When considering the project, clare said:
“It was a privilege to attend a workshop with Mererid and Eurig to learn more about Cynghanedd. It was fascinating to consider how elements might also work in English. I’ve learned Cymraeg and know that writing in Cynghanedd well requires many, many, years (a lifetime) of devotion and learning. It’s not something I feel able to do in either languages and so my poems are more about that feeling, acknowledging ‘the wounds of my misunderstanding’.”
Family Line
I
Let me not rely on chain-rhyme, solely,
holy ancestors’ words I censor causes blood pain
congealing the wounds of my misunderstanding.
In the DNA though
is the woman, the woman hanging washing
pegging sheets that billow over the valley,
pigs and sheep to feed,
she pauses hands to hip, composes, mouths an englyn.
II
Heirloom table-cloth, intricately
patterned lace, passed down, mine now,
wrapped and kept in the recess, for best.
Today I bring it out, shake the dust off
lay it on the table. The children are seated
greeted with this feast—hungry,
they devour their long-awaited treat.
There Are Words With Me [1]
(That Might Take Flight)
I
hyoglossus muscle, sing, depress, re-
tract the Cymric tongue, bring
forth the blessing of every morpheme sung
that no longer renders me foreign.
II
I know the forest fluently, each tree
a mapping. Roots eloquent, gently retelling
me to sit, meditate, seek the ancient branch—
the bird’s nest, a new beak’s tapping.
[1] In reference to the fact that in the language Cymraeg we don’t ‘have’ something, rather that something is ‘with us’