I am a poet, spoken word performer and therapeutic writing practitioner from Llansteffan, Carmarthenshire with a strong connection to North Wales. My third poetry collection Mineral Wealth explores the life of my maternal grandmother and her influence in my life although she died in 1945 and I did not meet her. My mother grew up in Betws y Coed from 1938 when my grandfather, William Morgan Thomas, was HMI Mines and Quarries for North Wales. He was a member of the team that identified Manod mine as a safe place to house the art treasures from the National Gallery during WWII. He also conducted and presented research into measures to suppress dust in the slate industry’s processes. I have always felt a strong affinity with the Welsh slate areas and enjoyed writing some of the poems in the collection in Blaenau Ffestiniog.
Poet and environmentalist, Elinor Gwynn says of the collection:
“A captivating collection of works that delve into landscapes of mind, memory and places – and into the materiality of our being. Blending poetry, prose and art Mineral Wealth invites us to gaze “away and out and back” as the author weaves connections across generations and shuttles between rural west Wales, Eryri’s slate landscape and the south Wales coalfield to illuminate how we live with, and through our stories and secrets.
Playing with shards of language, the musicality of words, with whispering fragments from family archives and with the pigments and history of places, Mineral Wealth is a moving exploration of the overburden, gashes, folds, seams and sediments that are part of our identity as people as much as the places we inhabit.
This is a collection to be savoured, to be read aloud, to be mulled over and shared.”