ground.

Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere addresses these critical situations from the inside. How we can save the earth, ourselves and others? How valid is the concept of a ‘holy’ place these days? Are any values still sacrosanct? We all deserve peace and security but can these be achieved without exploitation?

Stage Door, Grand Pavilion, Porthcawl CF36 3YW

https://www.serenbooks.com/productdisplay/delirium

This collection of short prose begins with a real 1945 diary kept in Burma, and Minhinnick telling stories to his mother in her care home.

It includes a series of pictures of war-stricken Baghdad, and vignettes about place and travel, dedicated to Jan Morris.

On the way we encounter a Middle East island devoted to sustainability, close ups of what clearing a family house reveals, and the writer’s intimately imagined Welsh sand dunes.

Minhinnick also watches the Stereophonics in Sydney, mourns the Golan Heights and meets a family of destitute Bedouins.

Throughout we encounter the Covid pandemic, threats of extinction, and images of post-apocalyptic life.

A breathless epic…

Sustainable Wales’s Green Room returns on Friday, September 29, 8pm.

The evening will be dedicated to ‘new work’, in this case new music from Peter Morgan, and new writing from Kristian Evans, Robert Minhinnick and Hugh Doyle.
Kristian Evans will perform writing that will feature in his popular ‘Kenfig Journal’.

Robert Minhinnick will read poetry based on his father’s ‘Burmese diary’ for 1945, written when Albert Minhinnick was in the second battalion, Welch regiment.
The recently deceased writer, Duncan Bush, will be remembered, with reading of his work.

The evening will also feature an Open Mic for those who wish to take part. After three months away, a healthy turnout is expected.

Everyone welcome. Entrance £4.

‘DIARY OF THE LAST MAN’
Carcanet book and Park6 Productions film of the same name together.

ROBERT MINHINNICK & EAMON BOURKE

7.30pm, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26, 
STAGE DOOR, GRAND PAVILION, PORTHCAWL CF36 3YW. With Bar.

'Robert Minhinnick's new collection confirms his status as one of the most important poets of these turbulent times. Bleakly elegiac, environmentally political, vital and visionary, his poems cast an extraordinary light over our darkening landscapes.'
Carol Ann Duffy.

With guest readers.

Live music from Peter Morgan.

The opening poem sequence, 'Diary of the Last Man', sets the tone for Robert Minhinnick's book, a celebration of the dwindling Earth, an elegy, a caution. His Wales is a touchstone; other landscapes and cityscapes are tried against it, with its erratic weather, its sudden changes of mood, 'a black tonic'. The sequence remembers all the geographies of his earlier work, old and new world, but now unpeopled and the lonely spirit free to go anywhere, do anything, but meaning with mankind has drained away. Yet still alive, and still with language, registering. The rest of the book is filled with voices: of children, of rivers, terrorists, magicians; and voices translated from the Welsh, and from Turkish and Arabic, shared, enriching with their difference, their other worlds. History washes over and washes up on the strand of this Welsh book. It is seen and recognised, it begins to be transformed. In the long concluding poem, 'The Sand Orchestra', the poet returns to his own voice, and to the voice of a Bechstein piano abandoned in the open air, played now by nature, its winds and sand. The last man, who has been looking for Ulysses, is the very man he has been looking for.

GREEN ROOM RETURNS WITH LOCAL WRITING

Charity, Sustainable Wales welcomes all local writers to its GREEN ROOM, 5, JAMES ST. PORTHCAWL CF36 3BG on FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25, at 8pm for a celebration of ‘new writing’.

Entirely devoted to the ‘open mic’, the event will feature Robert Minhinnick, Gerald Webber and a variety of other prose and poetry writers.

Entrance £4.

More information: Sustainable Wales 01656 773627

Anthony Hontoir an author based in Porthcawl launches his ninth work at the Green Room a crime novel; "The Tidal Road Mystery", followed by the popular Open Mic event.

Journalist, film-maker and author Anthony Hontoir returned home after a week’s holiday in Devon during the summer of 2013 with an idea for a whodunit murder mystery, based around the tidal road in Aveton Gifford, which is renamed Watersford for the story. He decided that it should feature a new amateur detective in the form of Erwin Graham, a one-time Fleet Street crime reporter, assisted by his partner Belle, a gipsy. “The Tidal Road Mystery” is the first in a series of mystery tales, and it has been written along traditional whodunit lines, evoking the golden age of murder mysteries in which there are a number of suspects, each with a motive of their own, and they are all brought together at the end for Erwin Graham to explain how he has solved the crime and to reveal the culprit.

Film screenings: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 8pm. GREEN ROOM above SUSSED, 5, James St. PORTHCAWL CF36 3BG

Sustainable Wales’s ‘Green Room’ returns from its summer break with showings of ‘Late Love Poems’, a series of films by Eamon Bourke of Park6 Productions based round poems by Steve Griffiths. These will be followed by an Open Mic for local writers to perform their work, maybe with a ‘love poem’ theme. £4 entry.  Bring your own drinks. Everyone welcome. Further details – Sustainable Wales 01656 773627. 

About the Late Love Poems films.

More information to follow...

Following a successful launch event at Carnegie House, Bridgend, the performance of Limestone Man readings comes to the Green Room...

The novel features a main character, Richard Parry, who returns to south Wales after teaching in Australia. He discovers his hometown is now notorious for the suicides of young people.

Parry is a ‘writer who cannot write, a painter who does not paint’. His obsession is Lulu, “an orphan off the street, an aboriginal green child.” Lulu was gone missing in mysterious circumstances.

‘Limestone Man’ is the second novel in Robert Minhinnick’s ‘Sea Holly’ series.

The performance will feature readings by Robert Minhinnick and Lucy Bourke; plus music on theremin and Ableton Push played live by Peter Morgan.

‘Limestone Man’ retails at £9.99. available at SUSSED

Review of Limestone Man at Wales Art Review "Limestone Man is a very fine novel written with a hypnotic style"

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27. 8pm

HappenStance Press Comes to Porthcawl

Poet and editor of HappenStance press Nell Nelson travels from Fife to Porthcawl to launch two new books by Welsh poets.

'Unleaving' is the first collection of poems by Kristian Evans, a writer and artist, originally from Bridgend, who currently lives among the dunes at Kenfig on the south Wales coast with his wife, two sons and a border collie. A close observer of the expressions of the natural world, and its dialogue with poetic tradition, his work is nonetheless willing to take risks and test our conventions. Even in his prose, there’s poetry, the borderlines blurred and burnished. He is the author of the popular Kenfig Journal.

Stephen Payne’s day job is in academic cognitive science. He is currently Professor of Human-Centric Systems at the University of Bath. He’s always been fascinated by language and lyric, and here, in his first full length collection, 'Pattern Beyond Chance', scientist and poet meet and strike sparks. It’s no surprise to encounter poems that think, and think about thinking. They’re playful, provocative and lyrical, and the poet’s continuous pleasure in sound and pattern is curiously infectious.

Nell said, ""How lucky and lovely it is to have debut publications from two excellent Welsh poets at the same time! It's a delight to be launching HappenStance books in Wales -- for the first time, but definitely not the last."

Kristian will also be reading at Ty Carnegie, Bridgend's new art centre, with Clare Potter on the 15th of October and Stephen will be reading in Bath on the 30th of November.

HappenStance on twitter

SEPTEMBER 25, 7.30pm. Launch of ‘Limestone Man’

by Robert Minhinnick, a novel published by Seren Books.  With music from Peter Morgan and guest readers.

At ‘Ty Carnegie’ (Arts Hub), Wyndham Street, BRIDGEND, CF31 1EF. FREE ENTRANCE

Sustainable Wales’s ‘Green Room’ performance space has its autumn 2015 programme lined up. More details www.sustainablewales.org.uk

 All events usually take place at 5, James St., PORTHCAWL CF36 3BG on the last Friday of the month.

However, on FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 7.30pm we move to Ty Carnegie (Old Library) Wyndham Street, Bridgend CF31 1EF, for the launch of Robert Minhinnick’s novel, ‘Limestone Man’ (Seren). Free entrance. 

The novel features a main character, Richard Parry, who returns to south Wales after teaching in Australia. He discovers his hometown is now notorious for the suicides of young people.

Parry is a ‘writer who cannot write, a painter who does not paint’. His obsession is Lulu, “an orphan off the street, an aboriginal green child.” Lulu was gone missing in mysterious circumstances.

‘Limestone Man’ is the second novel in Robert Minhinnick’s ‘Sea Holly’ series.

The performance will feature two voices plus space-age keyboards played by Peter Morgan. There will also be three guests at a special ‘Open Mic’ event. ‘Limestone Man’ retails at £9.99. available at SUSSED 

Review of Limestone Man at Wales Art Review "Limestone Man is a very fine novel written with a hypnotic style"

8pm, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 sees a special evening of harp playing and Welsh language recitation taking place in SUSTAINABLE WALES’S GREEN ROOM, 5, JAMES ST., PORTHCAWL CF36 3BG

Led by CARYS EVANS, who administers the ‘Porthcawl Cerdd Dant’ (string music) group, the evening promises to be an outstanding musical and literary occasion.

Entrance on the door is £3 and everyone is welcome, whether Welsh speaking or not.

For Sustainable Wales, Robert Minhinnick said today: “ This is the first event in our new Green Room series, which will include book launches and celebrations.

“Carys Evans is a great admirer of harpist and writer Twm Morys, and Twm himself will be appearing at events in Ty Carnegie, Bridgend, on November 13, and in Llangynwyd on November 14, in events organized by Sustainable Wales.

Twm will playing his adaptions of ‘tribannau’ – Welsh language poems traditionally associated with Glamorgan. September 18 at the Green Room is the start of an exciting series that will last into 2016.”

For further details of all events, contact Robert Minhinnick on 01656 773627 or Kris Evans at Sustainable Wales 01656 783962.

Entry £3