Plethu/Weave Project

Friday 19 March 2021


When I was asked to write a poem for a collaborative project with a dancer for Plethu/Weave, a cross-artform collab between Literature Wales and NDC Wales, I was super excited. I've always loved dance, even though I left those skills behind in my teen classes, and working with a dancer has been something I've been wanting to do for a while. I was paired with Iestyn James, a dancer and choreographer, and we had a 4-week creative timeline to write and produce our poem and film. 


In our initial conversations, we responded to each other's previous work, and this led to conversations about finding inner peace, feeling restricted in lockdown, the causes that drive us, and how we've connected with nature during the pandemic. I've been thinking a lot about joy; what that is to me, how I can create joy in my everyday life, finding it in small places. We discussed the power of just being present in our bodies, existing, of slowness, rejecting the pressure to always be productive and busy with something. We were both drawn to the water and the calmness it brought us, having lived by the sea, and that was a vision in our minds from the very beginning. 


Writing has been difficult for me over the last year, as I know it has been for many others. Some days over lockdown, just getting out of bed and showering has been enough. I've had to make peace with the fact that some days will be hard and that I'm not running at my usual capacity. Working on this project has been refreshing; having a deadline, people counting on me has given me the push to take a poem beyond a half-draft for the first time in a while.


It's a very rare occurrence that the seeds of a poem come to me in some sort of mysterious subconscious way; in dreams, on walks, through pictures, out of nowhere. The 'magic' of this is something that's romanticised, but when an idea does come in this way, I find that they usually end up being my best work. In this case, I woke just before sunrise, and just getting up and going unplanned, out into the cold to wherever my body took me, felt like an act of defiance against the slow repetition of my everyday routine (and about as wild as things get in lockdown!) I took this feeling and ran with it, imagining what it might be like to have the world to yourself, being let into the secret language of nature and asking it for the tools to spark a new beginning.


I kept Iestyn updated as I re-drafted and picked apart the poem, sending snippets of voice recordings, sounds I took of the sea and birds, and he responded with small sequences of movement to my voice. Watching my words evolve into movement has been a beautiful thing, and Iestyn really brought the piece to life, with his choreography and film adding layers to the piece. Our vision coming together, despite working remotely, has been a great experience. I can't wait to share the finished film!



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