I slept in the pink room at Ty Newydd; the house built in the 1700’s, now the National Centre for Writing in Wales. It was rumoured that Lloyd George, Liberal Prime Minister of the UK from 1916 – 1922 died in this room. It was also rumoured he died in the library. No matter, there was no ghostly presence, but words hovered and hung in the ether, waiting to be plucked and played with.
As the 11 participants and two facilitators arrived on the first evening, for the three-day writing retreat, so did texts alerting us all to the death of Maggie Thatcher, Conservative Prime Minister of the UK from 1979-1990. Her death rumbled around for the next three days, people both curious and relieved to be away from the media hype and screaming headlines,
‘She saved Britain,’ and ‘She destroyed us.’
These two British Prime Ministers of the last Century were unavoidably with us in Wales.
I, the Aussie from New South Wales, stepped into a rich history and a celebrated group of writers, university lecturers in creative writing and facilitators of writing for wellbeing. The first morning we participated in a creative writing workshop, and then retreated into our chosen writing spaces.
Words staggered about on pages and screens. For some they effortlessly tumbled out, others made notes, scribbled fragments, walked, researched, and grabbed insights out of the still cold air to move their work on. Poems were worked and re-worked, and fictional characters became more substantial and led their writer to new places.
Mid-April and the trees were still unclothed; they exposed their shapes, round and stately, knobbly, tall and wispy. And I found myself writing about escaping into exposure.
I wrote at a pale old wooden desk in front of a small 6-paneled window. The white painted wood framed patches of grass, whole bare trees, and a smudge of sea. Birds swooped from one frame to another and disappeared into the faint rain. It was a small library room, one of three in the large white house imbued with words, with old and contemporary writing, English and Welsh literary magazines, and old copies of revered writers. I plunged into Goethe, Raymond Carver and Carol Ann Duffy, distracted and inspired.
I walked too, in the Welsh woods by the local river, along grey sandy paths, into darker muddier patches, past smooth river rocks and flotsam, the dry debris left exposed from bigger river flows.
‘Beautiful day,’ men and women said, as we passed.
Their dogs chased old tennis balls, half collapsed, slobbered, tasty, mouth-filling balls. There were small patches of yellow primroses amongst the grey, and I stepped through a gap in a dry-stone wall and found myself in a meadow of daffodils.
We ate sumptuously, the wine flowed and Maggie Thatcher slipped in and out of intense conversations, before the evening’s rich entertainment began. We sat together in the main library and absorbed more words, readings, stand up comedy, reflections, novel excerpts, performances and poems.
Another day I walked along the beach into Criccieth, on pebbles and more grey sand, under cliffs and towards the castle ruin on the headland. I stepped through my thoughts, exploring the outer rugged beauty, snow capped mountains in the distance. I delved into my inner world too, and later my pen glided across the cream pages in my new writing book.
Back home now, I will try and make sense of my dream fragments, the poetry prompt ramblings, and personal reflections in my exploratory writing. And hope there are also some gems to follow up, maybe just a phrase, a new thought, a few sentences, in the other writing that I dipped into, my creative non-fiction project.
I am grateful to Nawe (National Association for Writers in Education) and Lapidus (Words for Wellbeing) for facilitating this retreat, to the inspiring writers I shared these days with, and to Ty Newydd, the house itself which holds so many words, and its people for caring for us.
If you ever get the opportunity to attend a writing retreat, pack your pen and a new writing book and be willing to escape into your writing and let the words expose and unfold.
Published in 2013
Lapidus Journal Autumn 2013 UK online journal, http://www.lapidus.org.uk/
Northerly The Northern Rivers Writer’s Centre Magazine Sept/Oct 2013
