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WRITERS IN ABERGAVENNY

 

          ANN DRYSDALE
 

A talented poet and popular performer. Ann is well known in Wales on the poems-and-pints circuit, and acclaimed more widely in her on-page persona via her publications  The Turn of the Cucumber and Gay Science  ( Peterloo Poets ) Her work is accessible and humorous, with a deceptive simplicity that often catches the reader unawares and touches deeply.  

Ann lives and works in Blaina, Gwent. Since her London childhood she has lived a variety of lives - student, novelist, single parent, water-gipsy, gonzo journalist and hill farmer, not necessarily in that order and some of them more than once. She is widely published in magazines and has won several competitions; she is the current holder of the Dylan Thomas Award for poetry in performance and is not too proud to " slam. "  

She is the author of four published novels: Faint Heart Never Kissed a Pig, Sows Ears and Silk Purses, Pearls before swine ( all  Routledge & Kegan Paul ) and A pig in a passage ( Robert Hale.) 

Ann holds an MA in Teaching and Practice of Creative Writing and has taught at University College Cardiff, in schools and writing centres. She has also been the ' Writer in Residence' at the University of the West of England, Bristol, and is  Welsh Arts Council ' Writers on Tour ' listed.  


 
                                                         SELF PORTRAIT  

                                                        Why should anyone seek pictures of poets?  

                                                        I do not choose to exist in a fixed picture  
                                                        Inevitably given the lie to later  
                                                        Regretted, superseded, taken down  
                                                        Leaving only a clean patch on the wall.  

                                                        I should prefer to hang  
                                                        Not in your mind's gallery but its concert hall.  
                                                        I would rather think of you  
                                                        Taking me home with you, busy in your head.  
                                                        Playing me daily, gaily in the garden  
                                                        Humming me happily about your business.  

                                                        What I am is whatever you see when you hear me.  
                                                        Whistle me thoughtfully in odd moments -  

                                                        Allegro, ma non troppo vivace.  
 

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