Skip to main content

Ancient Anglesey

Paul and I had a free day today - no rugby, no work, no errands. So of course, we spent the first half of the day trying to decide what to do with ourselves.

We finally decided on Anglesey - I've been wanting for a long time to wander around the island to the various antiquities, the burial mounds, the stone circles. I've sorted a list for myself from the BU Library catalogue of Wales & Anglesey histories, mythologies, and folklore. Monday I'll head to the library to actually check them out.

I very much want to set this novel here in North Wales, maybe even on Anglesey in particular. My short stories lately ("Wish on One Hand" and "A Queen for a King) have been set on Anglesey. There's just such a beauty about the place, so compact, wild, cultured, ancient...I can't help but want to set something magical there.

We made it around to a couple of burial mounds (Bryn Celli Ddu and Barclodiad y Gawres), then checked out St. Gwenfaen's Holy Well on Holyhead (and only after looking it up at home have I discovered we never actually found the well). Picture album is here.

The burial mounds struck me less, moved me less, than did the landscape itself. Harsh, rough, murderous coasts...and then you turn around and find lush rolling green hills, fluffy white sheep snoozing like animated puffs of cotton. The people can be rough, but we asked directions from two different old men out walking with their border collies, and both were so friendly and helpful.

I don't know yet what shape the story will take, whether it will touch on Grail myth, Celtic myth, whether it will be inspired by the story of a Welsh peasant boy or driven by the tale of a king. I just know that I'm drawn to Anglesey over and over, the same way I'm drawn to Chaco Canyon back home. Maybe it's the mystery there, maybe just the beauty of standing in the only remnant of a long-gone civilization, one unshaped by kings' edicts.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Take on Specifications Grading (or, How I Learned to Not Spend My Weekends Marking)

I’ve been proselytizing this method for a while now, and have used it in a range of creative writing and publishing modules. It’s been wildly successful for me (though of course I’ll continue tweaking it), and enough people have asked about it that I thought I’d put it together into an overview/summary resource. It should probably be an actual paper one of these days, but that would require time and research and motivation. Natch. My teaching model is based on Linda Nilson’s Specifications Grading  (she’s also got a great intro article on Inside Higher Ed ), just so the original genius can get plenty of credit. My motivations are these: I came a hair’s breadth from burning out entirely. I went from teaching creative writing classes with 7-10 students on them to massive creative writing modules with 80+ students on them. Marking loads were insane, despite the fact that I have a pretty streamlined process with rubrics and QuickMarks and commonly used comments that I can cut and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

In which the Apathy Monster is curtailed

Me, lately I spent my PhD years going to many, many  conferences. When you're in a small department in an isolated part of the world, they're kind of a necessity. You go to meet anyone - anyone  - who is doing similar stuff, and who won't stare at you blankly when you describe your research. You go to try out your ideas, to make sure the academic community you'll be pitching them to don't think you're an absolute waste of space ( imposter syndrome is for real). Also, you go just to go somewhere (though I think I went to Leicester far too often). In the last few years, as I've gained contacts and confidence, I've gone to fewer and fewer conferences. I know the ones that best suit me now, and where I'll get to meet and/or catch up with my peeps. I also know the ones, of course, where I've never made any headway at all. I was pleasantly surprised this week to be wrong about that last one. MIX Digital - Bath Spa University Let me back thi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thoughts on @dreamingmethods Digital Writing Workshop

I'm on the long train(s) ride home from Kent after a one-day digital fiction workshop with Andy Campbell ( Dreaming Methods ).  It's the first time I've met Andy IRL - great to put a face to the name & works. The workshop itself was set up by Peggy at East Kent Live Lit , funded by the Kent Arts Council, and she was graceful enough to let a non-Kent-resident such as me sit in.  Most of the attendees were not necessarily new to digital fiction, but new to building it.  They were writers, musicians, installation artists, and sometimes a combination of the above.  Almost everyone save me and one other had been able to make the Friday evening session, which was an overview of digital fiction and some of Andy's background. The morning session covered a few examples of dig-fic (from the Poole Literary Festival New Media Prize ), recommended software (more on this in a minute), and resources for media files (more...).  The afternoon session was more hands-on building of di...
1 comment
Read more