Fundraiser for the Children of Gaza.

Posted on by celfypridd

Saturday 21st June 2025 6.30pm. VoicesontheBridge @StoryvilleBooks, Mill Street Quarter, Pontypridd. 6.30pm

Tracey Rhys is a Bridgend-based writer, non-fiction editor and a mother-of-two. Her poetry can be found in Poetry Wales, New Welsh Review, Planet, Ink Sweat & Tears, The High Window, Dreich andanthologies such as Lipstick Eyebrows, Cast a Long Shadow, Yer Ower Voices: Dialect Poems from Wales, and Free Verse: Poems for Richard Price.

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Poems from Tracey’s first pamphlet, Teaching a Bird to Sing, were adapted into poetic monologues for two plays by Tim Rhys, directed by Chris Durnall. Listed for various competitions including the Cinnamon Press Pamphlet Competition, the Poetry Wales Pamphlet Competition and Cardiff International Poetry Competition, she was a winner of the Poetry Archive’s Now WordView competition in 2020. Tracey’s debut poetry collection, Bathing on the Roof, is a new release from Parthian Books.

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Organised and presented by Rob Cullen of VoicesontheBridge – Tracey will be reading with Patrick Jones, Sabrin Hasbun, Abeer Ameer, Mike Jenkins, Rob Cullen, Leanne Evans, Des Mannay, Fiona Cullen, Ben Wildsmith and Greg Cullen.

VoicesontheBridge is an evening of poetry, spoken word and song. This event is stacked with great poets & speakers book early to ensure your place!

Elizabeth Heath of RCT Palestine Solidarity Campaign will be speaking about the upcoming Palestinian youth visit to RCT and they will have a stall with info leaflets.

Menna Elfyn couldn’t be with us but has generously donated 20 copies of – Y Bachgen a’r Wal – The Boy and the Wall made by the young people at Lajee Centre near the city of Bethlehem.

Three local artists have donated paintings to be autioned on the night Barabara Castle, Jenna Cullen.

Great news Gerhard Kress has donated £410 he raised from the sale of his art work!

There will also be food and music.

This event is part of The Pontypridd Great Big Community as Super Power Day.

The event could not take place without the support of the wonderful @StoryvilleBooks. Big thanks to Jeff!

Watch out for further posts with more information about the evening.

We hope you can join us and support the urgent need of the children of Gaza.

Tickets are £10 – £12 on the door.

Book early – lets do this for the Children of Gaza! All monies raised will be donated to UNHCR.

This is a formidable group of poets, writers, artists – Don’t miss it – Book Early!

VoicesontheBridge Fundraiser for the Children of Gaza 6.30pm Saturday 21st June 2025 @StoryvilleBooks, Mill Street Quarter, Pontypridd.

Posted on by celfypridd

VoicesontheBridge is a great fan of Abeer’s work and its great that she will be reading at our event again!

Abeer Ameer is a poet of Iraqi heritage who lives in Cardiff. Her poems have appeared widely in journals including The Rialto, Magma, The Poetry Review, and Poetry Wales. Her debut poetry collection, Inhale/Exile, was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2022. She is currently working on her second poetry collection and regularly shares readings of poems on her YouTube channel.

This fundraiser to support the Children of Gaza is organised and presented by Rob Cullen of Pontypridd’s VoicesontheBridge. Performing wirth Abeer Ameer will be Mike Jenkins, Sabrin Hasbun, Patrick Jones, Rob Cullen, Leanne Evans, Des Mannay, Tracey Rhys, Fiona Cullen, Ben Wildsmith and Greg Cullen.

VoicesontheBridge is an evening of poetry, spoken word and song. This event is stacked with great poets & speakers book early to ensure your place!

Elizabeth Heath of RCT Palestine Solidarity Campaign will be speaking about the upcoming Palestinian youth visit to RCT and they will have a stall with info leaflets.

Menna Elfyn couldn’t be with us but has generously donated 20 copies of – Y Bachgen a’r Wal – The Boy and the Wall made by the young people at Lajee Centre near the city of Bethlehem.

Three local artists have donated paintings to be autioned on the night Barabara Castle, Jenna Cullen and Gerhard Kress and the sale will be donated to the fundraiser.

There will also be food and music.

This event is part of The Pontypridd Great Big Community as Super Power Day.

The event could not take place without the support of the wonderful @StoryvilleBooks. Big thanks to Jeff!

Watch out for further posts with more information about the evening.

We hope you can join us and support the urgent need of the children of Gaza.

Tickets are £10.

VoicesontheBridge Fundraiser for the Children of Gaza 6.30pm Saturday 21st June 2025 @StoryvilleBooks, Mill Street Quarter, Pontypridd.

Posted on by celfypridd

Mike Jenkins is Co-editor of ‘Red Poets’ magazine for 32 years , Mike Jenkins has been involved in the Palestinian solidarity movement for decades.
His pamphlet ‘For Gaza’ ( Red Poets) raised nearly £500 for MAP.
Mike’s latest book is ‘Shared Origins ‘ ( Seventh Quarry), a collaboration with poets David Lloyd and David Annwn.
Forthcoming anthology ( as editor) is ‘We not me/ Ni nid fi’ (Culture Matters), radical poetry from Cymru.

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Organised and presented by Rob Cullen of VoicesontheBridge. Reading and performing with Mike Jenkins will be Sabrin Hasbun, Abeer Ameer, Patrick Jones, Rob Cullen, Leanne Evans, Des Mannay, Tracey Rhys, Fiona Cullen, Ben Wildsmith and Greg Cullen.

An evening of poetry, spoken word and song.

A member of RCT Palestine Solidarity Campaign will be speaking about the upcoming Palestinian youth visit to RCT and they will have a stall with info leaflets.

Menna Elfyn couldn’t be with us but has generously donated 20 copies of – Y Bachgen a’r Wal – The Boy and the Wall made by the young people at Lajee Centre near the city of Bethlehem.

Three local artists have donated paintings to be autioned on the night Barabara Castle, Jenna Cullen and Gerhard Kress and the sale will be donated to the fundraiser.

There will also be food and music.

This event is part of The Pontypridd Great Big Community as Super Power Day.

The event could not take place without the support of the wonderful @StoryvilleBooks. Big thanks to Jeff!

Watch out for further posts with more information about the evening.

We hope you can join us and support the children of Gaza.

Tickets are £10.

VoicesontheBridge Fundraiser for the Children of Gaza 6.30pm Saturday 21st June 2025 @StoryvilleBooks, Mill Street Quarter, Pontypridd.

Posted on by celfypridd

We are really pleased that Sabrin Hasbun will be speaking on Saturday 21st June and reading from her book “Crossing”. Sabrin Hasbun is a Palestinian-Italian transnational writer. She has always had to mediate between cultures and every day for her is a journey across borders.

Sabrin believes in the extremely generative power of collective creation and action and her research focuses on collaborative practices to explore histories of marginalised groups and decolonisation strategies. She has recently worked as writer, editor, translator, and trainer for several institutions around the world and published articles, both individual and collaborative, about collective creation in communities. She now works as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Cardiff Met university, specialising in writing for liberated imaginations and alternative futures.

Sabrin‘s first book, the family memoir Crossing: a love story between Italy and Palestine, won the Footnote x Counterpoints Writing Prize and will be published in May 2025.

Update for the Fundraiser for the Children of Gaza

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Organised and presented by Rob Cullen of VoicesontheBridge. Reading and performing with Sabrin Hasbun will be Abeer Ameer, Patrick Jones, Mike Jenkins, Rob Cullen, Leanne Evans, Des Mannay, Tracey Rhys, Fiona Cullen, Ben Wildsmith and Greg Cullen.

An evening of poetry, spoken word and song.

Menna Elfyn couldn’t be with us but has generously donated 20 copies of – Y Bachgen a’r Wal – The Boy and the Wall made by the young people at Lajee Centre near the city of Bethlehem.

Gerhard Kress has also donated some of his paintings and the sale will be donated

There will also be food and music.

This event is part of The Pontypridd Great Big Community as Super Power Day.

Watch out for further posts with more information about the evening.

We hope you can join us and support the children of Gaza.

Tickets are £10.

Uncertain Times

Posted on by celfypridd

…RobCullen@Celfypridd.co.uk

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40 years since the end of the 1984/85 Miners Strike.

Remembering.

Yesterday I went to Chapter Arts Centre to watch films made by Welsh independent film makers Chris Rushton & Chapter Video & Chapter Film Workshopbefore during and after the 1984/5 miners strike. It was an emotional reminder of my experience of returning to Wales in 1981 to do a social work training after nine years away .

One of the films we watched was of the fight to prevent the closure of Penrhiwceiber – a film made by miners of their community. My first placement for the Social Work course was in the Citizens Advice centre in Mountain Ash which neighbours Penrhiwceiber. I was shocked – an understatement – by the levels of deprivation and poverty in this close knit community. And shocked to see the statistics scrolled out on the film and to understand that the same levels of deprivation still holds its grip to this day.

My poem “Uncertain Times” was written during 1984. It is no coincidence that the front photograph of my poetry collection “Uncertain Times” is of the Naval Colliery, Penygraig, Rhondda taken in 1968 after its closure. It’s the place where the miners leader John Hopla in 1910 was arrested for “incitement” and as a result subjected to twelve months imprisonment with hard labour which broke his health and he died not long after his release.

With the rise of Farage and Reform in the South Wales Valleys the last verse seem strangely prophetic!

Rob Cullen 3rd March 2025.

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Uncertain times.

1

I see only forgotten men

Living in places

With once famous names.

I hear only words

Of tales and deeds

Of days of men and women

Long since forgotten

Long since dead.

…

And in these times of uncertainty

People live surrounded

By purposeless decline

A landscape of waste

And those twisted lines

Of once white shone steel

Polished by the unceasing grind

Of the turning wheel

Now lie hidden by elder.

And gathering the dirt brown stain

Of rust and disuse

Map out the death struggle

Of this dark place

And in this uncertainty people live.

…

Writhing in its decay

Its history ensnares

the withering and hopeless present.

But its people refuse to cry out.

Anger has been replaced

By that silence of regret

That pitiless lament

Of resignation and acceptance.

Some say it is our age

As if we were born in other times

And others days

Or as if this turmoil

And unceasing uncertainty

Was of our own making.

…

It has taken one hundred years

To silence and to forget

To carve away with such precision.

One hundred long hard years

To isolate those memories

To purge our dreams

And cut with all the accuracy

Of liquid golden steel

The misery of generations

The torments of our people

Of the years of our childhood

And before.

We can do nothing

We can say nothing

We are not listened to.

…

This is the song of our people

We suffer we suffer

We have cried too much

We have cried too long

And we have become lost.

But do not stir us

For we are dark dogs

We are shadow dogs

We sleep in motionless terror.

Do not speak to our hearts

Of indignities, of suffering.

Do not kindle our hatred.

Do not evoke words to spur

Our slumbering emotions.

We sleep we sleep.

2.

In Silence

…

That strange silence

When did it first occur?

Were there no witnesses?

Did no one see its coming?

Had it been something gradual?

Something that had begun

Without our knowing.

Or with that abruptness

That quickness of the blade

That cuts and severs

And life without knowing

Without recognising its own going

Seeps silently away.

…

That strange silence

When did it first occur?

Were our eyes turned away?

Our intelligence caught

By other curious happenings.

Was it that? Simply

A distraction of sorts.

Or was it something

That we secretly welcomed?

And now if there are regrets

It’s too late, much too late.

All that has been is no longer

All that may have been

Is now silent and forgotten.

…

Who will remember?

Or will it become

A few pages here and there

Of names and muttered words?

Some faint remembrances?

That strange vision

Of people blackened

Standing in cobbled streets

Faces turned towards camera

Their eyes watching

Looking but seeing nothing.

And we see nothing of them.

Their world our past

A fleeting glance caught

On the papers gloss

And in this hour I ask

Is that all that remains?

That strange silence.

…

3.

Of words and truth.

…

Like grasses bundled

And withered in storm

We are blown helplessly

And not a word is spoken.

Who sings the authentic song?

Who speaks the words of truth?

Who stands for me and mine?

Who looks at what we see?

Who hears what we hear?

Who breathes the air we breathe?

Who sees what is right and wrong?

Who speaks for me and mine?

Who sings the authentic song?

Where are our heroes and poets now?

1984.

…

RobCullen@Celfypridd.com

“Uncertain Times” Poetry & Photography by Rob Cullen.

Posted on by celfypridd

“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.

Posted on by celfypridd

“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.