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About the Poem
The Great Cardiff Poem/ Cerdd Fawr Caerdydd
is a world-first! Never before has a city written and published
its own huge communal poem.
 Led
by the Academi (the Welsh Literature Promotion Agency), conceived
by Chief Executive Peter Finch
and managed by writer and lecturer Susan
Richardson, the Great Cardiff Poem is now underway to support
Cardiff's bid to be the 2008 European Capital of Culture. Thanks
to generous sponsorship from British Telecom, an epic poem which
reflects and celebrates the city's past, present and future is being
created.
For the past few months, Susan has been running
creative writing workshops in a wide range of communities throughout
Cardiff. She has offered sessions in primary and secondary schools,
retirement homes, hospices, at Cardiff Institute For The Blind
and for Arts Disability Wales. Children as young as 3 have written
poems about the city, while the oldest contributor so far is 96.
Poems have been submitted in English, Welsh and in the languages
of Cardiff's many other communities.
As well as involving first-time writers of poetry,
the project is also including the work of many experienced professionals.
Poets such as Dannie Abse, Gillian Clarke, Sheenagh Pugh, Ifor
Thomas, Mererid Hopwood and Grahame Davies have all been commissioned
to write a new piece about the city.
Susan is now busy editing the many hundreds of poems
received into one huge Cardiff epic. Fragments of the work will
then be published all over Cardiff - on buses, bus shelters, t-shirts,
posters, mugs and banners. There will be public readings and performances
and a book containing the whole Great Cardiff Poem will also be
produced.
Finally, there is this evolving website, where you
can both read some of the Poem and view the ever-growing list
of contributors.
photographs by Kiran Ridley/ ethos
with thanks to Cardiff 2008 for use of the photos
and to the Wales Millennium Centre for those in the montage strip
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