2022 Programme

Thursday 16 June

Stations to the Untenanted Cross

Susan Fogarty
19:30 – 20:30
£5
St Hywyn’s Church
Limit: 20 people

Friday 17 June

Writing Together: Words and Water

Philip Gross 11:00 – 21:00 £60

St Hywyn’s Church, Aberdaron 11:00-13:00
Sarn Plas Cottage, Y Rhiw. 14:00-16:00
Celtic Roundhouse, Felin Uchaf 19:30-21:00

Limit:15 people

Water has always been a presence in Philip Gross’ poetry – the Severn Estuary in the T.S. Eliot-Prize-winning Water Table, the Taff inA Fold in the River and, in his new collection, Between the Islands, the sea. For more than 30 years, Philip has been opening doors into writing for people of all ages and any level of experience.

The morning will start at St Hywyn’s Church within sight of Thomas’ ‘timeless’ and yet ever-changing sea to explore how we can use words, and the spaces between words, to become more alive to the world around us and within. Sarn Plas, the retirement cottage of RS Thomas and ME Eldridge will be the afternoon venue.

“Bards Around the Fire” in the Celtic Roundhouse, Felin Uchaf, in the evening, will be an opportunity for the writers and Philip to share some of their inspired words.

Walking in the Footsteps of RS Thomas

Susan Fogarty
10:30 – 12:30 £10
Limit: 15 people

Starting at St Hywyn’s Church, this 3 mile walk, over uneven paths ground along the river, leads to the old vicarage by the quiet path that RS would have taken, stopping along the way for the reading of his poems.

The Missing Trap: A Close Look at Illustrations by M E Eldridge

The Landscape of Anglo-Welsh Poetry: RS Thomas 2022

Mark Pryce
14:00 – 16:00 £10
Sailing Club, Aberdaron
Limit: 40 people

Drawing on his family roots in Wales and the Welsh Marches, Mark will offer a reading of RS Thomas’s poetry set in the vibrant company of Anglo-Welsh poets such as George Herbert, Wilfred Owen, David Jones, Saunders Lewis, Dylan Thomas, Lynette Roberts, Ruth Bidgood and Rowan Williams. What themes emerge in these ‘songs from the hills’, as we hear the poetry of prayer, nature, community, love and war?

Through the Keyhole: Look Inside Sarn Plas

4:15pm – 5pm Free
Limit: 10 people

An opportunity to have a look around Sarn Plas cottage and garden, the holiday home and place of retirement for RS Thomas and ME Eldridge. In 1964 the Keating sisters gifted a lease to the Thomas’s ending with the death of their son Gwydion. The cottage has now returned to the stewardship of the National Trust who are working on future plans.

Bards Around the Fire

Philip Gross, Poet
Ian M Parr, Host

19:30 – 21:00 £7
Celtic Roundhouse, Felin Uchaf
Limit: 40 people

Philip Gross and the writers from the creative writing workshop hosted by Ian Parr will share their poetry and words, accompanied by Ffion Wood in a unique atmospheric setting. www.felinwales.org

Saturday 18 June

£25 Day Ticket 10:00 – 16:15
Crud y Werin School Hall Limit: 70 people

Reading the Poems

Tony Brown
10:00 – 10:20

Short session devoted to the close reading of a single R.S. Thomas poem, considering meaning and technique.

The Tides of Faith in RS Thomas

Mark Oakley
10:30am – 12:00pm

The festival is delighted to welcome back Mark Oakley as one of the Society board members and a speaker in the 2017 Festival.  ‘Time and Tide’ is the theme for this year’s festival and Mark will be exploring the tides of faith as expressed in Thomas’ poetry and experienced by those of us in whom his words resonate deeply.

Through the Keyhole: Look Inside Sarn Plas, Rhiw

12.30pm – 1.30pm Free
Limit: 10 people
An opportunity to have a look around Sarn Plas cottage and garden, the holiday home and place of retirement for RS Thomas and ME Eldridge. In 1964 the Keating sisters gifted a lease to the Thomas’s ending with the death of their son Gwydion. The cottage has now returned to the stewardship of the National Trust who are working on future plans.

Reading the Poems

Tony Brown
13:45 -14:00

Short session devoted to the close reading of a single R.S. Thomas poem, considering meaning and technique.

‘Bring on the Dancing Girls’: An RS Thomas Perspective

Manon Ceridwen James
14:00 – 16:00

In the poem Perspectives, Thomas describes modernity, referring to electricity pylons as ‘the dancing girls of the future’.   Manon Ceridwen James appropriates his phrase to speak about Thomas’ contribution to the poet priest tradition, and how this living tradition is expressed today. Some of this will be drawn from her own research within feminist and contextual theology, as well as experience of theological education and the use of technology. How can Thomas’ poetry speak into a very different society and ministry context from his own?

The Future of Sarn Plas Cottage

Laura Hughes, National Trust Visitor Experience Manager
Tony Brown, Co-Director RS Thomas Research Centre
16:00pm -16:15pm

A brief presentation from the National Trust about their ideas for the future of the cottage. In 1964 the Keating sisters gifted a lease to Elsie Eldridge and RS Thomas ending with the death of Gwydion. The cottage has now returned to the stewardship of the National Trust. This is also an opportunity to present ideas, concerns and aspirations, to influence those future plans.

Members’ Buffet Dinner & Wine

RS Thomas & ME Eldridge Society
18:30pm – 19:30pm
£10
Porth y Swnt
Limit: 30 people

Join the speakers, board and other members of the Society in a relaxed and interesting setting.

Cyngerdd Emyn i Gymro – Hymn to a Welshman Concert

Mared Emlyn, Harp
20:00 – 21:00 £8
Written by Menna Elfyn composed by Pwyll ap Sion
Plus: Sioned Eleri Roberts – Clarinet
St Hywyn’s Church Limit 80 people

Emyn i Gymro was created as a tribute to RS Thomas after his death in 2000. The words were written and performed by Menna Elfyn, translated into English by Gillian Clarke, with music for the harp composed by Pwyll ap Sion, performed by Eleanor Bennet at Portmeirion in 2001. This will be its third performance with Mared Emlyn as the harp soloist.

Sunday 19 June

Revd Dr Mark Oakley, Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge, will lead the service and preach. For 300 years from the early 17^th Century, under the auspices of the Church of England, there was a connection between St John’s, Cambridge, and St Hywyn’s, Aberdaron.

The service will be bilingual as usual.

Refreshments to follow.

WORD is a sequence of musical meditations on the Gospel in the 21st century for mixed chorus and organ, setting together verses from St John’s Prologue and five poems of R S Thomas.

Francis will share his insights into the challenges of composing this work, in particular using Thomas’s free verse poetry with the text of John’s Gospel.

Performed by Commotio in Keble College, Oxford in September 2018, it was subsequently recorded in March 2019, for general release in the summer of 2020. It was subsequently nominated for the US Grammy Awards.

Through the Keyhole: Look Inside Sarn Plas, Rhiw

12.30pm – 1.30pm Free

Limit: 10 people

An opportunity to have a look around Sarn Plas cottage and garden, the holiday home and place of retirement for RS Thomas and ME Eldridge. In 1964 the Keating sisters gifted a lease to the Thomas’s ending with the death of their son Gwydion. The cottage has now returned to the stewardship of the National Trust who are working on future plans.

Time and Tide – Waiting For The Rare Bird

Jon Gower
14:00 – 15:30
£7
St Maelrhys Church
Limit: 40 people

R. S. Thomas wasn’t just a keen birdwatcher, he was an expert, able to identify rare birds that made landfall in his parishes. As Thomas’s poem Sea-Watching suggests, such birds – which appear ‘when one is not looking’ – are elusive, like God, and the act of irdwatching is thus akin to prayer. Jon will discuss Thomas as a naturalist and conservationist, sharing his correspondence with other writers and birders; spotting the various species – some mythical, some real – that fly through Thomas’s verse.

Through the Keyhole: Look Inside Sarn Plas, Rhiw

4pm – 5pm Free

Limit: 10 people

An opportunity to have a look around Sarn Plas cottage and garden, the holiday home and place of retirement for RS Thomas and ME Eldridge. In 1964 the Keating sisters gifted a lease to the Thomas’s ending with the death of their son Gwydion. The cottage has now returned to the stewardship of the National Trust who are working on future plans.

2022 Presenters

Philip Gross

Philip Gross has published over twenty collections of poetry, including The Water Table, which won the T.S. Eliot Prize 2009, and a new collection, Between the Islands, from Bloodaxe in March 2020. He received a Cholmondeley Award in 2017, and his science-based collection for young people, Dark Sky Park (Otter-Barry, 2018) was shortlisted for the CLiPPA prize. He is a keen collaborator, e.g. with artist Valerie Coffin Price on A Fold in the River (Seren, 2015), with poet Lesley Saunders on A Part of the Main (Mulfran, 2018) and currently with Welsh-language bardd Cyril Jones. www.philipgross.co.uk

John McEllhenney

John McEllhenney from Pennsylvania is a retired Methodist minister, trained historian, and lover of poetry and art, began reading the poems of R S Thomas in 1973. He visited RS three times in the 1990s and published A Masterwork of Doubting-Belief: R. S. Thomas and His Poetry in 2013. Recently, he turned his attention to Thomas’s wife, the artist Mildred Elsie Eldridge. This focus led to a research trip to Italy in October 2017, during which he looked at art works that Eldridge studied in in Florence, Assisi, and Ravenna in 1934. He has co-created a website dedicated to the life and work of ME Eldridge. www.meeldridge.com

Mark Pryce

Mark Pryce is Director of Ministry for Birmingham Diocese, and Chaplain to The Queen. Originally from Wales, Mark served as Curate and Hospital Chaplain in West Bromwich, Fellow and Dean of Chapel of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and Vicar of Smethwick Old Church. He is a member of The Diviners, a group of theologian-poets with whom he co-authored Making Nothing Happen [2017]. He regularly lectures on The Welsh Poet-Priests [including RS Thomas], exploring connections between poetry, spirituality and the practice of ministry. His most recent book is Poetry, Practical Theology & Reflective Practice. [2019]

Mark Oakley

Mark Oakley is Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge, and a former residentiary canon of St Paul’s Cathedral (London). He served as Rector of St Paul’s Covent Garden (the Actors’ church); he is Deputy Priest in Ordinary to HM the Queen, and a Visiting Lecturer at King’s College, London and Visiting Scholar at Sarum College, Salisbury. His writings and broadcasts explore poetry, spirituality, and human rights. His books The Collage of God (2001) and The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry (2016), winner of the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize for theological writing, were recently the top two selling books of The Church Times along with his publication of 50 sermons By Way of the Heart [2019]. His latest book is My Sour-Sweet Days: George Herbert and the Journey of the Soul (2019). In 2021 he was given the most prestigious award of Fellowship by King’s College London. In 2022 was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) by Bangor University. One of his supervisors, Professor Emerita Helen Wilcox has been a speaker at this Festival.

Manon Ceridwen James

Manon Ceridwen James was one of the first women to be ordained in the Church in Wales.  Welsh speaking, she was brought up on the Llŷn Peninsula. She is Dean for Initial Ministerial Training for St Padarn’s Institute, with responsibility for training lay and ordained ministers in the Church in Wales.  Her poetry has been published in Poetry Wales, Envoi, Under the Radar and Obsessed with Pipework. She is the author of Women, Identity and Religion in Wales [2018] and has also contributed several chapters for edited collections on poetry, theology and feminist research.

Jon Gower

Jon Gower is a former BBC Wales arts and media correspondent, and author of thirty books. The Story of Wales, which accompanied the landmark TV series; An Island Called Smith was awarded the John Morgan Travel Writing Prize. Y Storïwr won the Wales Book of the Year Award. He has made two radio programmes about his occasional birdwatching companion RS Thomas, in particular Radio 3’s R.S. Thomas: Always Seeking Greater Silence [2013], which draws on interviews conducted whilst birdwatching and at the poet’s home on Anglesey in the late 1990s. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01r5n6g

Tony Brown

Tony Brown is Professor Emeritus in the School of English at Bangor University and Co-Director of the R.S. Thomas Study Centre. He has published extensively in the field of Welsh writing in English. He was the founding editor of the journal Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays (1995-2007). Publications on R.S. Thomas extend over some thirty years and include R.S. Thomas (U. of Wales P, 2006 & 2013) He and Jason Walford Davies published R. S. Thomas’s Uncollected Poems (2013) and Too Brave to Dream (2016)

Mared Emlyn

Mared Emlyn is a graduate of Bangor University, who completed a doctorate in performance on the harp and composition in 2014. She studied composition with Prof Pwyll ap Siôn and harp with Elinor Bennett, with additional lessons in Switzerland and Canada. Mared has received many composition commissions, including works for Wales International Piano Festival, Colwyn Male Voice Choir, a work for the Bangor Music Festival premiered by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and a harp concerto for the Beaumaris Festival. In 2018, she collaborated with musician Gwenan Gibbard and poet Mererid Hopwood on a commission by the Wales International Harp Festival to celebrate the world-renowned harpist Osian Ellis’ 90th birthday.

Susan Fogarty

Susan Fogarty is a founder and director of the RS Thomas & ME Eldridge Society, facilitating RS Thomas events in Aberdaron and elsewhere since 2013. She specialises in reading Thomas’s work: engaging her audience to move through the poetry, in churches and the natural environment. She has written articles for The Church Times, Faith & Freedom and Christians Aware. She has been a Journeying leader: guiding people on walking holidays with a spiritual intent. She co-leads RS Thomas retreats with her partner John McEllhenney in the UK and America. In 2022 she co-created a website dedicated to the life and work of M E Eldridge

Francis Pott

Francis Pott is professor of composition at the University of West London, who has developed an international reputation as a composer over the past thirty years. His dramatic, challenging music unites a distinctive personal voice with a highly disciplined but versatile technique rooted in a keen awareness of the past. To date his works (including a steady flow of major commissions) have been heard in concerts and on radio across the UK and in over forty countries worldwide. They have been widely published and extensively recorded for global release. His works Into The Light and Word were nominated for US Grammy Awards. www.francispott.com