Voices on the Bridge @ClwbyBont Pontypridd Thursday 19th October

Starts 7.45 pm (doors open 7.30pm)

A glorious night for a rich spread of Poetry, Spoken Word Song and Shadow Puppetry all the way from California!

Rachel Carney is a creative writing tutor and PhD student based in Cardiff. Her poems, reviews and articles have been published in numerous magazines including Poetry Wales, Anthropocene, and Acumen. She won the Pre-Raphaelite Society Poetry Competition and was voted runner up in the Bangor Poetry Competition in 2021. Two of her poems have been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. Her debut collection Octopus Mind is published by Seren Books.

Reading and performing with Rachel will be – Carol Burns, Sion Tomos Owen, TwistedHeart Puppetwork, Ben Wildsmith, Nick McGaughey, Pete Akinwunmi, Johnny Giles & Rob Cullen.

Voices on the Bridge is hosted by Clwb Y Bont and is a free event!

VoicesontheBridge is organised by Rob Cullen.

Voices on the Bridge@ClwbyBont Pontypridd

So come in from the gloom of Autumn nights for a real spread of Poetry, Spoken Word Song and Shadow Puppetry all the way from California!

Reading and performing will be Rachel Carney, Carol Burns, Sion Tomos Owen, TwistedHeart Puppetwork, Ben Wildsmith, Nick McGaughey, Pete Akinwunmi, Johnny Giles & Rob Cullen.

VoicesontheBridge is hosted by Clwb Y Bont and is a free event!

VoicesontheBridge is organised by Rob Cullen.

VoicesontheBridge – Wednesday, 30th November 2022 @Storyville Books, 8 Mill Street, Pontypridd @cafequarter

Nicholas McGaughey will be reading his poetry….

Nicholas lives in Pontypridd. He has new work in Bad Lilies/Stand/Lucent Dreaming/The Friday Poem and Spelt Magazine.

Nicholas played Brandon Monk in Pobl y Cwm for 10 years and has had his poetry widely published including most recently in the hit anthology A470.

Writers also reading are Sophie Buchaillard, Abeer Ameer @abeer_ameer77, Susie Wild, Ben Wildsmith, Stephanie McNicholas, Sion Tomos Owen & Rob Cullen.

VoicesontheBridge is hosted by Jeff Baxter @StoryvilleBooks

VoicesontheBridge is organised by Rob Cullen.

All are welcome.

Bridges not walls.

BridgesofPonty

Love Daffodils

Steel works excerpt “Spitting Black”.

credit unidentified photographer

A week later I was stood on the Larry cart

of that massive steel hulk of coke oven A

waiting watching the deck as the smoke

gasses fumes rose from the rows of oven lids

men dim ghosts carrying lances wearing hoods

walked through the blue green tinged haze

walked the cobbled top in wooden clogs

but it was the running men drew my attention

not the screams, not the smell of his searing skin.

@Rob Cullen 1976.

credit unknown photographer.

….

In 1973 I left Cardiff Art School and worked across the road in British Steels East Moors Steelworks raising money to travel to the USA. I worked in Quality Control which meant I moved around the steel plant, engaged in sampling various products mostly on the coal and coking side. I witnessed at first hand the brutality of heavy industry as experienced by the workers & what I witnessed in 1973 and again in 1974 for a short period has informed my writing and politics ever since. This poem is about helping a sixteen year old illiterate boy, a school leaver to get a job, to help him fill in an application form. The poem is about witnessing, a week later this boys involvement in a seriousn industrial accident in which he was badly burnt. I still think of him.

@robcullen220324.

RobCullen@Celfypridd.co.uk

Lament for the Girl of the Morning Sea.

A premonition of merciful peace has emerged

In the morning of this day.

And as if in agreement

Your hand opens to the waves.

In a movement of gratitude,

A moment of quiet acceptance.

I have heard you sing

To the waves crests,

Rise, rise from your depths

Rid me of all pain

I am alone wash over me.

In this bright early hour

You are at once transformed.

Peace adorns you,

Rests on your face.

I have seen you whisper

To the open sky

Touch me, cleanse me

Rid me of all fear.

I am alone wash over me.

Your hair hangs tangled

Stiffly on your eyes,

Green-water droplets

Trickle to your lips.

Your fingers grasp

The water’s edge.

The shoreline pierces you,

Welcomes you, calls to you.

I am alone wash over me.

And you lying unseen

A curved silken spine

Broken by spite

The savagery of indifference

And the brutality

Of unmourned death

Move without moving.

Knowing nothing, knowing nothing

In your quiet sadness.

I am alone wash over me.

I have heard you sing

To the waves crests’

Rise from your depths

Rise from your submerged stillness.

I have heard you sing

To the open sky,

Touch me, cleanse me,

Rid me of all pain,

Rid me of all fear.

I am alone wash over me.

….

Your mother cries for you in her silence

And mourns for another in her isolation.                        

I am alone wash over me.

©robcullen2016            

“Uncertain Times” Poetry & Photography by Rob Cullen.

“Uncertain Times” was first published in 2016 with an unhappy beginning with the now defunct Octavio Press. In 2023 Rob Cullen decided to re-publish under his own title Celyn Books.

What people have said about “Uncertain Times”.

“Dark, insighful and well-crafted” – Carol White. Film Maker.

“This is an impressive first collection …. The poems have an easy strength and a directness that is strangely enchanting. Cullen most reminds me of Pablo Neruda not in style but sensibility. An apparent simplicity that is deceptively complex. There’s a lot going on here; love, loss, joy, work, family, trauma and the healing effects of nature. More like a selected poems than a debut, this is a rich, full and adroitly perceptive poetry that shows Cullen to be a quiet, strong and remarkable voice.”  Topher Mills, Poet.

“Your new “Uncertain Times” book is one of the best poetry books I have read – and read again – in a long time. 

“The range of poet Rob Cullen’s life’s experiences, including social worker anprobation officer, and his years spent in America contribute to a wide knowledge, real depth, and such open honesty to his poetry. His poems are ones without the safe bandages of literary refinements. He always speaks from the heart. It is a poetic voice offering, to take a phrase from a question he asks in his poem words and truth, ‘authentic songs’.                              He tackles many subjects in Uncertain Times/A Collection of Poetry and Photographs, each one powered by focus observation, aptly chosen words, and a voice that is often for those without a voice, the marginalised, the sufferers of a social and political system that is unfair, unequal and cruel. To quote from his poem An SOS from the Frontier, Cullen has ‘worked among the desolation, survivors of lives that might have flowered”. Uncertain Times so deserved a wide readership, for its originality, for its sheer bravery in exploring issues that a lot of poetry does not tackle, and for its healing moments in nature. This poet, though, also offers impressive poems about grief and deep love.                                            The photographs are a wonderful bonus, each one encouraging the reader to stop and think about them, to see depths in them too.”                             Peter Thabit Jones Welsh poet, dramatist and publisher Author (with Aeronwy Thomas) of the Dylan Thomas Walking Tour of Greenwich Village, New York.

“Uncertain Times” is available at @StoryvilleBook & Amazon now.

More Bridges Less Walls.

“Uncertain Times” Poetry & Photography by Rob Cullen.

“Uncertain Times” was first published in 2016 with an unhappy beginning with the now defunct Octavio Press. In 2023 Rob Cullen decided to re-publish under his own title Celyn Books.

What people have said about “Uncertain Times”.

“Dark, insighful and well-crafted” – Carol White. Film Maker.

“This is an impressive first collection …. The poems have an easy strength and a directness that is strangely enchanting. Cullen most reminds me of Pablo Neruda not in style but sensibility. An apparent simplicity that is deceptively complex. There’s a lot going on here; love, loss, joy, work, family, trauma and the healing effects of nature. More like a selected poems than a debut, this is a rich, full and adroitly perceptive poetry that shows Cullen to be a quiet, strong and remarkable voice.”  Topher Mills, Poet.

“Your new “Uncertain Times” book is one of the best poetry books I have read – and read again – in a long time. 

“The range of poet Rob Cullen’s life’s experiences, including social worker, probation officer, and his years spent in America contribute to a wide knowledge, real depth, and such open honesty to his poetry. His poems are ones without the safe bandages of literary refinements. He always speaks from the heart. It is a poetic voice offering, to take a phrase from a question he asks in his poem words and truth, ‘authentic songs’.                              He tackles many subjects in Uncertain Times/A Collection of Poetry and Photographs, each one powered by focus observation, aptly chosen words, and a voice that is often for those without a voice, the marginalised, the sufferers of a social and political system that is unfair, unequal and cruel. To quote from his poem An SOS from the Frontier, Cullen has ‘worked among the desolation, survivors of lives that might have flowered”. Uncertain Times so deserved a wide readership, for its originality, for its sheer bravery in exploring issues that a lot of poetry does not tackle, and for its healing moments in nature. This poet, though, also offers impressive poems about grief and deep love.                                            The photographs are a wonderful bonus, each one encouraging the reader to stop and think about them, to see depths in them too.”                             

Peter Thabit Jones Welsh poet, dramatist and publisher Author (with Aeronwy Thomas) of the Dylan Thomas Walking Tour of Greenwich Village, New York.

“Uncertain Times” is available at @StoryvilleBook & Amazon now.

More Bridges Less Walls.

Uncertain Times – Poems & Photography by Rob Cullen in stock @Storyvillebooks

Re-edited and re-published complete wiith missing poem!

What people have said about “Uncertain Times” –

“This is an impressive first collection …. The poems have an easy strength and a directness that is strangely enchanting. Cullen most reminds me of Pablo Neruda not in style but sensibility. An apparent simplicity that is deceptively complex. There’s a lot going on here; love, loss, joy, work, family, trauma and the healing effects of nature. More like a selected poems than a debut, this is a rich, full and adroitly perceptive poetry that shows Cullen to be a quiet, strong and remarkable voice.”

Topher Mills, Poet.

“Your new “Uncertain Times” book is one of the best poetry books I have read – and read again – in a long time.

Peter Thabit Jones Poet. Editor The Seventh Quarry Swansea’s International Poetry Magazine. Playwright. Librettist.