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Cecil Woolf Publishers
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New
paperback editions of MAIDEN CASTLE and PORIUS ~
T. F. Powys’s Favourite Bookseller: The Story of Charles Lahr
+
Encounters with John Cowper Powys
from Cecil Woolf ~
LITERARY SOMERSET by James Crowden.
For
further details of these please click on the Publishing News link
above
The latest
Conference double DVD,
Llangollen 2009, is now available.
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Forthcoming Events |
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TWO POWYS DAYS
TWO POWYS DAYS are planned for next year:
CAMBRIDGE on Saturday 24 April 2010
DORCHESTER on Saturday 5 June 2010
Further details will appear in the
April 2010 Newsletter, or contact
Chris Thomas.
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Powys Society Annual Conference 2010
Wessex Hotel, Street, Somerset
Friday 20th August - Sunday 22nd August
The 2010 Powys Society Conference will be held in Street in
Somerset, two miles from Glastonbury and within view of Glastonbury
Tor. As in previous years, the conference will appeal to all
readers John Cowper Powys, T.F. Powys, and Llewelyn Powys and their
circle.
There will be a number of invited guest speakers plus
shorter talks from Powys scholars and readers.
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2009 EVENTS
The Society Conference 2009
The Hand Hotel, Llangollen
Friday 21st August to Sunday 23rd August
CONFERENCE WALKS TO VALLE CRUCIS AND MYNYDD Y GAER
VALLE CRUCIS
“Twas in this Chapter-House I wrote the first sentences of my
own Owen Glendower and left it uncorrected because the spirits
of those Cistercian monks were inspiring it....”
On Saturday afternoon a group of Conference-goers followed the
towpath, a short distance, beside the still waters of the
Llangollen canal as far as Pontefrelin and then by field paths
with fine views of Bryn Hyfryd and glimpses of the buttresses
and arches of the Abbey seen through the trees, to reach the
well preserved remains of JCP‘s “scholastic sanctuary in the
mountains.”
Links with JCP are very strong here. He visited the Abbey in
1935 with Phyllis and wrote in his diary that he wished to be
buried here, beside Glendower’s bard, Iolo Goch. He came here
again in 1945 on a holiday with his son, Littleton, who had just
been ordained in the Roman Catholic faith. JCP loved the cool
interior of the chapter house, and must have found the tranquil
riverside location, and the historical connections of the place,
as well as its associations with the mother church of St Mael
and St Sulien in Corwen very appealing. It was thus here on 24
April 1937 that he began to write Owen Glendower.
The Vale of Llangollen, and the area around Valle Crucis, with
its local traditions, myths and stories about King Arthur, and a
Grail castle on top of Dinas Bran reminded JCP of Avalon and the
Glastonbury legends, just as the monk’s fishpond in the Abbey
grounds, the beautiful west front, circular window and rib
vaulting of the Chapter House also reminded him of Glastonbury
Abbey and the remains of a once prosperous Cistercian abbey in
Montacute,
On the way to Valle Crucis green fields and flower filled
meadows could be seen reaching down to the edges of the canal
leaving space for sheep and cattle to roam freely along its
muddy banks. On the other side, the towpath follows the route of
the steam railway and the river Dee, connecting, at a point
beyond the motor museum, with the Horseshoe Falls and the
Chainbridge Hotel, where the river plunges dramatically and
noisily over fallen trees and massive boulders. Gaily painted
leisure barges, some drawn by horses, now occupy part of the
route to Valle Crucis which was once crowded with vessels
carrying raw materials to the industrial centres of England.
The views of Dinas Bran, with its foundations “sunk in the
mysterious underworld of beyond reality” seen from the two path,
or, more prominently, from Coed Hyrddin, the hill on the other
side of the road opposite the entrance to the Abbey, leave the
visitor with no doubt why JCP thought that this was a very
special place. In an essay in Obstinate Cymric, Wales and
America, JCP recalled that: “...never...not even in Glastonbury
– have I felt the spirit of what Spengler would call the Spring
time of our Faustian culture as powerfully as in this holy
ground.”
MYNYDD Y GAER
A small fleet of cars transported other conference-goers further
afield to Corwen where our ‘ael’ and goal was the summit
of Caer Drewyn -- the impressive Iron Age fortress called by
Powys Mynyd Y Gaer – a name which you can also see on a local
sign post pointing the way to the hill.
Our route to Corwen took us through a landscape made familiar by
repeated readings of Owen Glendower and Porius.
Leaving Llangollen we went past the tiny community of Berwyn
where the gaunt peaks of the Llantysillio mountain range could
be seen in the distance, till we reached the picturesque
villages of Glyndyfrdwy and Carrog, passing the heather and
bracken filled hilltops of Coed Pen Y Garth, Craig Y Rhos and
Coed Bwlch Coch. Entering Corwen, which JCP in Porius
frequently refers to under its other names of “The White Choir”
or “The White Circle” we easily found good parking in the
middle of town in the rather grandly named Corwen Interchange (a
car park with facilities and a bus stop!). We crossed the Dee by
a modern bridge. At this point the river is broad and deep.
Willows bend low over the surface of the Dee creating shady
spots, like the “pools of Cybele”, where lamprey, Atlantic
salmon, brown trout and grayling can sometimes be seen. On the
clay banks we looked for green woodpeckers and kingfishers that
are frequent visitors here. Perhaps further down stream where
the river is shallower there might be found a possible location
for JCP’s “Ford of Mithras” which Porius uses to get to St
Julian’s fountain on the other side.
Ahead the great round mass of Caer Drewyn confronted us. Early
fruiting blackberries in the hedgerows suggested Autumn was on
its way. The ever-changing late summer light and muted
chiaroscuro effect of the variegated colours of yellow, green
and purple that covered the surface of the hill refreshed our
eyes. The colour schemes of JCP’s Welsh novels devised by Wilson
Knight came to mind -- red and gold for Owen Glendower,
and silver, grey and dark brown earth colours for Porius.
Beside Corwen Leisure Centre we followed the course of a disused
railway path where oak and elms grow thickly and the sound of
blackcaps and warblers fill the air with their song, then
skirted the edge of Caer Drewyn untill we began to climb
steadily up the north side of the hill to a spot near the summit
surrounded by the stone walls of the Gaer. Standing on a carpet
of bracken, fern and gorse, we surveyed the spreading valley
below trying to identify some of the locations in JCP’s novel
Porius, in the panoramic view spread out before us. The Dee
itself could easily be identified twisting round the town. We
spotted Cae Coed, which JCP explained means “the clearing in the
forest” and the meadow he refers to in his abandoned novel
Edeyrnion, known locally as “Dol-pur-gresyn” or “the field of
unbearable pity” situated beside the original Pont Corwen,
constructed in the eighteenth century, and perhaps another
possible location for the “Ford of Mithras”. Could the gap
between the trees in the “greenish black” ancient forest
opposite us be the Path of the Dead leading to Y Grug, or “The
Mound” - the burial place of Iscovan in Porius? Turning
north we could see the “Swamp of the Gwyddyl Ffichti”, the
village of Gwyddylwern, and looking down again at Corwen, on
the other side of the river, its buildings seemed more like
JCP’s “Brythonic dwellings” than modern houses, we could pick
out Coed Pen Y Pigyn, the hill behind Corwen church, and a
favourite destination for JCP on his daily “round” and walk
amidst the thick oak woodland above the town.
We debated the location of Snowdon but dark purple edged clouds
had suddenly descended and the tops of the mountains were no
longer visible, so we could only discern its general
direction.
As we spoke our voices were lost in the vast open space of the
Gaer. Approaching the very top of the hill the cry of a buzzard
startled me. A raven flapped its wings nearby. I thought of the
croaking raven of Llangar, of Sycarth, Mithrafael and the
descent of the Kings of Powys Fadog. I thought of Powys himself,
for whom Caer Drewyn never lost its fascination, the omphalos of
his imagination. I thought of Powys newly arrived in Corwen, “ a
wayfarer from Dorset”, ascending the “purgatorial mount”,
situated high above the Dee Valley, and making his way to the
ruins of an abandoned shooting lodge, called Liberty Hall, built
in the early twentieth century by a local landowner, Lord
Northborough. Here JCP erected stone “stele” – memorials for
family and friends - “a regular burying ground of my Dead
Heroes and Glory Ground of my Living Ones!” he told Katie.
From here JCP looked back across the river at the
Gaer. In his mind he had already filled “the absolute blank” of
Dark Age history with his own self-created stories and invented
characters.
The Gaer, empty now, felt however preternaturally alive. The
buzzard and the raven had fallen silent. The sound of the wind
in the thorn trees and bracken was all that accompanied our
descent to the car park. Somehow I felt that the past and the
present were not so far apart. The image of the Mithraic Sun
God, the lion headed figure encircled by a serpent, the deos
leontocephalus, the god of time and eternity worshipped in
the Hellenic mystery religions, whose statue Porius
glimpses in the Cave of Mithras, but which left his “religious
sensibility” quite cold, rose up, fleetingly, in my mind, then
disappeared, and I thought I understood what Powys had meant:
“As the old gods were departing then so the old gods are
departing now.”
Chris Thomas
POWYS DAY
Saturday 9 May, Dorset County Museum, 11.00am
“HARDY, POWYS AND WEYMOUTH”.
All
members of both The Powys Society and The Hardy Society were welcome
to join this event and participated in a day of literary discussion
combined with an easy ramble beside the Frome and the Cerne.
John Cowper Powys was intimately associated with many of the places
mentioned by Hardy in his novels, especially the landscape of the
Dorset and Somerset borders, and the hills and valleys and chalk
downs around Weymouth and Dorchester. Powys shared with Hardy
similar obsessions about Fate, Destiny and Chance as well as the
invisible powers of an unseen First Cause. He took from Hardy his
understanding of the interpenetration of character and landscape and
especially admired his pessimism, his “imaginitive grandeur”, and
ability to render in prose the physical quality of things.
We
began our day with a talk by Tony Fincham, Chairman of The Hardy
Society, who explored the links between Hardy and Weymouth, the
surrounding locations and their representation in Hardy’s work.
Before lunch there was an opportunity to visit the Writer’s Gallery
and also the Powys Society Collection in the Dorset County Museum.
In
the afternoon we focused on a single chapter of JCP’s novel
Weymouth Sands. We studied Chapter 13, Punch and Judy,
and examined Powys’s vision of the “Platonic essence” of Weymouth.
Written in 1932-1933 when Powys was living in up-state New York, the
novel evokes with great intensity the scenes of Powys’s childhood.
The selected chapter also evokes the darker side of Powys’s vision:
there is the looming fear of madness, incarceration, and of the
sinister scientific experiments that take place in “Hell’s Museum”
somewhere on the margins of the town and the chalk downs.
Our
day concludes with a walk in Powys’s footsteps through the water
meadows of Dorchester,
In
reading Weymouth Sands with its accumulation of animate and
inanimate detail we are reminded that, as George Wilson Knight once
observed, “to read Powys is to explore creation”.
Key texts:
Weymouth Sands (see elsewhere on this web site for the
republication of the novel by Duckworth on 30 April 2009), John
Cowper Powys on Thomas Hardy (Powys Society publications).
There are also essays by Powys on Hardy in Visions and Revisions
and The Pleasures of Literature. The April 2009 Powys
Society Newsletter includes a further essay by Powys on Hardy,
“Thomas Hardy and his Times” reprinted for the first time since its
original publication in Current History in 1928.
Powys Day, Saturday 9 May
A Walk to the Blue Bridge
John Cowper Powys dedicated his first novel, Wood and Stone, to
Thomas Hardy: “the greatest poet and novelist of our age”. In fact
the connections with Hardy seem to have been pivotal to JCP. He
later told Louis Wilkinson that he took from Hardy the ability to
see all human feelings and actions against the inanimate background
of nature. These interconnected themes provided the focus for a
lively discussion of Hardy, Weymouth and Powys at this year’s Powys
Day in Dorchester.
Tony Fincham, Chairman of the Hardy Society, introduced us to
Hardy’s association with Weymouth and the town that JCP called “the
centre of the circumference of my life” while Judith Stinton, author
of books about Dorset and its literary connections, led us on a
journey deep into the world of the commedia dell arte
tradition and the symbolism of Mr Punch in Powys’s Weymouth Sands .
For both men Weymouth was a place of glamour, and happy childhood
memories. For Powys, especially, Weymouth was an enchanted place,
associated with sensations of ecstasy, and which always seemed to
him to be rising magically out of the wide encircling bay -
Deadman’s Bay to Hardy.
In the warm afternoon sunlight we later followed in the footsteps of
JCP and his dog, The Old, on a gentle ramble beside the clear, swift
moving waters of the Frome, bordered on one side by sloping gardens
and on the other by a secluded woodland walk and cheery little
allotments.
The route passed between Hangman’s Cottage, possibly once the
habitation of the town’s public executioner, an abandoned mill
stream, a pair of dilapidated wooden sluice gates, a celandine
ditch, and “John’s Pond”, mentioned in Powys’s novel Maiden Castle ,
and still overgrown with weeds and wild plants.
We paused at the Blue Bridge and gazed, as Powys did, at the willows
bent low over the muddy banks of the river Cerne, observed the
smooth surface of the pebbles and stones glisten amidst the wavering
underwater weeds, saw the thin silver strips of telegraph wires in
the next field sparkle in the sun, and stared intently at the spires
and towers of St Peters and All Saints silhouetted against the pale
blue sky.
From here the lush pastures and verduous green water meadows, filled
with yellow cowslips, spread out in all directions. Further on where
the path narrows to allow progress to be made only in single file
little clumps of hog weed and saxifrage mingled with harebell, and
bluebells.
This tranquil and pastoral scene, well known to JCP, evoked a deep
sense of timelessness and intense pleasure. This must be one of the
most beautiful spots in all of Dorchester. Only the bell like sound
of a solitary song bird and the sudden disturbance of the water’s
surface by an occasional fish rising up from the sandy bottom of the
river broke the perfect stillness of this sleepy little hollow.
The sun had not yet set when we began to retrace our steps and
returned to Dorchester via Hennings Gate, amidst the lengthening
shadows cast by the chestnut trees, to enjoy a pint of real Dorset
ale and reflect on more Powysian subjects.
Chris Thomas
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