Ruth Bidgood

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Friday Poem – ‘Interviewing’ by Ruth Bidgood

Following the sad passing of Ruth Bidgood, and in celebration of International Women’s Day, this week’s Friday Poem is ‘Interviewing’ from Ruth’s award-winning collection Time Being.

This cover shows a mid-wales valley shrouded in mist beneath a sky tinged pink by the sunrise. The text reads: Ruth Bidgood. Time Being. A Poetry Book Society Recommendation

Ruth Bidgood’s Time Being, winner of the Roland Mathias Prize, is emphatically a collection of location. The history and nature of the poet’s particular region of mid-Wales inspire these poems. Bidgood avoids sentimentality but not sentiment: an observation can engender joy or sorrow or fear uncluttered by irony. These descriptions are sharp and memorable, tending to a cool accuracy. Nature is not always benign, but often inescapably dark and mysterious, lyric and move towards a more epic, multi-faceted form equal to the many experiences of her long life.

Interviewing When I was the one with the recorder I liked the richness of dark and light in their reminiscing, the unexpectedness, the shocks and laughter, but not the drooping voice they used for saying “All gone now, all over”, or “Water under the bridge, eh?” – as if there was something wrong with ending on a high note, or moving to the present without that cloying downbeat refrain. So now when she comes, this likeable girl with her little gadget, her young hands (no slack skin, no gravespots) setting it up, I’m my own censor, ignoring her questions’ invitation to lament, her disappointed eyes thirsty for the juice of my tears.

Time Being is available on the Seren website £8.99

Poems from this collection are also featured in A Last Respect, an anthology of poems by the eleven winners of the Roland Mathias Prize.

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Friday Poem – ‘Shapes in Ice’, Ruth Bidgood

Friday Poem Ruth Bidgood Shapes in Ice

Our Friday Poem this week is the delightfully wintery ‘Shapes in Ice’ by Ruth Bidgood, from her New & Selected Poems.

New & Selected Ruth Bidgood Friday Poem Bluetit FeedingRuth Bidgood’s New & Selected Poems features work from her five early collections, starting with The Given Time (1972) through Kindred (1986) along with selections from The Fluent Moment (1996) and Singing to Wolves (2000). The final section is devoted to over fifty pages of new poems.
This generous selection of work highlights the steady accumulation of a significant oeuvre. Bidgood’s ostensible subjects are the storied landscape and history of her region of mid-Wales, the hills and valleys of Powys and Breconshire, but her themes frequently have a wider reach, a spiritual depth that is often darkly suggestive and mysterious.

 

 

Ruth Bidgood Shapes In Ice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New & Selected Poems is available from the Seren website: £9.99

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Legend of the Month: Ruth Bidgood

Legend of the Month Ruth Bidgood

Each month we are shining the spotlight on one fantastic Seren author in honour of Wales’ Year of Legends. Our selection for April is the poet Ruth Bidgood.

Ruth Bidgood turns 95 this year, and her poetry career spans over five decades. She was born in Blaendulais, near Neath, educated at Oxford, and worked as a coder in Alexandria, Egypt in World War Two. She has lived in mid-Wales since the mid-sixties.

Legend of the Month Ruth Bidgood

She has published fourteen books of poetry, including The Fluent Moment (Seren, 1996), Singing to Wolves (Seren, 2000), and her New and Selected Poems (Seren, 2004). Her twelfth collection, Time Being (Seren, 2009), won the Roland Mathias Prize and was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her most recent collection is Land Music (Cinnamon, 2016). As well as poetry, she has written a prose book about Wales, Parishes of the Buzzard (Goldleaf, 2000), and published many articles in country historical journals.

Matthew Jarvis writes of Bidgood’s achievement: ‘The heart of Ruth Bidgood’s poetry is her varied and intertwined rendition of the mid-Wales area that she has made her home… Artistically, what she has achieved in such material is nothing less than a mid Wales epic.’

Here is ‘Legacy’, from New and Selected Poems, which featured as our Poem of the Month in the April edition of Seren News:

Ruth Bidgood 'Legacy' New and Selected Poems

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Find more of Ruth Bidgood’s poetry on the Year of Legends page, alongside books by March’s featured author, Dannie Abse.

 

 

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Friday Poem – ‘Bluetit Feeding’, Ruth Bidgood

friday poem bluetit feeding ruth bidgood

Our Friday Poem this week is a careful portrayal of the fragility and beauty of nature. So take some time away from the Black Friday madness, and enjoy Ruth Bidgood’s ‘Bluetit Feeding’.

New & Selected Ruth Bidgood Friday Poem Bluetit Feeding‘Bluetit Feeding’ is taken from New and Selected Poems. This generous selection of work highlights the steady accumulation of a significant oeuvre. Bidgood’s ostensible subjects are the storied landscape and history of her region of mid-Wales, the hills and valleys of Powys and Breconshire, but her themes frequently have a wider reach, a spiritual depth that is often darkly suggestive and mysterious.

 

Bluetit Feeding

Early at the window in starved winter
a little knot of energies, a beaky hunger
fluffed and sleeked, taps, prises
unsucculent scraps of cracked putty,
swallows with a ripple of tiny throat.

Behind it climbs a bleak pale hill
stained with ruts of December bracken.
White morning moon is barely seen
on hardly darker sky that seems
opaque, a barrier against pressure
of immensities. Imperceptibly
the chill day flows out to black deeps.

The bluetit pauses in its arid feeding,
flirts a crisp wing. Half-handful of warmth,
it stays for a moment sill,
compellingly centre-stage, diminishing
to a backdrop the hill, dull morning sky,
pale echo of moon, black vertiginous
trenches of space-ocean, myriads
of molten and frozen, dying and rising worlds.

 

 

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Ruth Bidgood wins the Roland Mathias Prize 2011

Ruth Bidgood wins the Roland Mathias Prize 2011 with her collection of poetry Time Being, published by Seren (2009).

The £3,000 prize was awarded to Ruth Bidgood at ceremony in Roland Mathias’ home town of Brecon, supported by BBC Wales and hosted by Nicola Heywood Thomas, presenter of Radio Wales’ Arts Show.

In future years, it is to be incorporated into the Wales Book of the Year.

Congratulations Ruth!

Ruth Bidgood with editor Amy Wack at the prize giving event in Brecon.


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Ruth Bidgood, Reading at Oriel Davies Gallery

Friday 1st April, 7 pm. Ruth Bidgood will be reading at Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown with Jan Fortune-Wood.-Ruth’s most recent collection Time Being is shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Prize.

Find out more about Ruth Bidgood the poet and her published works with Seren on our website www.serenbooks.com or under our ‘Seren Authors’ category on our blog.

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Ruth Bidgood

Ruth Bidgood was born in Blaendulais, near Neath, educated at Oxford, and worked as a coder in Alexandria, Egypt in World War Two. She has lived in mid-Wales since the mid-sixties. The author of several prize-winning volumes of poetry, she also writes local history.

Books by Ruth Bidgood
New and Selected Poems
Selected Poems
Singing to Wolves
The Fluent Moment
Time Being

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The Roland Mathias Prize 2011

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROLAND MATHIAS PRIZE

Seren author Ruth Bidgood has been shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Prize 2011.

The event which will take place 7.oopm Friday 8th April, The Guildhall Brecon, recognises works published in the fields of poetry, short stories, literary criticism and Welsh history.

The event hosted by BBC Cymru/Wales will include readings by the shortlisted authors.

A Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
Time Being is Ruth Bidgood’s  10th collection in a career that spans almost 40 years. It has been said, rightly, that Bidgood’s work is ‘emphatically a poetry of location’ and it is the history and nature of her particular region of mid-Wales that most inspire the author. Her narratives are often literally exploratory and discursive as in ‘Viewpoint’ where a walk in the countryside revives both personal memories and knowledge of the stories associated with a place. Her distinctive voice has a quiet authority but also a subtle, conspiratory edge, as if she is letting one in on a secret, unveiling a hidden fact, or making a discovery. She avoids sentimentality, but – unfashionably – not sentiment; an observation can engender joy or sorrow or fear uncluttered by irony.  Her descriptions are sharp and memorable, tending to a cool accuracy. Nature is not always a benign presence but also often inescapably dark and mysterious as in’ Illusion’ where “A goshawk climbs a tower of air and is gone”. Also notable here are several substantial sequences: ‘Gaps’, ‘Time Being’, ‘Reading a Landscape’. These are ambitious attempts to transcend the lyric and move towards a more epic, multi-faceted form equal to the many experiences of her long life.