Afon Nant Peris: Cwlwm Nant a Ni. Or I, Contructal
Assignment #2 for poetry eclogue ritual ecopoetics course with Rhys Trimble... following one river (Afon Las) from source to lake in Dyffryn Peris, trying to combine different ways of knowing (words from Bedwen Nain - a silver birch tree), Muneera Pilgrim and constructal law). October 2020.
Making a pond
The Coronavirus made me think more about living with the land, and I decided to build a raised bed to try to grow some veg. To get soil, I dug a pond in front of my studio, which was always a boggy place, but we’d put in land drains years ago. I now feel bad about this! So a pond is a way of restoring some of the water retention that we’d lost… A friend with Coronavirus texted me instructions from his sick bed, and to fill the pond, I temporarily took water from the stream beside our garden. I used the same materials and process as i had for Llif-Flow, the satisfaction of transporting water with ‘found materials’ (including an old pipe left by the Afon Las hydro that I found high up on the mountain) into the pond was astonishing! And the flow patterns beautiful….
Côr-ona Pond Song, 2020
Ffilm bach - 'Côr-ona pond song'... I've been struggling to find a way to live with all the conflicting emotions, experiences, fears, insights around at this moment... so this is an attempt to do that, with the help of pond, weather, birds and Rhys Trimble's sorcery.
And further reflecting on the moment we are in [during lockdown 2020], I really recommend a listen to this powerful drawing together strands of thought and experience that “remind us we are not separate, the moments that re-belong us to the earth. they encounter these questions in public theology, black prophetic tradition & environmental justice “ : Brontë Velez’ Well Prophecy on For the Wild Podcast.
This is a time to think about how we will change our attitudes, beliefs and actions, especially those of us used to privilege and security. Here's to "collaborative survival in precarious times" (Anna Tsing)!
One year on= March 2021
At around midnight, on the last full moon, a little troupe of whirligig beetles played with the moon in our pond... Diolch i Rhys Trimbleam y geiriau. This year i’m focusing on the circular, the round. As Gaston Bachelard says “Being is round”:
“images of full round-ness help us to collect ourselves, permit us to confer an initiation constitution on ourselves, and to confirm our being intimately, inside. For when it is experienced from the inside, devoid of all exterior features, being cannot be otherwise than round”.
Lleugylch Anneal in Awen, March 2021
Pwllu - Ponding. Sounding the pond 2021
a circle immersion :
U pooling
dependence sounding round
inter
D
immersion cylch
immersion N A W edges I
circle P P O
P radical of P
G I silent edges
ponding N O LL W and U
immersion Round
D I P emotion G O Silent