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3rd February, 2023

Friday Poem – ‘Candlemas’ by Hilary Llewellyn-Williams


This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Candlemas’ by Hilary Llewellyn-Williams from her new and selected poems The Little Hours.

This cover shows an illustration of a pagan calendar depicting the seasons. The text reads: The Little Hours: New and Selected Poems. Hilary Llewellyn-Williams.

The Little Hours: New and Selected Poems is a landmark volume which collects key poems from the career of Hilary Llewellyn-Williams, one of the outstanding poets of her generation in Wales. In addition to the classic sequences ‘The Tree Calendar’ and ‘Book of Shadows’, the book also includes ‘The Little Hours’, a sequence of new work arranged according to the traditional monastic hours. Llewellyn-Williams is one of the earliest environmental poets; her response to nature always profound, passionate and keenly observed. The Little Hours will remind readers of her many strengths and beauties and shows new readers the breadth and talent of a writer whose eye for vivid imagery and startling detail has always astounded.

Candlemas for my father, d. 2/2/81 On Brigid’s Night there was rain and wind and miles of darkness between us; there was a generation of pain between us, but I stayed awake for love’s sake, and because of the candles. On Brigid’s Night spring was calling a long way off, below the horizon invisible, but heard, like a changed note; my ears attuned, I lit candles around the room. My children slept upstairs, bundles of summer. I was tight-strung and humming. Nineteen points of fire in a small room needed watching: I sat with them. My eyes half-closed I watched them burn all night, watched wax spill pools and curl and flow, the flames dip low, wrapped round in shadows, caught in the eye of light. The night you died I talked to you through webs of sleep, recalling you in my years of childhood solid and sure, filling the fiery spaces. I slept at last towards dawn, in a darkened room. Slowly I woke to sunlight striping the carpet, the cold little heaps of wax: and my children shouting, and spring one day nearer and bottles clanking outside, and a sense of peace and freedom; then the shrill cry of the telephone, which I stumbled up to answer.

The Little Hours: New and Selected Poems is available on the Seren website: £12.99

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Watch Hilary reading her poem ‘Considering the World’ on our Youtube channel:

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