David Davies is in his mid 30’s. He grew up in Clevedon, England just across from Cardiff where his dad was from.
He lived there until he was ten years old. In 1991 his mother brought him back to her home in East Belfast. His dad died at a young age so he grew up without a father to help guide him through the culture shock that followed. In Secondary School he was bullied and taunted and told to ‘Go back to England’. He attended Art College in Hull before returning to Castlereagh Art College, Belfast.
In 2016 David published a book of poetry ‘The Romantic Landscape’ based on, as he says, his most favourite place in the world – The Mourne Mountains. David has read at the Mixed Jam and Purely Poetry events in the Sunflower Pub and Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast.
This is the story of David Davies against the backdrop of 21st Century Belfast with Poetry evenings where people write about their divorce, Donald Trump, Brexit, talking bees, the Mourne Mountains and the father figure that he misses. His voice is measured and his laugh sincere.
The Long Woman’s Grave, Cooley Mountains
Recording Normerella Blues at Dundalk FM studios.
Stopping for lunch in Newcastle before climbing Wee Binnian.
The Mourne Wall read by David Davies sitting at the top of the Wee Binian mountain between Newcastle and Annalong looking out over South County Down.
Here is a draft edit for the show that I’ve labelled ‘fear defined’ – it’s getting dark and quiet and Joni Mitchell paints a cloudlet in the sky.
The Mourne Wall
I feel the will to crawl
Hiking along the Mourne Wall
To cling and hug
Sheltered from the winds bulk
The wall is under no beck and call
Its permanent fixture holds on
Weighs down its granite anchor
Hammers and chisels: tools for plug and feather
Wraps around over twenty two miles of peaks
Its dry stone is fitted with shape of preference
A hope of a lasting fit
It may have been to keep the sheep from getting lost
It is where the heart is sparsely walked
Inside its boundaries
If the wall’s rocks could write
It would be in-between
Where the wind blows through
O hear those songs through the gaps
And perhaps I think what shelter does the heart have?
To starve it from risk;
It is a bleak existence
To be exposed with a threat of hyperthermia
Even the walls defence
The exploded battles of life
Pummelled, rolled and battered
Like a castle wall being knocked and fired at by boulders
Its heavy blasts leave a devastation
With collapsed rocks in piles
It is now an opened wall
Where sheep wander into the heart of its kingdom
Roam freely, lost in memory
from The Romantic Landscape by David Davies
Published by Author House
2016
We are going to send a request to VCS Radio Cardiff 98.7 FM to see if a volunteer at the Community Radio Station will translate a few lines of the poem to include in the programme.
David Davies and Alan Byrne at Omeath, with the Mourne Mountains in the backdrop.
A visit to the Belfast Library
David launches his second book of poetry and displays his paintings at the Hollywood Arches, Library, Belfast