Culture Highlight 2024: Hay in May and Major Dragons
Sarah Persson
Do we have to, Mum?
Sometimes I feel sorry for my two, being ‘dragged’ to different book events. But I’m not sorry, not really.
Massive and Mad
Jeff Kinney’s showcase at the Hay Festival 2024 was one event which both my children, aged 8 and 12, became increasingly excited to attend. They had read the ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ series, and we had laughed uncontrollably together at the ‘chocolate’ scene in the ‘Rodrick Rules’ film. It was unsurprising that, as soon as we arrived in Hay this May, we became second in the queue to the event.
The No Brainer Show was a massive, mad, high octane and fast paced event, with audience interaction, quizzes, draw-offs, and giveaways. My favourite part was when we learned how to draw the Diary of a Wimpy Kid characters, though the children loved the dance-off. Of course, they had wanted me to be picked to participate.
I was secretly relieved not to be.
Kinney’s gameshow format delighted the hundreds of children there with its energy, enthusiasm and originality. I’d have liked a little more actual reading, but maybe that’s having my teacher-hat on: it didn’t seem to matter to anyone else. Kinney was engaging and the trip to Hay sparked a resurgence of reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
Big Names in Small Venues
Such enormous events are fantastic at bringing the exceptionally famous to Wales, and we love the theatrics of a big stage. We’ve also been lucky enough to experience top name authors at excellent community venues too. One of my highlights for 2024 was the National Poet of Wales, Hanan Issa’s dazzling, dynamic, dragon-themed session at Llantwit Major Library on the weekend of These3Streams 2024.
Issa read from the poetry anthology ‘And I hear Dragons’, then she led an exciting, language-rich poetry workshop, with both children (and their grown-ups) creating ‘My Dragon’ poems. Hanan created a safe and creative space, encouraging the use of similes: ‘My dragon is as brave as…’ and ‘flies like…’
Roaring and flapping their wings
Hanan Issa gave the children confidence and ownership of their work, establishing a safe and exciting place to create. A place where real life authors inspire children in places which are familiar, free and accessible. Bringing big names, to small places.
At the end of the workshop, Issa sent the children roaring and flapping their dragon wings all around the library. Poetry and dragons: what a joy!
Rot Välta
The snow-light dusk is honey pale,
the hallway cleared and door unlocked
we pour from the Veranda, loud
and garish, into plump white snow.
The saw swings onwards in his grip.
We march fluorescent past the gates
beneath the Silver Birch and Oaks
to slivers of the summer paths
in snow thick moss, and dormant grass.
The children jump in leg-pole holes
from deer who scattered from our shouts,
our boots on creaking ice that pools
in hollows, left by monstrous roots,
cross-fingered roots, like goblin-guts,
from pines upturned and lying flat.
You warn them like your mother did
(when as a child you also hid
in deep and caving goblin dens)
in case the roots should grip the ground
and stand again with them below.
Sweet breathless voices screech, and out
they scram, they sprint and shout, spin gold
around the forest choosing trees
with room for presents underneath.
The men don’t stop, but shake their heads,
dismissing hope with reason dead.
We pass the ice-age rocks and stop,
around a tree, the men convene –
a whispering of ancient lore
and codes, long-vowelling lips discuss
this six -foot spruce, which grows too close
to nearby trees, and then they say
that loggers fell those anyway.
‘Is there room for lots of presents
under the branches of this one then?’
The children ask, without reply.
As farmers grip a calf or lamb
their grandpa, uncle, father, hold
the struggling branches, saw in hand,
its gnawing teeth a bite that grips
the bark, the sawing back, back, forth
of cold grey metal over shins,
and snow falls wild from flailing
branches. Back, back and forth through
its heartwood, the last fibres tear
and sever. A stump gasps orange in
the whiteness.
We drag this dying, rootless spruce
in bloody ice-light, honeyed dusk,
with sudden sap a bulging gum,
this cooling corpse sweeps green behind,
the sky remembers grasses, flies,
bare feet and lingon, raspberries, mossy days.
Its fragile arms five people wide.
The children run ahead, then back,
like small dogs, sweet, but poorly trained.
A watery hushing of the tree
is dragging out until we’re home,
across the veranda, front door,
then lies in Grandpa’s gasping hall.
Sarah Persson
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