Poetry on Sunday: The price of slate

We continue the series in which the Llansteffan-based poet Mel Perry explores roots, family and belonging in her poetry.

The Price of Slate

The Slate Industry has, for many years, been aware of the harmful effect of dust which is produced in the development, winning, working and dressing of slate for the market.

                                                                            (W.M. Thomas, 1952, The Dust Problem in the Slate Industry)

it’s all about dust

everywhere and everywhen

in air breath and body

slate  silica  fine quartz grit

thick in throats

from drills  hammers  saws

gimlet-groove angle-grind

heart-beat mouth-gulp

gavel-tap chisel-crack slit

spicules in slate chamber air

visible in sunlight shafts

swirl whirl settle

sleep in larynx trachea lung

scratch   breathe   form tumours

gasp   slowly sicken

wet jet mist

dust clutched in traps

sack swabs and gauze

dust suppressed by water

sludge cools  rock freezes

men stiffen

plane split dress

flecks caught in the konimeter

snatched in photomicrographs

duct suck disperse

grey specks of debris

blacken compact congeal

images of coalesced smudges

thick like a puckered nipple

blocked alveoli

it’s all about dust

everywhere and everywhen

in air breath and body

Much of my grandfather’s work as a mining engineer was devoted to researching techniques to reduce dust underground.  My mother told me that around 1932 her father was dismissed from his role as agent for the Gurnos group of collieries in the Swansea Valley. He wanted to introduce measures that would have incurred costs to the company, but he believed that they would have protected miners from dust disease. Following a number of years in and out of employment in the Rhymney Valley, in 1938 Bill secured the role of His Majesty’s Inspector of Mines and Quarries in North Wales.  He continued his dust research work and saw the implementation of new dust extraction techniques in the slate industry. His work, for which he was awarded an MBE, is held in publications, talks and radio broadcasts  of the 1950s.