| |
The
poet Christine Evans and I have worked together on a book about
Bardsey Island (Ynys Enlli). Bardsey is a small island in North
Wales, just off the tip of the Llyn peninsula.
There's no running water, no electricity and unless you climb
to the top of the mountain, no telephone reception. This in my
eyes qualifies it as an outpost of heaven.
Not surprisingly then, it used to be a place of pilgrimage. Its
history goes back so far, it may even have existed before the
gods created the universe.
Christine, who has known the island for forty years, writes lyrically
about its physical and spiritual aspects. She sees Bardsey as
both a workaday place for farmers and fishermen - and, more recently,
naturalists and caretakers - and as an almost transcendent landscape,
alive with the invisible.
I am supplying the photographs, drawn from several years of trips
to the island, divine time spent sitting on top of the mountain,
waiting for the sun to rise; walking around in the rain, swimming
in the ice-cold sea and getting harassed by sheep.
The book is published by Gomer Press, and you
can buy it here.
Links:
Bardsey
Island: enlli.org
Christine
Evans: biography on Gomer website
Gomer
Press: gomer.co.uk
Back
to marloh.com |
|
