From Poetry to Prose – On ‘In the Deep’ finding its Voice

August 11, 2022Leave a comment

It’s been over three weeks now since I finished my ecology job and began working full time on my ‘The Forgotten Gods’ book series. This aims to re-imagine the myths of the ancient British Gods and Goddesses from existing Welsh and Irish sources and to tell the story of how they were forgotten due to the Roman invasions, Christianity, industrialisation, science and capitalism, and to provide a vision of the future in which their worship is restored.

After completing the first draft of the first book, In The Deep, in free verse I went on to use that style for a first draft of the second book. During the process I realised it had got very long and that I couldn’t justify taking up so many pages with such short lines. Another realisation was that, without clear and detailed explications of the plot, character development, and a grounding in the landscapes of ancient Britain and of Annwn most readers, even those who know the Welsh and Irish myths, would likely be lost.

Therefore, I decided to go back to the beginning and rewrite In the Deep in prose. As I did so, I noticed there was a big shift in narrative perspective between the first section and the rest of the book. In the former I write the story of the birth of the Children of Don and the slaying of the Dragon Mother of Annwn in a combination of omniscient and third person omniscient. From the second section onwards, when I introduce the main viewpoint characters Vindos (Gwyn) and Kraideti (Creiddylad), I write Them in third person limited, thus going to into greater detail on their thoughts and feelings, whereas I continue to write Lugus and Uidianos (Gwydion) in third person omniscient.

I think I can get away with the shifts in narrative perspective. However, I recognise that the parts I have written in third person limited are much more engaging. Plus, the book is changing all the time as I go through and realise ‘ah, that wasn’t set up properly, that wasn’t explained, I know where I am in the landscape and what that deity looks like but the readers doesn’t, that fell flat.’

My aim is to write a book that is accessible to readers without any knowledge of the Welsh or Irish myths at all and that will be engaging and enjoyable as well as having mythic depth and doing justice to the stories of the Gods.

When I first set out writing this series I was hoping to have three books, in verse, finished within three years, when I need to start looking for paid work again. I’m now having to adjust my expectations. Half way through the second draft of In the Deep, I am at 45,000 words and sure it is going to be novel length. As such it is still very much finding its voice. When I have finished this draft, I will be in a better place to review the shifts in narrative perspective.

Having realised the book is in such early stages I have decided not to share any more excerpts in the public domain as they are unlikely to represent what it will be. What I have decided to do instead is re-open my Patreon account so people who want to follow my creative process and receive private excerpts from my work can do so in return for investing a small amount of financial support to help me buy more time for writing.

I’m judging it will take me one to three years to finish this first book, so I will be in for the long haul writing the others when I also have to work. It’s almost beginning to feel like a project of a lifetime, which isn’t a bad thing, as it’s far better than living without inspiration. In contrast here is a photo of some sweet peas, one of my growing highlights this year, beautiful and ephemeral.

Imagine the Old North

February 17, 2015July 10, 20157 Comments

Imagine the Old North. What can it be? Can you see it in this land, from your green hill across the marsh how the ordinary people saw it?

Can you see ravens in trees amongst the crows? Was it common enough for magpies?

Can you imagine the rumours of embittered warlords and honey-tongued bards who sung their praises? Can you taste weak beer or braggot? Do you feast on dog or wild boar?

Can you imagine living in a world where the animals speak? How will you learn their tongues? Will they lead you into their expanses?

Your books are filled with stories. Can you imagine the ones who got away? How their hearts beat on river-banks and they were pierced by spears as carrion birds circled? How the sleek otter swept into the depths and carried their death-cries to his young? Can you imagine what the ravens whispered in their thatched nest?

Can you imagine the task of bringing peace to the battle-dead?

Where all the darkness of history wanders and I hold the spirits of Annwn back… can you imagine?

What can our poetry be? A sound, a scream, a panorama of the Old North in a beam of light?

*Questions posed by Gwyn ap Nudd.
**Photograph of the river Ribble from the Ribble Way east of Ribchester Bridge.

Review: Your Face is a Forest by Rhyd Wildermuth

January 13, 2015January 14, 20156 Comments

Rhyd Wildermuth is a writer and social worker based in Seattle. He writes for ‘The Wild Hunt,’ ‘Patheos Pagan’ and ‘Polytheist.com’ and blogs at ‘Paganarch.com.’ He describes himself as ‘a dream-drenched, tea-swilling leftist pagan punk bard.’ He is also a student of Druidry with OBOD. What drew me to his work was his boldness, passion, vision and the fact he proudly and outspokenly ‘worships gods.’

Your Face is a Forest is a collection of essays and prose. Rhyd describes his style as ‘weaving a forest from meaning’. This book’s a tapestry of poetic prose and prose poetry woven from themes that make sense as a whole only in the non-rational way trees make a forest. It’s rough, edgy and raw, and also a little rough around the edges, which adds to its anarchic charm.

Rhyd invites the reader to step into his life and accompany him through the places where he lives into forests behind to meet the faces of ‘the Other’ in ‘tasselled willows’, pines and alders, satyr dances and Dionysian revels. To find the tooth of an elk long dead and buried where cars now drive. A world full of life and another world behind it.

What I love about this book is that Rhyd speaks deeply and richly of both worlds. On pilgrimages to France and Germany he tells of the wonder of waking in a field of rabbits, playing flute with locals on unknown streets, sitting within the pink fur womb of a Berlin bar. He speaks of his despair at social inequality and the continuing repression of homosexuality in Christian colleges. He is a poet of the sacredness of this-worldly life on all levels.

He also shares some of his innermost visions of the gods and otherworlds. These have guided his life and thus form the reader’s guiding threads. Outstanding was a vision of Bran, which deserves quoting in full; ‘When I saw Bran, his great black cloak rippled in an unseen wind, his powerful form straddling a Breton valley between the River of Alder and the sea. But the cloak fled from his body, a myriad of ravens having stripped from his flesh sinew and skin, leaving only great white pillars of bone, the foundation of a temple and a tower. I do not yet know where his head lies.’ On his pilgrimages we find a mysterious tower on a mountain, a stone head in a fountain and a magical cloak. But Rhyd doesn’t give all his secrets away.

Other deities include Arianrhod, Ceridwen, Brighid, Dionysos and the unnamed gods and spirits of the city streets, buried forests and culverted rivers. What I liked most about these sections is that rather than kowtowing to being acceptable, Rhyd speaks his experiences directly and authentically. This was encouraging and inspiring for me and I think will be for other polytheists whose encounters with the gods go beyond known mythology and conventional Pagan text books. There are few modern authors who speak of the mystical aspects of deity and Rhyd does it exceptionally well.

I’d recommend Your Face is a Forest to all Pagans who are looking for real, undoctored insights into nature and the gods. Because it’s not only about Paganism and is written by somebody fully immersed in the beauty and pain of life and the search for love I’d recommend it to non-Pagans too, particularly those interested in spiritual journeys and visionary prose and poetry. Quoting Rhyd’s dedication, to ‘Everyone who’s ever looked into the Abyss / And brought back light for the rest of us.’

Your Face is a Forest is available through Lulu: http://www.lulu.com/shop/rhyd-wildermuth/your-face-is-a-forest/paperback/product-21887986.html

Ribble Illusions

June 26, 20145 Comments

Yesterday I had a most uncanny experience. Approaching the river Ribble from Castle Hill, I found myself facing a long stretch of tide marked wall that gave the appearance it had dropped away into nowhere. I was struck by a sudden sense of vertigo. The Ribble couldn’t have disappeared, as if had fallen into a void, surely?

On closer inspection, seeing the reflections of the grilles and staircases, and catching subtle fluctuations in the surface of the water, I realised this was an illusion created by a combination of its stillness with the markings on the stone.

To my relief at either end of the concrete barriers, the ‘true’ water level was clear.

Drawn to stay a while in meditation on the strange appearance and disappearance of the river, which occurred as I shifted my eye-line, I was gifted with the sight of several birds. Common and black headed gulls and terns circled, their darker shadows mirrored in the water. Another bird, which I think may have been a grebe or even a black throated diver flew in. Diving with quick flips of its tail it emerged, for the most part, triumphant with white-silver fish, which after a brief kerfuffle vanished down its throat. Finally, a heron arrived to land majestically on a piece of flotsam.

For me this goes to show that even where it is channelled, the Ribble is a magical and mind altering place. I give thanks to the river, all its visitors and inhabitants, and its goddess Belisama.

Gwyn Portrait, April’s End

April 29, 2014July 8, 2014Leave a comment

The huntsman has ridden all night, following the brilliance of the spirit roads- the shining tracks that criss-cross the island of Britain. Instead of returning home he remains here for dawn, listening to the idiosyncrasies of each bird’s song, watching dew form on blades of grass, on petals of hawthorn blossoms and may flowers.

He is and is not the mist, riding through damp meadows over hills, mountains and moors on a pale horse accompanied by a hound of the same complexion. He is and is not each sun-lit cloud he travels with, the touch and whisper of the wind.

He cannot stay here long, for this world we see as the land of the living is not his. He must return home to Annwn, the Otherworld, to prepare for a battle that cannot be won. To fight for a maiden he shouldn’t have loved, shouldn’t still love… in bluebells and forget-me-nots, emerging greens and white and yellow flowers he sees her colours.

For a moment he is possessed by memories of their passion, and the crimes it drove him to. A glimpse of his blacked face in a reed strewn pool shows no amount of war paint can mask his guilt, which he must live with for as long as there are people to sing his songs.

He searches for a sign. What is Judgement Day? When is it? Although he knows the language of the trees and plants, the tracks of every wild creature and the flight of birds, these questions are beyond his power to divine. When the worlds end, will Creiddylad and I be together again?