ISSUE 8 (2004)
[212pp. ISBN 09530674-7-5. £7.50]

Contents: Articles
 Jeremy Hooker, ‘From “Upstate: a North American Journal”’
 Fiona Owen, ‘This Even Frailer Flesh’
 Glyn Pursglove, ‘“Taught him at the well”: Reflections on “Isaac’s Marriage’
 Alan Rudrum, ‘Narrative, Typology and Politics in Henry Vaughan’s “Isaac’s Marriage”’
 Michael Srigley, ‘Flowers in Rich Fields: The Poetry of Thomas Vaughan’s Pamphlets’

Contents: Poetry
 Gary Allen, ‘New Year’
 Ruth Bidgood, ‘Patricio 2001’, ‘Pattern’
 Lucy Calcott, ‘Maundy Thursday’.
 Tony Connor, ‘Haymaking’
 Clare Crossman, ‘Writing Back’
 Pat Earnshaw, ‘Everyone a Stranger’
 Kate Foley, ‘Wellington Boots’
 Richard George, ‘Reliving the Calendar’
 Daphne Gloag, ‘Turning the Square into an Octagon’
 Graham Hartill, ‘Winged Heads’
 Vicki Holmes, ‘The Visitor’
 Jeremy Hooker, ‘Towards Elsinore’
 Phil Maillard, ‘The Press of Silence. A Walk to Patricio’
 Christine McNeill, ‘Expedition’
 Angela Morton, ‘Traces’
 Gréagóir Ó Dúill, ‘Tideline’
 William Oxley, ‘Memory, Snowflakes’
 Simon Pettifar, ‘To the Clerk of the Meetings when the Sufis Came to Speak to Us’; Laughing Poem’; ‘Incense’
 Jay Ramsay, ‘The Boreen’
 Mercer Simpson, ‘At Malmesbury Abbey’
 Kim Taplin, ‘A Road to Dover’
 Chris Torrance, ‘PATH/Finder’
 Edwina Trentham, ‘Calling My Father By Name’
 John Powell Ward, ‘The Last Green Year’
 John Welch, ‘Turning’; ‘Daybreak’; ‘Family’
 Merryn Williams, ‘After Mandelstam’
 Rowan Williams, ‘Invocation: a Sculpture for Winter’
 Dilys Wood, ‘Singularity’
 Lynne Wycherley, ‘Fragments of Iraqi Calligraphy’
 Open Poetry Competition, Short Poems:
       James Harpur, ‘The Monastic Star Timetable’ (1st Prize)
       Jemma Borg, ‘The Pond’ (2nd Prize)
       Brett Van Toen, ‘Bullfrogs’ (3rd Prize)
      Commended:
       Helen Burke, ‘The Lace-workers of Ghent’
       Rose Flint, ‘Grace’
       Mary MacRae, ‘Flycatcher’
       John Weston, ‘To Alaska and Back’
       Samantha Wynne-Rydderch, ‘Lipstick’
 Open Poetry Competition, Long Poems:
       Alyson Hallett, ‘The Storm Trilogy’ (1st Prize)
       Myra Schneider, ‘Orpheus in the Underground’ (2nd Prize)
       M.C. Newton, ‘Beliefs Broad and Narrow’ (3rd Prize)
      Commended:
       James Harpur, ‘Joseph of Arimathea’
       Greg Hill, ‘Myddleton’s River’
       Mary MacRae, ‘Shades of Grey’
       Philip Rush, ‘How to Listen to Classical Music’
       Maria Jastrzebska, ‘Carrying Her’

Visual Art
Issue 8 features images from wood engravings by Colin See-Paynton (inc. cover art).

Contributors
 GARY ALLEN was born in Ballymena, Co. Antrim. Included in Breaking the skin – 21st century poetry from Ireland, and The backyards of heaven – contemporary poetry from Ireland, Newfoundland, and Labrador. Latest collection Languages (Flambard/Black Mountain).
 RUTH BIDGOOD lives in mid-Wales. Her most recent collection is Singing to Wolves (Seren, 2000). Her New and Selected Poems is due from Seren in 2004.
 JEMMA BORG has a PhD in genetics and works as a science editor. She has had poems in Magma and poems forthcoming in the Agenda broadsheets for promising young poets.
 HELEN BURKE, is widely published in magazines such as Rialto, New Welsh Review, Northwards, Raindog, Kindred Spirit, Poetry Nottingham, Dreamcatcher and many others. Her new collection Back of Beyond comes out in September.
 LUCY CALCOTT lives in Eastbourne, Sussex. She has had poems published in Resurgence and Agenda and contributed to a recent anthology, Earth songs. She has three young children and works part-time in the local hospice.
 TONY CONNOR’s first five volumes of poetry were published by OUP. Since then, three more volumes have been published by Anvil Press Poetry. The latest isMatamorphic Adventures, 1996.
 CLARE CROSSMAN lives near Cambridge, with her husband. She has published two books of poetry, Landscapes (Redbeck Press), Going Back (Firewater Press Cambridge), and a series of ten poetry lithographs and accompanying pamphlet of that sequence. Silent Reading. (Pharos Press).
 PAT EARNSHAW, a biology graduate, has published four books of poetry, and a pamphlet, The Golden Hinde (Redbeck 2002). In June 2002 she was awarded a SouthEast Arts Council grant towards work on a collection.
 ROSE FLINT is an artist and writer. She works as both a creative writing tutor and an art therapist; she is currently Lead Writer for the Kingfisher Project in Salisbury Hospital, using poetry in a variety of healthcare settings. Her first collection is Blue Horse of Morning (Seren), and her second and third collections are Firesigns (Poetry Salzburg) and Nekyia (Stride).
 KATE FOLEY’s third collection, Laughter from the Hive, will be published by Shoestring Press in spring 2004. She worked in archaeology/ conservation but now lives in Amsterdam and is about to begin studies for a PhD in creative writing.
 RICHARD GEORGE read Classics at Oxford before being visited by the Muses in 1996. Both his parents were geography teachers, giving him an eye landscape (not least that of the mind).
 DAPHNE GLOAG read Classics and Philosophy at Oxford but worked mainly as a medical journalist and editor. Many of her poems have appeared in magazines etc; Diversities of Silence (Brentham Press) was published in 1995. She won first prize in the 2001 Poetry on the Lake competition in Italy.
 ALYSON HALLETT’s book of short stories, The Heart’s Elliptical Orbit, was published this July by Solidus Press. She is currently writing a new body of poems about the migration habits of stone, a project funded by The Arts Council, England.
 JAMES HARPUR was winner of the 1995 National Poetry Competition. He has had three books published by Anvil, including his latest, Oracle Bones, an exploration of prophecy, divination and inspiration. He is currently writing a short history of Christian mysticism.
 GRAHAM HARTILL’s book of ‘transcription poems’, Life-lines,was published in 2003 by the Ledbury Poetry Festival. Cennau’s Bell, his selected poems, is out this year from the Collective Press.
 GREG HILL edited the Anglo-Welsh Review and regularly contributes both verse and criticism to literary journals in Wales and beyond. He is Head of Humanities at Coleg Ceredigion in Aberystwyth.
 VIKI HOLMES lives and writes in Cardiff. Her poetry appears in Pterodactyl’s Wing: Welsh World Poetry, and her first collection, Miss Moon’s Class and the Interrelatedness of Things, will be published in 2004.
 JEREMY HOOKER’s most recent collection of poems is Adamah (Enitharmon Press), 2002). His Welsh Journal appeared from Seren in 2001. He is Professor of English at the University of Glamorgan.
 MARIA JASTRZEBSKA, author of: Postcards from Poland (Working Press), Home From Home (Flarestack 2002), co-edited Forum Polek. Published most recently in Ambit, The Rialto, Smiths Knoll and One Heart One World exhibition.
 MARY MACRAE has had poems published in various anthologies and magazines including Magma, Scintilla, Staple, Other Poetry, The Interpreter’s House and The Rialto. She is included in the Poetry School anthology, Entering the Tapestry, in Making Worlds and in the forthcoming anthology of women’s writing from Second Light. She lives in London.
 PHIL MAILLARD, born in London in 1948, has lived (mostly) in South Wales since 1975. He currently works in Cardiff as an NHS speech therapist. He has published five poetry collections and a paperback of stories.
 CHRISTINE McNEILL has had one collection published by Bloodaxe and a translation of Rilke’s poem-cycle on the Life of the Virgin Mary by Dedalus Press. She works as a language tutor in adult education.
 ANGELA MORTON lives near Brecon. Her first poetry collection, The holding-ground, was published by the Collective Press, Abergavenny, in 2002. Key interests include the natural world, alchemy, shamanism and healing.
 M. C. NEWTON recently moved from Devon to North Wales, where she hopes to carry on writing and publishing verse.
 GRÉAGÓIR Ó DÚILL is executive director of the Poet’s House, Falcarragh, Co. Donegal, Ireland. With a substantial body of work in Irish (eight collections and his selected verse, anthologies and prose) he recently writes mainly in English.
 FIONA OWEN has two collections of poetry published, Imagining the Full Hundred (Gwasg Pantycelyn, 2003) and O My Swan (Flarestack, 2003). She teaches for the Open University and Open College of the Arts, and lives in Ynys Môn.
 WILLIAM OXLEY was born in Manchester. A poet and philosopher, he has read his work on UK and European radio and is the only British poet to have read in Shangri-la in Nepal.
 SIMON PETTIFAR used to be a publisher but found himself turning into a writer. His poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies and he is also currently working on two prose collection, Islands of the Present (non-fiction) and Tenderness among other things (short stories).
 GLYN PURSGLOVE teaches at the Depertmant of English in the University of Wales, Swansea. He is editor of The Swansea Review and reviews editor of Acumen.
 JAY RAMSAY is a poet, psychospiritual therapist and NESH healer in private practice. Project director of Chrysalis – the poet in you, and co-founder of The Lotus Foundation. His latest collection is his 9/11 collaboration The Message with Californian poet Karen Eberhardt Shelton (David Paul Press, London, 2002).
 ALAN RUDRUM has published widely but not exclusively on seventeenth century topics, principally Henry and Thomas Vaughan and John Milton. Editor of Vaughan’s Complete Poems (Penguin Classics 1976, etc) and The Works of Thomas Vaughan (Clarendon Press, 1984). Most recent book The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth Century Verse and Prose, with associate editors Holly Nelson and Joseph Black.
 PHILIP RUSH is a teacher of English in Gloucester who also plays the electric violin. He is completing a diploma in creative writing at Bristol University and last year walked four hundred miles to Santiago de Compestela with his wife Caroline.
 MYRA SCHNEIDER’s most recent books are her new and selecetd poems,. Insisting on Yellow (Enitharmon 2000) and Writing My Way Through Cancer, a fleshed-out journal with poems (Jessica Kingsley, 2003). Mutliplying the Moon is due from Enitharmon later this year.
 BILL SHEPHERD. Born 1935. Retired from industry 1987. Since 1997 trained and now practices as a psychosynthesis therapist. Versions of Horace (odes and epodes) and Propertius in Penguin Classics series.
 MERCER SIMPSON’s poetry collections are East Anglian Wordscapes and Rain from a Clear Blue Sky. Many of his poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies, particularly in Wales.
 MICHAEL SRIGLEY has taught for some years at Uppsala University. He has most recently published Probe of Doubt: Scepticism and Illusion in Shakespeare’s Plays (Uppsala, 2000) and is interested in alchemy and Green Men in churches.
 KLIN TAPLIN’s most recent book is From Parched Creek (Redbeck Press, 2001). She has just completed a book-length poem called Goodfellow, the opening of which appeared in Scintilla 6.
 CHRIS TORRANCE, born Edinburgh. Scotland, 1941. Upbringing South West London. Began writing in the 1960’s; moved to Wales in 1970. Tutored Adventures in Creative Writing for University College, Cardiff, 1976-2001. Co-founder poetry-&-music band HEAT POETS.
 EDWINA TRENTHAM has published in a number of periodicals and anthologies, including The Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, The American Scholar, Harvard Magazine, and Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age.
 BRETT VAN TOEN is living a complex life in Bethnal Green. Part of ShadoWork an experimental performing poetry group (which includes Mario Petrucci and Martyn Crucefix). Goes clubbing at weekends, reflects and writes the rest of the time.
 JOHN POWELL WARD is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Wales, Swansea. Six collections of poetry, including The Clearing. Welsh Arts Council Award for 1985. Former editor of Poetry Wales. His Selected Poems appears from Seren Books
 JOHN WELCH, born in 1942, retired from his job as a schoolteacher two years ago. A new collection of his poems will be appearing from Shearsman in Spring 2004.
 JOHN WESTON was Britain’s Ambassador to the UN in New York until 5 years ago. Some twenty poems accepted in the past year, including by Guardian, Spectator and London Magazine. A late-flowering cactus.
 ROWAN WILLIAMS, Archbishop of Canterbury, was brought up in Swansea. He is the author of several books of theology. The Poems of Rowan Williams, his third collection, appeared from the Perpetua Press in 2002.
 MERRYN WILLIAMS is the editor of The Interpreter’s House and the Wilfred Owen newsletter. She has published two collections, The Sun’s Yellow Eye (National Poetry Foundation) and The Latin Master’s Story (Rockingham) and translated the Selected Poems of Lorca (Bloodaxe).
 DILYS WOOD is the Convenor of Second Light, a network of over 350 women poets, which publishes a Newsletter and also anthologies of poetry. Hr own Collection is Women Come to a Death, Katabasis, 1997.
 LYNNE WYCHERLEY’s poetry, which often features landscape and the spirit, has appeared widely. Her first pamphlet was published by Acumen, and her first full collection At the Edge of Light is published by Shoestring Press.
 SAMANTHA WYNNE-RHYDDERCH was born in Aberystwyth and grew up in south west Wales. She now divides her time between New Quay and Oxford. Her first book, Rockclimbing in Silk, was published in 2001. She is currently working on a second collection.

ART WORK: COLIN SEE-PAYNTON, who lives and works at Berriew in Powys, is regarded as one of the finest wood-engravers working today. He creates images of great complexity and beauty out of a fusion of a deeply-pondered virtuoso technique with ‘personal thoughts and feelings about the natural world’, when, as he puts it, ‘somehow a spark is … struck’. The intricate layering and patterning of his images (he a master of the movement of birds, fish and mammals and of the elements they inhabit) is a revelation of the energies and interdependencies that animate the created world. ‘He leads the eye through air and water, weaving reality into reflection.’

Last modified 04-Oct-2006 .
This document is maintained by Anthony Mandal (Mandal@cf.ac.uk).