Ness Owen – författare

Ness Owen lives on Ynys Môn off the North Wales coast. This is her first collection, and is partly bilingual. The poems journey widely from family and motherhood, to politics, place and belonging: an underlying connection to the earth of Ness' home, that feeds a longing/desire/determination to write in the Mamiaith (Mothertongue) that she speaks, but did not learn to write fluently. The interplay of languages and the shifts of meaning from one to the other feed the musicality of the poems.Most of the poems were written in English, five have been additionally translated into Welsh (with help from Sian Northey) one was written in Welsh and translated into English by Ness.

Moon jellyfish live a life adrift, relying on the current to take them where they need to go. They are the ultimate survivors and one of the most successful organisms of animal life. So how do they thrive in the open ocean when they can barely swim? Rooted in her island home, Ness Owen's second collection explores what it is to subsist with whatever the tides bring in poems that journey from family to politics, womanhood and language. In the ebb and flow of an ever-changing world, starlings fall from the sky, votes are cast, a village is drowned, a petrified forest is revealed and messages wash up in seaworn bottles on the shoreline, waiting for answers that will not come.

Arguably the most famous road in Wales, the A470 is 186 miles from shore to shore through the backbone of Wales, linking north to south. From the seashore to slate quarries, from nuclear power stations and fighter plane flypasts to forests, mountains and the capital city. Travelling through memory, myth, love and grief, we learn lessons, ache for match tickets, stitch ourselves together and encounter famous goats.O bosib y ffordd fwyaf adnabyddus yng Nghymru, mae’r A470 yn ymestyn am 186 milltir o arfordir y gogledd i arfordir y de trwy ganol Cymru. Ar ei hyd gwelir traethau a chwareli, atomfa ac awyrennau rhyfel, mynyddoedd a’n prifddinas. Yn y gyfrol hon cawn 51 o gerddi gwreiddiol, wedi’u cyfieithu o’r Gymraeg, neu i’r Gymraeg, i greu casgliad dwyieithog sydd yn ein harwain ar hyd yr A470. Cawn ein tywys trwy atgofion, chwedlau, cariad a galar, dysgwn wersi, rhannwn docynnau gêm, pwythwn frodwaith ein gwlad a gwylio’r geifr.

Arguably the most famous road in Wales, the A470 is 186 miles from shore to shore through the backbone of Wales, linking north to south. From the seashore to slate quarries, from nuclear power stations and fighter plane flypasts to forests, mountains and the capital city.Travelling through memory, myth, love and grief, we learn lessons, ache for match tickets, stitch ourselves together and encounter famous goats.O bosib y ffordd fwyaf adnabyddus yng Nghymru, mae''r A470 yn ymestyn am 186 milltir o arfordir y gogledd i arfordir y de trwy ganol Cymru. Ar ei hyd gwelir traethau a chwareli, atomfa ac awyrennau rhyfel, mynyddoedd a''n prifddinas. Yn y gyfrol hon cawn 51 o gerddi gwreiddiol, wedi''u cyfieithu o''r Gymraeg, neu i''r Gymraeg, i greu casgliad dwyieithog sydd yn ein harwain ar hyd yr A470.Cawn ein tywys trwy atgofion, chwedlau, cariad a galar, dysgwn wersi, rhannwn docynnau gêm, pwythwn frodwaith ein gwlad a gwylio''r geifr.

In this our imagined future we watch them sound the trees hoping for deadwood, knowing the living are always harder to cut.– Show Us What it is to Love a Forest with SongA deep-dive into the human relationship with trees and how trees have shaped folklore and literature. Sparked by a campaign to save the ancient forest of Penrhos, an SSSI on Ynys Môn, from being turned into a holiday camp, Ness explores Welsh folklore of trees and her own love for and engagement with the trees and other wild aspects of her home, as well as more common garden flowers, which should be treated with respect (Daffodils are Dangerous). Ness has an ongoing conversation with her native language and some poems are presented bilingually: there is a link to be made between the disregarding of native language and the disregarding of native habitat. Far more than a book of nature poems there is a simmering frustration at the casual way we despoil our environment without any concern for what is destroyed or the ongoing impact of that destruction.

In this our imagined future we watch them sound the trees hoping for deadwood, knowing the living are always harder to cut.– Show Us What it is to Love a Forest with SongA deep-dive into the human relationship with trees and how trees have shaped folklore and literature. Sparked by a campaign to save the ancient forest of Penrhos, an SSSI on Ynys Môn, from being turned into a holiday camp, Ness explores Welsh folklore of trees and her own love for and engagement with the trees and other wild aspects of her home, as well as more common garden flowers, which should be treated with respect (Daffodils are Dangerous). Ness has an ongoing conversation with her native language and some poems are presented bilingually: there is a link to be made between the disregarding of native language and the disregarding of native habitat. Far more than a book of nature poems there is a simmering frustration at the casual way we despoil our environment without any concern for what is destroyed or the ongoing impact of that destruction.

Inspired by the positive reaction to our earlier bilingual Welsh/English poetry anthology about a Welsh road, A470 Poems for the Road/Cerddi'r Ffordd; we expanded our scope to Welsh rivers - any of them. with over 600 to choose from this proved a rich seam of invention for our Welsh poets, and a wide geographical range within Wales too. Our poets range from novices to luminaries of the Welsh Poetry scene. The outcome - 50 poems in their original language, whether that was English or Welsh, next to a translation, celebrating everything about Welsh rivers, from source to estuary, fresh and clean or culverted and polluted, childhood memory to recent flooding.

Inspired by the positive reaction to our earlier bilingual Welsh/English poetry anthology about a Welsh road, A470 Poems for the Road/Cerddi''r Ffordd; we expanded our scope to Welsh rivers - any of them. with over 600 to choose from this proved a rich seam of invention for our Welsh poets, and a wide geographical range within Wales too. Our poets range from novices to luminaries of the Welsh Poetry scene. The outcome - 50 poems in their original language, whether that was English or Welsh, next to a translation, celebrating everything about Welsh rivers, from source to estuary, fresh and clean or culverted and polluted, childhood memory to recent flooding.