R S THOMAS YN EGLWYS-FACH

©John Hedgecoe

ENILLWYR CYSTADLEUAETH BARDDONIAETH AGORED
R S THOMAS EGLWYS-FACH 2022

Mae’n bleser gennym gyhoeddi pwy sydd wedi ennill Cystadleuaeth Barddoniaeth Agored R S Thomas Eglwys-fach eleni. Gwahoddwyd beirdd i ysgrifennu un neu ddwy gerdd mewn ymateb i ddyfyniadau o farddoniaeth R S Thomas. Eleni fe gafodd 90 o gerddi eu beirniadu gan Gillian Clarke (cyn Fardd Cenedlaethol Cymru, 2008-2016) a’r Athro Tony Brown o Brifysgol Bangor. Yr enillwyr yw: Mair De-Gare Pitt am ‘After Fifty Years’ (gwobr gyntaf), Jennifer Burkinshaw am ‘Calling Time on Love’ (ail wobr), gyda Tim Hodgetts, Mary Robinson, ac Anne Uruska am ‘Llan-Fawr Shepherd’, ‘RS at the Writers' Workshop’, ac ‘Ain't gone nowhere like’ (cyd-ganmoliaeth).

Y cerddi buddugol yw:

GWOBR GYNTAF

After fifty years

… ‘and looking at
me say what time it is
on love’s face, for we have
no business here other than
to disprove certainties the clock knows.’
Countering, RS Thomas
‘Come and see the clouds,’ you say,
as you look every day at the colours that change,
the shapes that drift
with the high wind; that slide
over blue, that blow and billow.
The years have ticked your face
into falling, tricked your hair
into fading, but look up -
firm cheekbones form; round curls;
a smile like sunlight through rain.
‘Come and see the clouds,’ you say,
as you slip away from me, word by word, day by day,
and I try to hold a mist in my hand.
Look up to the clouds. We still have this minute.
This minute. This minute. This sky.
Mair De-Gare Pitt

AIL WOBR

Calling time on love?

Now the clock has put a full
Stop on your sentence, I am
Deaf to poetry. A castaway,
No hand takes mine. I
Heave at the hour hand, to counter-
turn it fifty years but it is stuck
at the point of your departing.

It’s I must change time: face
Forward; count the dead hours
Without you. The shipwreck
I am is the proof love has
No end on this isle, though
You’re in so distant a land, I can
No longer read your face.

Mewn ymateb i Countering
Jennifer Burkinshaw

CANMOLIAETH:

 Llan-fawr Shepherd

Day’s end dusk sees him dagging wary, half-sated
Ewes from thin, pleached pastures. Ill-defined
Valley farms kindle a warmth beneath his bale-twined,
Stale-grimed corduroy overalls. Dogs wait,
Heads aslant. Fly, Gwen, Meg, none better. Tireless friends.
Sharp ears, ever heedful. Best of beasts.
Through dark years as chapels shut and psalmody ceased,
These hallowed companions made amends.

Slowly, the bowed back unfolds. Bar-eyed sheep, now free
Beneath salt-licked skies where they’d begun,
Stand in their shame, while the shepherd smiles, ageing one
Season at a time, treading softly.
Timothy Hodgetts

RS at the writers’ workshop

Another Prytherch poem, RS?
Verse 1: I’d start at break of day if I were you
and cut behold – far too archaic for 1949 -
sounds like a hymn or the Bible.
Hedge-shorn yearlings - yes, I can see them,
trailing brambles, half their fleeces missing,
and the man with the dog. You bring them alive.
Don’t quite understand the last two lines
of that verse – but they sound good.
Verse 2: Of course the man’s counting his money –
he can hardly subsist between one mart
and the next. Oh yes, ravens – always birds
in your poems. Swollen fold is nicely ambiguous.
But a theme for sentiment –?
RS, you must drop this habit of telling
not showing. Sonnet form I see – the rhymes heavy
and predictable in my opinion – you need to loosen up a bit.
Not sure about nimble airs but that last line’s a cracker –
the dawn trimming his tattered rags with gold.
Wish I’d thought of that.
Mary Robinson

CANMOLIAETH HEFYD:

‘Ain't gone nowhere like’
Anne Uruska

Twitter: @RSThomaslitfes