The Tiger Poet vs. NATO

Finally, something happened in my village. Well, actually it happened in Newport and Cardiff, but they're just an hour down the road from me so it's close enough.

It is of course no secret that the 2014 NATO summit was held at the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport a week and a half ago over the course of two days. In that time all sorts of things happened. Even before the summit began, mile after mile of metal fencing, now called the "Ring of Steel", was put up around the Celtic Manor and stretched back all the way to Cardiff Castle. Security and police forces were drafted in across the UK to ensure that the first serving US President to visit Wales had a safe and pleasant trip. Sixty six world leaders turned up for the summit, along with the biggest show of military might Wales has seen in a long while.

I wasn't aware that NATO was coming to Wales until I heard about it on the news. I saw the Ring of Steel when I went past the Celtic Manor on my way to Edinburgh, and by the time I returned the security presence was being felt across Newport. Shortly before the summit was due to start, I had a close encounter with US security forces when an Osprey V22 flew over my house. It was probably searching for potential assassins or bombs and the like, but it was a clear indicator that the US Air Force has never visited South Wales before.

Thursday arrived, and so too did Barack Obama with David Cameron and the rest of NATO. Quite what Obama made of Wales wasn't initially clear, but when he visited Mount Pleasant Primary School in Rogerstone he greeted the children by saying "bore da". I never thought I'd see the day. Then the summit began in earnest, with items on the agenda including the fighting in Ukraine, the crisis in Iraq and various other things. On the Friday evening it was over, and the world leaders all went home again.

Now what was I doing during all of this you might ask? Well, I'm ashamed to admit that I slept through the flypast of the Red Arrows and military aircraft on the Friday morning. I did however manage to go and see HMS Duncan and the other ships docked in Roath Basin in Cardiff Bay. Although they weren't the biggest ships in the world, HMS Duncan reached the height of some of the nearby apartment buildings. The fencing and the constant police presence added to the feeling that something extremely important was occurring in the Welsh capital.

Whether the NATO summit will have any lasting benefits for Wales remains to be seen. Certainly Obama seemed impressed by the Welsh people, and it looked like the other world leaders were too. Then there was the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, announcing to the world on the lawn of the Celtic Manor that a ceasefire had been reached in Ukraine. It gave the impression that the summit had actually achieved something, although fighting is currently continuing in the country.

It would be tempting to discuss the issues faced by NATO, such as the situation in Iraq, the fighting in Syria, and the conflict in Ukraine. It would also be tempting to examine how effective NATO has been in achieving its aims. While from my point of view, NATO appears to be making ground on these problems, the situations they are faced with are far too complex for simple military action to set right. I say this, but then I wouldn't know what the correct answer to these challenges would be. I'll leave those questions to the political commentators.

So, there we are. Something finally happened in South Wales, and it just happened to be NATO who decided to drop in. I doubt I'll have a lot to talk about following this, but expect a poem or two in the next few days.

Return from Edinburgh

It's been two weeks since I returned from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and now that I've had some time to reflect I feel I ought to share my verdict of it.

First off, I must say that it was insane; that is, in the best possible way. It's one thing reading that there's three thousand or more shows going on, but it's another to be on the Royal Mile when everybody's out and flyering as if there's a flyer shortage. Literally every taste is catered for; comedy, theatre, spoken word, cabaret, the list is comprehensively endless. The shows I saw were certainly indicative of the variety on display.

One such show, Janis Joplin: Full Tilt was a musical detailing in the space of an hour the life and death of the famous singer. It blended some of Joplin's hits together with acted segments and archived recordings of Joplin to produce a fantastic show with no fault in the musical department. Especially impressive was how Angela Darcy's voice was identical to Joplin's, so that it was almost impossible to spot the difference. I didn't know anything about Janis Joplin before, so this show actually proved educational for me. For that alone, I think it was brilliant.

Kevin P. Gilday is the Man Who Loved Beer was a completely different affair. This was the first time I'd seen spoken word in action outside university, and my verdict is somewhat conflicted. It detailed Gilday's relationship with beer and the effects it had on his everyday life. Compared to what I've seen of spoken word in the past, it was skilfully done and Gilday's Glaswegian tones definitely added to it. However, I feel that most spoken word artists tend to use the same pace and tone of delivery when reciting their poems. Gilday was no exception, although in this case I think it was suited to the material.

The other show I ended up seeing was a performance by Out of the Blue. This a-cappella group is made up of Oxford undergraduates, and appeared on that TV talent contest that everybody seems to love back in 2011. They performed a selection of songs, including their cover of a Shakira song that went viral, and they were better singers than I was expecting. They even managed a bit of improvisation with a member of the audience during a couple of songs. The hilarious enthusiasm with which they carried the performance made them an act worth seeing twice - which unfortunately I didn't.

To say that these shows represent the tip of the iceberg is devaluing icebergs. The whole of Edinburgh is packed to the brim with shows during the Fringe, each one of them vying for an audience and a review or two. Some have questioned the quality of the Fringe in recent years, but if the shows I saw are anything to go by, then the question of quality is somewhat irrelevant. The Fringe is designed to enable artists to try new things, and all of these shows were great in their own right.

I must also mention my visits to a few other places in Edinburgh. I took a tour of HMY Britannia, which is hardly your average cruise ship. I had expected the Britannia to be fifteen hundred tons of wealth on water, but it was much less ostentatious than that. It reminded me of my grandmother's house, albeit with narwhal tusks and whale ribs in the main dining room. The overall feel was of a ship designed to act as a floating country house, which was apparently the Queen's original intention.

The other place I visited was Edinburgh Zoo. The zoo is famous for its giant pandas, but I didn't see them because the female, Tian Tian, was pregnant and the enclosure had been closed as a result. I did see several other animals though, including a pair of jaguars roaring at each other, rhinos enjoying their lunch and penguins sunbathing just before a thunderstorm arrived. The zoo seems good enough, with decent and spacious enclosures for the animals to run around in. However , judging by the way one of the jaguars was calling for food, and the bare pen the tigers sleep in, it still has some small room for improvement.

When I look back on my visit to Edinburgh, the city seems like one of the better places I've visited; that's to say it's one of the few places I've visited in recent years. The place is brimming with culture, vibrancy and warmth, and nowhere is this more apparent than during the Fringe. I highly recommend that if you must go to one of the Edinburgh festivals, surely it must be this one.

The Tiger Poet vs. Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Although the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow may have somewhat stolen the limelight from Edinburgh this year, the city is currently right in the middle of its annual Festival Fringe. Thousands of shows are being performed across the whole of the city, ranging from dramatic theatre to student comedy. I myself am going up to Edinburgh this week to partake in some of the madness, and possibly to see a show or two. At the moment though I'm wondering what else Scotland's capital city has to offer the unsuspecting Welshman who doesn't travel much these days.

Certainly it has no shortage of places to stay, if you're planning to stay in the city like me. Unfortunately August is one of the most expensive times of the year when looking to rent a flat or an apartment in Edinburgh. I found this out after scouring the web for places to stay. Anything that costs a thousand pounds was out of my price range, and so I've settled for an apartment in the centre that was going relatively cheep. I haven't yet seen the apartment, but I'm fairly confident that it'll be good enough to last the week.

This will not only be the first time I've been to the Edinburgh Fringe, but also the first time I've been to Edinburgh. I was in Scotland two years ago when I visited Lochgoilhead and passed through Glasgow, but didn't get a chance to stop in the city. I didn't get much of an impression of Glasgow from what little I saw of it, but by spending a week in Edinburgh I will get a full and informed experience of the city this time. It will no doubt be very busy, with most of the tourists there to see the acts performing as part of the Fringe or for the Edinburgh International Festival and Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Either way, it's sure to be hectic.

The Fringe itself is the largest arts festival anywhere in the world. Over three thousand shows are being performed in nearly three hundred venues across the city, making this the prime location for aspiring performers to get noticed and to find success. Many of the shows at the Fringe are brand new productions in search of a review, but a lot of already established acts have performed in Edinburgh including the likes of John Bishop and Alan Davies. I suspect that I'll get to see a lot of the new shows while I'm there, and it'll be nice to see what the new generation of creative people bring to the stage.

As I understand it, Edinburgh is quite a bit bigger than my village, and so I'm not sure I'm going to navigate the city without getting lost at some point. There must be maps on the high street to help me with this, but if all else fails I'll just walk into the nearest bookstore and buy an atlas. Hopefully I'll get to see some of the other sights, such as the castle and those famous pandas everyone keeps mentioning.

All in all I'm still not sure what to expect of the Fringe. It certainly is a big step up from going to the town centre, but I've got a fair idea of where to go once I get there. With all these shows to choose from, a laugh or two is guaranteed at least. Come the weekend, I'll see for myself.

If I survive I'll see you in Edinburgh.

Guardian of the Sacred Forest

I am master of this realm,
the grass is my royal guard,
the sal trees are my sentinels,
my stripes are my regalia,
with tooth and claw.
Langurs and peacocks I loathe,
but chital are always my servants
from dawn to dusk.
They serve all the great hunters.
So do the sambar, the boar
and the Barasingha.
This is my domain,
my forest,
my kingdom.
So long as I remain
its guardian ghost
all creatures large and small
shall heed my morning call.

The Tiger Poet

(This poem was written at Siginawa Jungle Lodge at Kanha National Park in India. The name Singinawa means "Protector of the Sacred Forest".)

The Tiger Poet vs. Dylan Thomas

In several posts on this blog I've often mentioned that my home village is so small that nothing much happens in it. However, if you're Welsh I doubt you've been able to escape from the centenary of this country's most famous poet.

The celebrations surrounding the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dylan Thomas have been nothing if not plentiful. Tributes to the famously exuberant and colourful storyteller have included Benjamin Zephaniah's mission to modernise Under Milk Wood with a cast made up of the residents of Town Hill, a bronze statue of the poet being erected near his house in Swansea, and a drama film shown on BBC One Wales about Thomas's untimely death. To many, Thomas is a defining figure of Welsh poetry and a symbol of Welsh culture, who was just as much renowned for his private life as for his verse.

When it comes to discussing Dylan Thomas, there is always mention of how distinctly Welsh his poetry is. I experienced this first hand during one of my creative writing seminars at university. In a poetry seminar we looked at Thomas's 'Do not go gentle into that good night' as an example of a perfect villanelle. When we were asked to write our own villanelle, I felt it my absolute duty as a Welshman to live up to Thomas's legacy and produce a poem that was just as powerful. I won't put the result up on this blog unless there's a demand for it, but I'll say that id didn't work as well as I hoped, and here's my question. How does my poetry compare to Thomas's?

I'm aware that comparing myself to Dylan Thomas is like comparing a house cat to a lion. In trying to determine common threads between our writing, I'm struck by how I don't measure up to Thomas's energetic poetic voice. Thomas writes about things that are characteristic of Welsh society, such as the tight-knit communities where everybody knows each other and the eccentricities of ordinary people. I write about tigers mostly, but I also write about India, animals in unusual situations, and all kinds of abstract things which poets as far back as the Augustan Age were talking about. In practice, although we share the same Welsh heritage, Thomas's poetry and my poetry couldn't be more different.

There are occasions when I've written about Wales or written in my native voice. Recently, on the advice of a poetry lecturer, I've been writing poems about domestic situations and events from my own childhood. I haven't tried this in a conscious effort to emulate Thomas, but a meagre similarity can be drawn in my new poems' fixation on the Welsh landscape and his own work. In one such poem, 'Wimberries', I attempted to recreate a childhood tale set in the landscape surrounding Blaenavon, in a similar vein to Thomas's depiction of his own childhood in A Child's Christmas in Wales, but really the similarities are not many.

Thomas was writing in a very different era to the one I'm writing in now. He was subject to the hardships of trying to raise a family, sustain both them and himself, and finding time to write poetry in the midst of these pressures, as well as contending with his ever-famous alcoholism. I haven't experienced any of those things, and I wonder sometimes if I had been born back then, would I have been subjected to any of Thomas's rigours?

Of course, I'm speculating way too much and punching far above my feeble weight, but in comparing my poetic efforts to those of arguably the greatest Welsh poet, I hope I can shed some light on how my own work has room to develop. As a fledgling writer, I can't hope of matching the likes of Dylan Thomas, but by seeing what worked for him, I might find something that will work for me.

Anyways, Happy Centenary Dylan Thomas!

Kalua

His father was a king,
his grandfather too,
and his great grandfather greater still.

The tiger cub hid in the thickets,
waiting for Mother to return
from her hunt in the meadows.
Would it be a chital, a sambar deer,
or a langur monkey?
Monkeys were his favourite.

Mother and Brother,
the only familiar things
in a perilous forest.
Monitor lizards and peacocks
startled him at first.
When he grew bigger
they fled as he approached.

His teeth and claws became blades,
and his prey's hide was no longer tough.
He sharpened his claws for battle
and flexed his tail and whiskers,
his eyes fixed on Father's domain.

Father had ruled the forest
with scars to remind others
of those who dared contest him.
His son refined his weaponry,
and his roar, but in his heart
he was still a cub.

Father and Son met on the ridge,
silhouetted in the amber glare.
Son emerged with scars of his own,
to remind him of Father's supremacy.
Maybe the forest beyond the meadows
would have a kingdom waiting for him.

The Tiger Poet

(This poem is a tribute to the tiger known as Kalua, the Prince of Bandhavgarh, who I encountered four years ago. A reading will be available on my YouTube channel soon.)

Tiger Verse Update

Hello. The Tiger Poet here.


I'm aware that this blog has hardly been updated since my last post. I'm working on several poems, one of which has been published on my YouTube channel, and I'm still waiting for something to happen in this impossibly dull village.


Also, I have to address the change of name. I like to go by a moniker, and my last one turned out to have been used by someone else. Hopefully you'll prefer this one.


When something happens, I'll let you know. In the meantime, check out my poem 'Guardian of the Sacred Forest' at this link http://youtu.be/THeV49pBnOM


Will be back soon.