Sustainable Wales Co-founder awarded Hay Medal for Poetry 2022

Sustainable Wales co-founder Robert Minhinnick has been awarded the 2022 Hay Festival Medal for Poetry.

Hay Festival have announced the recipients of their 2022 festival medals and award-winning poet and author Robert Minhinnick has been awarded this year’s Medal for Poetry. The Medal, designed by Christopher Hamilton, will be presented on stage at Robert's event with Gillian Clarke on the 4th June. 

Awarded annually since Britain’s Olympic year (2012), the Medals draw inspiration from the original Olympic medal given for poetry. Past recipients include Hilary Mantel, Lydia Cacho, Inua Ellams, Mererid Hopwood, Laura Marling, Margaret Atwood, Evelyn Schlag, Gillian Clarke, Ahdaf Soueif, Alan Bennett and John le Carre. 

Robert is one of four authors receiving medals at this year’s festival. The other recipients include Lyse Doucet, awarded the Medal for Journalism; David Harewood. awarded the Medal for Drama; and Jacqueline Wilson, awarded the Medal for Fiction. Find out more about the Medals on the Hay Festival website.

Robert Minhinnick

Review of Gorwelion Shared Horizons

GORWELION SHARED HORIZONS REVIEW

From Caroline Bracken for ‘Nation Cymru’

https://nation.cymru/culture/poetry-roundup-all-life-is-here-love-sex-death-humour/

Three books for review this month from the consistently excellent Parthian Books. First up, an anthology of writing about climate change Gorwelion: Shared Horizons edited by Robert Minhinnick. A selection of prose and poetry by writers from Wales, Scotland and India who were invited to write about their immediate surroundings, its history and future.

The effect of these personal witnessings is to make the climate crisis real and close rather than a massive remote event we can do nothing about. Sampurna Chattarji selected and edited the contributions of the Indian writers which are particularly stark including her own: ‘She whispered as she fingered the green bedspread that was all that remained, reminded of habitat’ (Last She Looked) and from Aditi Angiras’s That Thing with Feathers: ‘They say that before colour began to disappear, Dilli was dream-like. A disco in the trees, birdsongs in the evening light. Now all I want from the future is the past. To unearth a thousand lakes, a couple hills, a river and a beating heart.’

The Welsh landscape is well represented by many writers including Tree Tai Chi by Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch to Beyond Coal by Phil Cope and Airbrushed Fields: Newport’s Glebelands by Laura Wainwright. Maggie Haggith* and Stewart Sanderson show us the view from Scotland.

If, like me, you find the enormity of the climate crisis hard to get your head around, this anthology will make sense of it, beautiful writing from beautiful places worth fighting to save.

I will leave the last word to Tishani Doshi, from her piece Keeling Towards Water: ‘Birds and gods can travel between homes, but coastal communities can’t. What happens when one home is lost? What happens when you only have one home?’

 

*Note From Robert Minhinnick, editor: Parthian’s only error was to call ‘Mandy Haggith ’ Maggie'. I saw the corrected proof but mistakenly they printed the mistake.

Health and wellbeing impacts of climate change Infographics - from Public Health Wales

Public Health Wales has published a series of infographics highlighting the importance of climate change impact on the health and wellbeing of the population of Wales, and to support public bodies and businesses to take action to address any impacts.

Launched to coincide with the Council of Parties 26 (COP26), the infographics focus on the relationships between the natural environment and health, the population groups affected and some of the key health and wellbeing impacts of climate change and those population groups who could be affected.

Download the infographics from Pubic Health Wales, examples from the multiple page infographics are below.

Click to enlarge