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TFP The Voice of God by Michael Kowalewski

JCP OWEN GLENDOWER The Seen and the Unseen by P.J. Kavanagh

First Powys Lecture in Ireland

DUCDAME

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

(Reprinted by Faber Finds)

The Brothers Powys

by Richard Powys Graves

W.J. Keith

‘A Glastonbury Romance’ Revisited  

H.W. Fawkner

John Cowper Powys and the Soul

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Kindling the Scarp: A Jack Clemo Conference 31st May and 1st June 2013 (see below)     PLACING JOHN COWPER POWYS The Hand Hotel, Llangollen Friday 16th August — Sunday 18th August For the 2013 Conference we will return once more to The Hand Hotel, Bridge Street, Llangollen. The Conference will start at 4 pm on Friday 16th August and end after lunch on Sunday 18th August 2013. Please decide on the option you prefer on the form opposite and send this to Anna Pawelko at the latest by 31st May 2013 with a non-refundable deposit of £30, cheques to be made payable to The Powys Society. In the current Newsletter you will find further details of the Conference. The Hand Hotel, which always looks after us well, is still, after many years, a favourite with most of us. As those know who have attended conferences here, the hotel is set above the river Dee with spectacular views of Dinas Brân and very near the town centre. Once a coaching inn on the old Watling Street route to Ireland, it combines antique charm with modern amenities; most rooms were refurbished in 2010. All the rooms are in one (rambling) building, both single and double according to need, and all with private facilities. Note that the hotel does not have lifts! As before we will be using the Dinas Brân suite for our reception and meals, and the Denbigh Room for lectures. The popular bar is open most of the time. Everything in this busy little town is easily accessible. Please return the attached PDF form as soon as possible. It always helps the organisers to know numbers early. If you with the pay the full amount at this stage feel free to do so. We will be in touch nearer the time with those who book, sending further details and a request for the remaining fee.      Our Conference organisers on the day will be Anna Pawelko and Louise de Bruin, to whom you should address any queries:   Louise de Bruin 600 Mappowder, Sturminster Newton, Dorset DT10 2EH tel 01258 817825 e-mail <lsedebruin@gmail.com> Anna Pawelko 109 Heol Isaf, Radyr, Cardiff, CF15 8DW tel 029 2041 8813 e-mail <anna.pawelko@ntlworld.com> If you wish to stay any extra nights before or after the Conference, you can contact the hotel directly (tel: 01978 860303).     Kindling the Scarp: A Jack Clemo Conference and Associated Events Wheal Martyn, Cornwall 31st May and 1st June 2013 Organisers: Gemma Goodman (University of Warwick) and Luke Thompson (University of Exeter) 'It flashed in Cornwall, at Meledor, My rebel vision, kindling the scarp' Jack Clemo (1916-1994) was a novelist, poet, story writer and autobiographer best known for his Cornish clayscape verse and prose. Academic interest in his life and work continues to develop both within Cornwall and beyond. There is also a cultural reservoir of memory and experience of Clemo from within the clayscape. This first ever Jack Clemo Conference will bring together the local community of the china clay area and academic communities engaging with this writer of international significance. All are therefore welcome to all of the events we have planned over these two days. So come and join us! Academics and those with an interest in Clemo and his work will be presenting 20 minute papers across the two days on such topics as theology, biography and his influences The conference is just £10 per day and this amount also includes access to the associated events happening on that day such as: clay country tour, film showings, literary readings and an evening at Trethosa Chapel Alternatively you can book for the film showing of 'A Different Drummer' (Norman Stone's film of Clemo's life) for £5. There is also a 10-day Jack Clemo exhibition taking place at Wheal Martyn - entry will be free for conference attendees and the parts of the exhibition in the foyer of Wheal Martyn will be free for all. Access to exhibits displayed in the Wheal Martyn museum will be charged at the usual entry price for the site. For further information, please visit: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/ias/current/engagement/jackclemo     ‘John Cowper Powys: Celtic Colossus and Eminence Grise’ by Adam Daly In the new issue of Wormwood 20 Issue 20, Spring 2013 (Publication 19th April 2013)   Membership Subscriptions increased on 1st January 2013 due to rising printing costs and especially the cost of postage. The new rates are £22.00 for UK members and £26.00 for overseas members.   TWO POWYS DAYS FOR 2013: Ely, Saturday 13 April and Dorchester, 8 June.   RECENTLY RELEASED: The latest Conference double DVD 2012,  'MANY VOICES, MANY WORLDS', is now available priced at just £6.00. Additions to the Powys webliography continue to be unearthed by the Society’s secretary, Chris Thomas; the latest being a collection of letters in the prestigious Huntingdon Library from John Cowper Powys to Charles Wood as well as correspondence from Llewelyn and Alyse Gregory. Visit the webliography page here. Saturday, September 22, 2012 John Cowper Powys Lecture and Exhibit in Hillsdale. An exhibit featuring the works of John Cowper Powys, who lived and wrote in Hillsdale in the 1930′s, will open at the Roeliff Jansen Community Library on Saturday, Sept. 22 with a talk by New School Professor Nicholas Birns, followed by a reception. From their website: The exhibit was organized by Hillsdale residents Jay Rohrlich and Maureen Rodgers, co-chairs the Library’s Local Authors Committee, and will include books, articles, photos, posters and an audiotape by Albert Krick, a local resident who knew Powys well. An expert on Powys (pronounced Poe-iss), Nicholas Birns is Associate Teaching Professor at Eugene Lang College, the New School, where he teaches American and British fiction. He was editor of Powys Notes, the journal of the Powys Society of North America, from 1995 to 2002, and organized the most recent American Powys conference in New York in 2001. Powys  who lived from 1872 to 1963, put Hillsdale on the world literary map when he moved to the town in 1930. For the prior 25 years in the United States, he had written prodigiously, mostly novels and essays, and crisscrossed the entire nation as a charismatic lecturer. So emotional were his presentations on literature, culture, philosophy, politics, psychology, and a multitude of other topics that he sometimes caused people in the audience to faint. Powys claimed to have given 10,000 lectures across the country!  In 1930, he finally decided that he needed to rest and write, and found peace in his new-found paradise in a small farmhouse in the Harlemville section of Hillsdale. Powys had many literary admirers, and the famed critic George Steiner said that “Powys is the only 20th century English writer on a par with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.” His books were lengthy –900 pages was not unusual, which – in an increasingly minimalist age – largely accounts for his lack of enduring popularity. His fans and intimates included Theodore Dreiser, Isadora Duncan, Edna Millay, Edgar Lee Masters, Clarence Darrow, Will Durant, and Henry Miller. He debated Bertrand Russell, and testified in the obscenity trial of James Joyce’s Ulysses. He was a larger than life figure and his years in Hillsdale resulted in an enormous outpouring of work. To the poet Philip Larkin Powys was a “gigantic mythopoeic literary volcano.” About reading A Glastonbury Romance (written in Hillsdale), Henry Miller said, “My head began bursting as I read.  ‘No,’ I said to myself, it is impossible that any man can put all this—so much—down on paper. It is super-human.” Margaret Drabble called him “a genius–a fearless writer who writes with reckless passion of flowers and graveyards, incest and teacups…” Hillsdale was Powys’ “Utopia,” as several contemporary newspapers celebrated. He wrote extensively about the peace and happiness he experienced in his home at the base of Phudd Hill, which he named “Phudd Bottom.” He kept detailed diaries filled with his fascination for the flowers, animals, stone walls, streams, trees, and people near his home. Powys believed that happiness derives from an ability to experience sensation, particularly that which involves an immersion in nature. “The coolness of sheets, the warmth of blankets, the look of the little blue flames dancing on the top of a fire of hard coal, the taste of bread, of milk of honey, of wine or of oil, of well-baked potatoes, of earth-tasting turnips! – the taste of the airs, dry or moist, that blow in through our opened window, look of the night-sky, the sounds of twilight or of dawn, the hoarse monotone of a distant pinewood or of pebble-fretted waves–all these things as one feels them, in the mortal pride of being able to feel them at all, are the materials, eternal and yet fleeting, of the art of being a man alive upon the earth…the man whose interior consciousness is forever obstinately writing down, in the immaterial diary of his psyche’s sense of life, every chance-aspect of every new day that he is lucky enough to live to behold!”  In Hillsdale from 1930-34, John Cowper Powys found happiness. Here is his diary entry from December 13, 1930:  Got up at 7.30. ‘Twas very cold. Saw the sun rise or rather half-rise. Very cold. Very cold. Very cold. I am  by nature too restless and impatient even to stand staring at the beautiful Ridge that I like so well and the pale gold sky till it comes up. But I watched every detail of its rising except the second of its first emergement over the Ridge. Gold light on the Waggoner house is the first sign — or rather on the East side of the great Waggoner Barn — and then on the hill up there and on the hedge and trees up there. Next on the top of Phudd as you see it over our house. The sun comes up that curious, steel-blue, blinding light that you can scarcely look at  … but when it first appears in full circle you can see round the blue-blinding circle inside, or rondure inside, a yellow band of candle-flame light not blue or blinding at all. Tis as if you were looking into a gold ring or a round port-hole into a blazing eternity that by reason of its blindingness takes on a milky, metallic, blueish colour. Finally, the full sun hits our little house and makes it gleam white as a shell, white as England’s cliffs, white as the Dog’s teeth, white as Bone!  Then does our house appear like a Light-House or a coastguard’s house or even like a ship. I walked up and down thrilled with happiness … Soon after Powys and his companion Phyllis Playter arrived in Hillsdale, her journal entry stated:  “J. was so happy — all the time. . . . It is such a simple and profound well-being — like a child’s or a dog’s or a horse’s or a cow’s. . . .I was very happy too.” The Powys exhibit is one in a series organized by the Roe Jan Library to celebrate the many great – and not so great – writers and poets who lived or spent time in Hillsdale. Saturday, September 22, 2012 John Cowper Powys Lecture and Exhibit in Hillsdale.     The Powys Society Annual Conference 2012     'MANY VOICES, MANY WORLDS'  The Wessex Hotel, Street (nr Glastonbury) Friday 17th to Sunday 19th August Further details here.   1st June - Now fully booked! Featured speakers include: Michael Kowalewski (JCP), Arjen Mulder (LlP), Marcella Henderson-Peel (JCP), Larry Mitchell and Micheal Caines (TFP).   Theodore Powys and The Paradox of Immortality Sunday 29 July 2012 08:50 BBC Radio 4 The philosopher John Gray reflects on the nature of immortality as expressed by the writer Theodore Powys, 'The longest life may fade and perish but one moment can live and become immortal.' "Powys captures a paradox at the heart of our thinking about death and the afterlife: there's a kind of immortality that only mortals can enjoy." Listen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01l1ggb   John Cowper Powys Lecture and Exhibit in Hillsdale on Saturday, September 22, 2012 There will be an exhibit at the Roe Jan Community Library beginning September 22 commemorating the life and work of John Cowper Powys who lived in Hillsdale from 1930-34. Powys wrote extensively about his life in Hillsdale and the beauty of the area, which he considered his "Arcadia." A lecture on Powys will be given in the library at 6:00 pm on September 22 by Professor Nicholas Birns. Powys' writings have inspired many people, and there are Powys Societies in the United States, France, England and Sweden. More here. NEW Additions to Webliography: Georgetown University Library, Special Collections Research Centre University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, Special Collections Department.   WORDS AND MUSIC WITH SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER (Organised by The Sylvia Townsend Warner Society) Re-Visiting Sylvia Townsend Warner 29 June 2012, 9am – 6pm, Dorset County Museum, Dorchester  A One-Day International Symposium devoted to the work of Sylvia Townsend Warner Members of the Powys Society are offered discount tickets for this conference.  Re-Visiting Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) A One-Day International Symposium hosted by the Centre for South West Writing, University of Exeter and the Dorset County Museum 29 June 2012, Dorset County Museum, Dorchester Professor Mary Joannou (Anglia Ruskin University) Professor Jan Montefiore (University of Kent) Sylvia Townsend Warner’s writing demands renewed investigation. An expert musicologist as well as a versatile novelist, short story writer and poet, she was a controversial international figure. MI5 investigated her ‘communist activities’ while contemporaries were unsettled by her Spanish Civil War politics and the unreserved expression of her homosexuality, with these aspects of her writing having attracted some of the liveliest critical commentary by distinguished biographers, critics and novelists. Her novels, short stories, poems, letters, diaries and translations have been reprinted by publishers including the Women’s Press, Virago, Penguin, Carcanet and her own publisher Chatto. Yet despite attempts to recover Warner’s work for a wider readership, she is rarely found on university syllabi in the UK or abroad. This one day international symposium hosted jointly by the University of Exeter’s Centre for South West Writing and the Dorset County Museum aims to mark the importance of Warner’s writing and highlight her place as an original, generically resourceful and politically conscious 1930s woman writer at the heart of the literary avant-garde. The conference also aims to draw attention to the rich resources of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Archive housed in the Museum. The conference committee would like to thank the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society for assistance and financial support of the conference. Registration deadline: 1 June, 2012. As we are holding the event in the Dorset County Museum and are strongly encouraging attendance from the public we ask all delegates to buy a ‘ticket’ for the event through the museum. Tickets are £35 for waged and £20 for Powys Society Members/DNHAS members/ STW society members/unwaged/students and are available in person from the Museum Shop or by way of a stamped addressed envelope sent to the Museum Shop. Cheques are to be made payable to The Dorset County Museum and credit card payments can be taken through the shop: 01305 262735 shop@dorsetcountymuseum.org More information on the conference, including a full programme, can be found here: http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/english/research/conferences/townsendwarner/. Please email the conference organisers Alex Murray and Vike Martina Plock (stwconference2012@exeter.ac.uk) for further information.   The Sylvia Townsend Warner Society is also staging a concert at 3 pm on Saturday 30 June 2012 at the Dorset County Museum. The programme consists of readings from her works, musical pieces edited by her as part of the Tudor Church Music project, compositions by her friends and some of her musical settings of poems by Thomas Hardy. The UK premiere of an important new work, the setting to music of her poem 'Azrael' by Jonathan David, will also take place at this event. Concert tickets are £8.00 Booking details and further information on both events are at the Society's website: www.townsendwarner.com     TWO POWYS DAYS for 2012 ELY, Saturday 31 March Our President, Glen Cavaliero, will lead a discussion of JCP’s novel Owen Glendower focusing on Chapter XII Mathrafal. The meeting will be held at the Old Fire Engine House, 25 St Mary’s Street, a restaurant and art gallery in the centre of Ely near the cathedral. Welcome and coffee, in the upstairs sitting room, is at 10.30am. We will commence our discussion at 11.00am. Lunch will be served downstairs in the restaurant from 12.00pm to 13.00pm. After a short comfort break we will reconvene to continue our discussion in the afternoon. Owen Glendower, written between 1937 and 1939, was first published in the USA in 1941 and in the UK in 1942 and is considered by many commentators to be one of JCP’s most accomplished works especially in his evocation of its physical setting, and the time period of the early fifteenth century. Owen Glendower, however, does not seem to be as widely read as JCP’s other ‘Wessex’ novels. Our discussion will attempt to draw out the key features and achievements of the book including the novel’s genesis, its role in JCP’s life at a key period, its relationship to his attitude to Wales and Welsh culture, his imaginary depiction of the character of the real Owen Glendower, his view of Welsh history and mythology, as well as his handling of the conventions of the historical ‘romance’, narrative and the historical novel. Owen Glendower was most recently reprinted in a modern edition with an introduction by Morine Krissdottir by Overlook Press in 2003. A useful introduction and overview of the novel can be found in Professor Keith’s Aspects of Owen Glendower, published by the Powys Society in 2008.    The event is free although a charge will be made for lunch which is optional. For details of menu choices for lunch and prices please visit the web site of the venue at: http://www.theoldfireenginehouse.co.uk/      DORCHESTER, Saturday 9th June   At the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester, in the library, at 10.30am for 11.00am start. Members are invited to bring their favourite Powys book or books, read selected passages, and discuss the significance or personal relevance of their choices with others at the meeting. After lunch, at 2.00pm THE IMAGINATIVE WORLDS OF LLEWELYN AND THEODORE POWYS a talk by Frank Kibblewhite, the Society's webmaster who runs The Sundial Press which has published titles by Theodore, Llewelyn, Littleton and Philippa Powys. During the last twenty-five years Frank has read nearly every Powys book published and has travelled widely in Dorset. The Powys Society Collection, housed in the Dorset County Museum, will be open during the meeting. At the close of the meeting we will visit a place of local Powysian interest. Coffee and refreshments will be available during the day. Lunch will be from 13.00pm to 14.00pm at No. 6 restaurant, North Square. The event is free with the exception of optional lunch. Anyone interested is very welcome to join both events. If you wish to attend these meetings please notify Secretary by e-mail at chris.d.thomas@hotmail.co.uk or by post to Flat D, 87 Ledbury Road, London W11 2AG.       15 paintings by Gertrude Mary Powys (1877–1952) now available to view on BBC website 15 paintings by Gertrude Mary Powys (1877–1952) are now posted on the BBC "Your Paintings" website. You can view them here (browser will open in new window). “There is my sister Gertrude, round whom like the sun we different members of the family like the planets revolve; of her no word of praise is too high; and I rejoice that now at last she has more time to devote to the art which for so many years has kept on calling to her.” From The Joy of It (1937) by Littleton Powys   JOHN GRAY will present a talk on JOHN COWPER POWYS at this year’s Oxford Literary Festival.   Event: The Sunday Times OXFORD LITERARY FESTIVAL Date:  4:00pm | Saturday 24 March Venue: Christ Church: Blue Boar Duration: one hour   "Political philosopher and author John Gray champions the work of 20th-century novelist, philosopher, lecturer, and poet John Cowper Powys. The literary quarterly Slightly Foxed aims to revive interest in forgotten books and authors and Gray was commissioned to write about John Cowper Powys for the Spring issue (now available). John Gray is emeritus professor of European thought at the London School of Economics. He now writes full time, is the author of Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death and many other books, and is one of Britain’s most talked-about thinkers and philosophers." http://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/events/detail/slightly-foxed-presents-john-gray-on-john-cowper-powys   February 2012 The following additions to Chris Thomas's A Powys Webliography:   University of California at Los Angeles (Henry Miller papers – Finding Aid): http://cdn.calisphere.org/data/13030/z6/tf9t1nb6z6/files/tf9t1nb6z6.pdf Correspondence from JCP to Henry Miller(1950-1959)   University of California at Los Angeles Library: http://www.library.ucla.edu/ Original correspondence between Llewelyn Powys and Louis Wilkinson. plus other updates.   November 2011   Descents of Memory The Life of John Cowper Powys by Morine Krissdottir Hardback 480 pages Illustrated  1585679178 | 9781585679171 is currently available at £9.99 instead of the published price of £25.00 from Postscript Books: http://bit.ly/u3vksl (this link will open in a new window). T. F. Powys, an English Tolstoy?  by Michael Caines (Times Literary Supplement: October 21 2011, No. 5664) Read the full article here. New Treasurer October 2011 Anna Pawelko has taken on the role of Hon. Treasurer and we extend a warm and grateful welcome to her.     Florence Hardy ‘Well, I had a perfectly lovely time with Thomas Hardy. Isn’t it amazing? He was 78 last 2 June. I rather like his little wife – about 33 she looks, like a grave ascetic art student or a Chelsea socialist, follower of William Morris, not a society person and not a naughty little girl – grave, my dear, very grave! rather like a hospital nurse – her hair parted Madonna-wise and a very responsible air.’  (John Cowper Powys to Llewelyn Powys, Summer 1918)   Monday, November 7: the publication of FLORENCE Mistress of Max Gate by Society member Peter Tait. (Reviewed in the Powys Society Newsletter No.75 March 2012)     The 2011 Powys Society Conference Friday 19 August to Sunday 21 August Hand Hotel in Llangollen   Speakers include: Patrick Wright, (author of The Village That Died For England and, more recently, Passport to Peking) on Llewelyn Powys; Jeremy Hooker, (author of John Cowper Powys, Writers in a Landscape and Imagining Wales) on Gerard and Mary Casey; Stephen Batty on the work of T F Powys and Jonas Aagaard, from Denmark, on John Cowper Powys. Additionally, a programme of guided walks and visits to places of historical interest with Powysian associations and on Saturday evening there will be a reading of Mr. Weston's Good Wine, adapted for voices by Kate Kavanagh. Registration for the Conference has now closed but if you require further information please contact either Louise de Bruin (01258 817825) or Anna Pawelko (e-mail: anna.pawelko@ntlworld.com). Further details about the venue can be found here: http://www.hand-hotel-llangollen.com.     Saturday, August 13th: The LLEWELYN POWYS Birthday Walk and Dandelion Club annual gathering meeting at The Sailor's Return around noon. All welcome  Tom Bates aka Neil Lee-Atkin writes: 'With Llewelyn's birthday falling on a Saturday this year we anticipate a bumper gathering at East Chaldon on August 13th. Five members of the Dandelion Club are coming down with me, and we've booked into the George Hotel in Weymouth for three nights from Thursday 11th; hoping to spend a couple of days exploring the White Nose, Undercliff, Rat's Barn, and old Llewelyn haunts along the coast.' His new address is 1 Church Hill, Spridlington, Market Rasen, Lincolnshire LN8 2DX, 'phone 01673 860535. For further information, please email: revneildatkin@sky.com     A LETTER CONCERNING THE FUTURE OF THE SWEDISH JOHN COWPER POWYS SOCIETY   I have had the pleasure to function as Chairman for the Swedish John Cowper Powys Society – John Cowper Powyssällskapet – during two periods; from the beginning in 1999 to 2004, and then again from 2005 to 2011. Most of the Swedish members live in the Stockholm area, but even if I myself am located in the South, in Lund, I think I have a fair overview of the society and its members. The task as Chairman has always been facilitated by the fellow members and the Board, and for several years by our Honorary Chairman and Founder, the late Sven Erik Täckmark. There are many happy memories that we can share with each other, and there has indeed been a lot of good work done for the promotion of John Cowper Powys and his books. The important outcomes are of course our bilingual newsletter, the Swedish editions of The Meaning of Culture and The Autobiography, and all the conversations we have had, when gathered in Sven Erik’s little flat in Stockholm or at other places, or by telephone and by mail, now mostly electronically delivered. But it is a fact that the activities have diminished lately. It has been hard to arrange meetings and run the ordinary society errands and even to collect the members fee. One of the reasons could be that Sven Erik no longer is the natural epicentre and source of energy for us; in fact the last time the Swedish Powysians were gathered in some numbers was at the funeral service for Sven Erik. Be that as it may, but several of us have discussed how to start anew and find new forms for our interest in John Cowper Powys. That is why the members at the last annual meeting, June 11th in Stockholm, voted and finally confirmed a change, proposed by the Board. What we want to do is to reorganise our society into a more informal one; thus letting go of Board functions as e. g. Treasurer, and also giving up the efforts to fund our activities with members fees. Instead we are working towards what in Swedish is called  ”vänförening”, i. e. ”a union of friends”. If you wish to continue to support the promotion of Powys in Sweden you are hereby invited to join the new Swedish John Cowper Powys Society; we will not change the name of our society, nor the goals of it, but formally it will from now on have the character of an informal network, hopefully with a nexus in our website: http://www.bjorner.com/powys.htm   For  further information, please contact me at: Lars_Gustaf.Andersson@litt.lu.se or by ordinary mail: Lars Gustaf Andersson, Plåtslagarevägen 8, SE-227 30 Lund, Sweden   Best wishes,  Lars Gustaf Andersson July 27th 2011   Two Powys Days for 2011   BRIGHTON, Saturday 14 May The Friends Meeting House, Ship Street, Brighton. 2pm.  Terry Diffey, Emeritus Reader in philosophy at the University of Sussex, in Conversation with Timothy Hyman, distinguished painter, art critic and Chairman of The Powys Society.  Their conversation will discuss current ideas about the aesthetics of the human and natural world, with particular reference to the novels and other works of John Cowper Powys. (Click on the photo to obtain directions.) Followed at 7.30 pm, in association with the Brighton Festival Fringe, 'Powys in Sussex', a programme celebrating John Cowper Powys and his time in Sussex, with readings and new musical compositions by Robert Carrington and the Pastores Ensemble inspired by Powys's works. There is no charge for the afternoon discussion but a small cover charge for the evening event.  Webpage here. Everyone is welcome to both events. Please contact the Secretary if you wish to attend either or both events. E-mail to chris.d.thomas@hotmail.co.uk or write to: Chris Thomas, Flat D, 87 Ledbury Road, London W11 2AG DORCHESTER, Saturday 11 June Dorset County Museum. 10.30 am THE LONG HOT EDWARDIAN SUMMER: LLEWELYN IN 1911 A talk by Peter Foss, the Society's Vice-Chairman and Llewelyn Powys's bibliographer. 2.00 pm  A POWYSIAN BOATING TRIP ON THE THAMES A talk by Stephen Powys Marks. There will be an opportunity for discussion, refreshments and a visit to Wolfeton Housea (a place of local Powysian interest). There is no charge for this event except lunch which is optional.           The aesthetics of the human and natural world with special reference to the novels and other works of John Cowper Powys' Terry Diffey, Emeritus Reader in philosophy at the University of Sussex, in Conversation with Timothy Hyman, distinguished painter, art critic and Chairman of The Powys Society.  Chris Thomas with Terry Diffey & Timothy Hyman at the Friends Meeting House, Brighton, on May 14th 2011. Webpage here.    2010   Nov. 22nd 2010 - First Lecture on John Cowper Powys in Ireland Read more ...   Nov. 2010 - THE BEST FIVE BOOKS ON EVERYTHING Steven Amsterdam author of Things We Didn’t See Coming has recommended one of John Cowper Powys’ books, WOLF SOLENT, as one of the best five on his subject – Worry.   “Powys was one of 11, several of whom also published, and was an extremely sensitive soul. He was born in the 1870s, which meant he suffered the shocks of a new noisy century when he was old enough to worry properly. His medium was more existential angst and self-doubt, offering an antithesis to Whitman’s universe-embracing enthusiasm.” To read the full article visit the FIVE BOOKS website here   ~ * ~ In A Hotel Writing-Room – John Cowper Powys’ finest poem? A nomination here      Hampstead meeting - Saturday 23rd October 2010  Autumn Meeting of the Powys Society Saturday 23 October 2010 at 2pm Friends Meeting House. 120 Heath Street, Hampstead, London NW3 1DR   A discussion of John Cowper Powys’s novel DUCDAME    Ducdame, first published in 1925, is usually discussed alongside Powys’s other early fiction. But Ducdame is also a novel that can confidently stand on its own. It includes some of Powys’s best and most exuberant descriptions of the natural world as well as some of his most luminous prose. Glen Cavaliero describes Ducdame as “...an undeservedly neglected elegy for the romantic spirit”. Wilson Knight thought Ducdame notable for its remarkable evocations of transfigured and “etherealised” landscapes. It is also notable for Powys’s evocations of earth-nature as well as for Powys’s use of striking images and symbols. There is a much greater sense in Ducdame, perhaps, than in any of Powys’s other novels, of the fecundity of nature. “We have here”, said Wilson Knight, “an unusually varied .... assortment of .... all that Richard Jeffries meant by ‘wood magic’.” Powys exhibits in Ducdame an intense Wordsworthian sensitivity to location, and history, “rarest of rarities of our race consciousness”. The inspiration for the novel no doubt came from a deeply felt longing to return to familiar places in England at this time: “I hate San Francisco”, he wrote in a letter shortly before starting the book, “there’s nowhere to walk into the country. I long for real Spring flowers.” Although the plot of Ducdame is thin the human drama and the characters are vividly realised and Powys employs his unerring psychological acuity to great effect especially in his delineation of the dilemma of the leading character Rook Ashover. There are fewer characters than in Powys’s other novels. It is a work conceived on a small scale. Powys may have been aided in this by Llewelyn to whom he read the book “chapter by chapter” and who persuaded him to make many changes including perhaps references to Rook’s brother Lexie, “the life amorist, the worshipper of the sun and the sweet air”. Other members of the Powys family make an appearance: Powys’s mother, Theodore, Marian, Margaret, Phyllis and Powys’s son are all present. The extraordinary meeting between Rook and the ghostly youth on horseback, his unborn child, near the end of the novel seems to hint at something Powys wanted to say about his feelings for his own son: “He’s beautiful like an angel...I think he is very like Alyosha”. We will look especially at Chapter XIX of Ducdame which Glen Cavaliero calls “one of the finest things in all of Powys’s fiction” and examine the means Powys uses to achieve a sustained meditation on the unity of Man and Nature. The intense concentrated focus in this chapter on the physical act of walking, the detailed interrelationship between character and landscape and the fluctuating consciousness of Rook absorbed in “earth obsessed intuitions”, suggests a possible “green” or eco-critical reading of Powys’s descriptions of “mystic ecstasies”. We will try to elucidate the mysterious meaning of Powys’s Shakespearean riddle - Is it nonsense, word-play, a charm or a spell, or does it hide a deeper meaning? We will explore Powys’s use of mythological themes, his Pyrhonnic scepticism, the existence of a mystic fourth dimension, “beyond the difference between space and time”, and philosophical ideas about the twin forces of creation and destruction in the process of “cosmic unravelling” announced by Rook’s nemesis , William Hastings. We will discuss whether the ending of the novel is a failure for Rook or “the ultimate sensation he craved”, a “token” or “signpost in the night”. The dedication of the novel to, “Kwang-Tse or Khi-Yuan”, reminds us of the dominant influence of Taoism on Ducdame and many of Powys’s other works: “ I am sure I would have made a receptive disciple to that fussy ritualist....A Taoist is what I really am.” Ducdame is in print and currently available from Faber in their Faber Finds Series of books. If you wish to attend this meeting please contact Hon Secretary: chris.d.thomas@hotmail.co.uk Or write to Chris Thomas, Flat D, 87 Ledbury Road, London W11 2AG Download the Ducdame flyer PDF (will open in a new window or tab)   To view a little known oil & acrylic portrait of John Cowper Powys (1984) please click here   T.H. LYON, architect and benefactor  Ilsington Old School Room, 1910-2010 St Michael’s Church, Ilsington, Devon is celebrating the centenary of the west lychgate, commonly known as the old school room which was designed and built by T.H. Lyon of Middlecott, Ilsington. There have been three buildings on the site of the west lychgate, and the first achieved notoriety in 1639 when in it collapsed whilst a school lesson was taking place. The second lychgate dwelling fell into disrepair sometime after 1871 when church vestry meetings ceased to take place there, and it was not until 1910 that it was restored under the benefice of Thomas Henry Lyon, a local architect. Prior to the creation of the present Ilsington Church of England School, various ‘Dame School’ had flourished in the parish thanks to the generous funding from the Jane Ford Charity. Alfred Lyon, Thomas’ father, was one of the major contributors to the village school along with the Duke of Somerset (Lord of Ilsington), Baroness de Virte of Bagtor, Captain Charles J.H. Monro of Ingsdon, George Wills of Narracombe, John Divett of Bovey Tracey, James Woodley of Halshanger Manor, Rev. Robert Lovett, vicar of Ilsington and Rev. Samuel Norsworthy. The school opened in 1873 with 102 pupils on the roll. The west lychgate is a remarkable building being a rare example of a two-storey lychgate. Other such buildings are known from the neighbouring parish of Bickington, Long Compton in Warwickshire,  Painswick in Gloucestershire, Bray in Berkshire and  and St Wendronas in Cornwall. The St Michael’s Parish Council are keen to find out if Thomas Lyons based his design on the original dwellings. Following its restoration, the old school room was used for vestry meetings, confirmation classes and Sunday school. Today, the west lychgate also houses the memorial to both world wars. Thomas H. Lyon was a generous benefactor. In 1909 he funded a crucifix which hangs above the 15th century rood screen and he designed the elaborate reredos which was erected in memory of his sister, Caroline, by her husband Canon Percy Charlton Wise. Thomas Lyon’s father, Alfred Lyon, wrote a number of diaries which were subsequently discovered by Mrs Y. Ware-Owen in the attic of Middlecott house. These, along with other biographical details, will form a part of the celebration of Thomas Lyon’s remarkable association with IIsington which is taking place on Saturday November 13th, 2010 in the old school room and the nearby village hall between 1-5pm. This event has drawn our attention to a remarkable story of literary and theological associations formed by Thomas H. Lyon and we hope to learn more about his life and begin a restoration of the old school room which continues to be used for children’s church and occasional meetings of the PCC. We would be delighted to hear from readers with an interest in Thomas Henry Lyons, and we are grateful to members of the John Cowper Powys Society who have enriched our understanding of a local hero.   CONTACT: Anne Parkinson, 9 Town Meadow, Ilsington TQ13 9RY (e-mail: rjparkinson@tiscali.co.uk)
EARLIER THIS YEAR
New Conference DVD now available	THE POWYS SOCIETY CONFERENCE 2010  “Grail Visions” Wessex Hotel, Street Friday 20th August - Sunday 22nd August This year's Conference was held in Street in Somerset, two miles from Glastonbury and within view of Glastonbury Tor. For more Conference photos Visit the CONFERENCE Webpage

                                                                      2009 EVENTS                                                                            

The Society Conference 2009 

The Hand Hotel, Llangollen

Friday 21st August to Sunday 23rd August

“Ravishing Limbo”

The last Conference double DVD, Llangollen 2009, is available.

[Discussing the stage adaptation of Dostoievsky’s “The Idiot” at Llangollen]  

2009 Conference webpage

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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