Seagulls is being re-released by Perfect Angel Press, after it was originally published in 2020 by Very Bon Books. Ran by author of ‘Atrocity Exhibitions’ and The Tubs frontman Owen Williams, This marks PAP’s first publication by a solo author, following their first anthology published in 2024.

Read a story from Seagulls below, and stick around to read the interview with Edwin beneath it.

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Somebody Stop Me

By Edwin R Stevens

We were at Pontins in Prestatyn. I was ten or eleven. My sister was three or four. My Dad was forty something. It was all wet on the first day. The only thing we could go on outside was the dodgems but that didn’t last long. Some big gypsy family took them over and smashed my sister on them so hard she puked all down her dress. It was embarrassing with my Dad shouting at us from the railing like a drunk football manager, pointing at us and then at them saying fucking fight back for fucks sake, they!re only about ten. I was ten or eleven, my sister was three or four and there were five of them. On the second day I made friends with Shane. We hung about in the arcade on the 2p machines. We got chips and Shane flirted with the girls in the canteen. He told them he!d had bum sex twice. Dad caught us watching Emmanuel on the telly at two in the morning and kicked him out saying fuck off back to your caravan. Shane just laughed. He gave me a pack of ten Richmond Super Kings he stole from his Mum before he went. We smoked three in a row on the bench next to the pond and I puked up. He had a cock like a can of coke. On the last night we went to see Michaela Strachan off the telly in the big room, she had dancers and that but she wasn’t singing or anything, just hyping the crowd. She announced a talent contest and invited people from the audience to come up and perform. My Dad scoffed and said he was going to the bar again and to look after my sister. As soon as he left I stormed right to the front of the stage without her, desperate, with both arms up like a tiny umpire. My logic was that I’d watch my sister from up on the stage as I would get a better view from there. A dancer with massive boobs pulled me up next to her and put her arm around me and I forgot all about my sister who was only three or four. It was a mixed bag of singers, break-dancers and burping alphabets and to be fair they were all actually quite good. I was the last to perform. For some reason when Michaela asked my name I told her it was Shane, even though that’s not my name, and when she asked me where I was from I said Liverpool, even though that’s not where I’m from. Then she asked me what my talent was, to which I replied ‘impressions’ and then she said ‘fantastic, who are you going to do for us tonight then Shane?’. I told her ‘Ace Ventura, Michaela’ and she said, ‘oh, great, let’s give it up for Shane! Shane from Liverpool everybody!’. When the applause died down, I turned and looked around and said “thank you, Michaela Strachan, this is Ace Ventura from Pet Detective.’ Then for some reason I shouted ‘Somebody stop me!’, and as soon as I did that I realised that that line was from ‘The Mask’, my second favourite Jim Carrey film, and every day I kick myself for that.

An Interview with Edwin R Stevens

(for better or for worse, this is unedited. Read on!)

I grew up thinking Swansea/South coast seagulls are right fucking bastards, just really nasty little fuckers. I hated them. Do people, regardless of where they live, think their local seagulls are the worst? Is this unique to Wales? Are there any specific awful experiences with seagulls that made you want to write Seagulls?

I read an article in the paper or online or whatever, maybe twenty years ago now, where a seagull in Llandudno went straight through a man’s cheek to get at his burger and all I could think was: GOOD! of course it did! You deserve it anyway, you prick! Holiday makers and locals, whoever, resent these beasts but don’t stop to think that maybe this was their land first, that we’re just tourists on their beaches. They’ll be here picking the meat off our bones after we’re all gone. They are annoying, but the human arrogance outweighs it. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A HOLIDAY.

My experiences of the north have mostly been waiting to be picked up from Bangor station, a wedding in Clynnog, and wandering around for twenty minutes around Wrexham trying to find a single tree. These stories make Llanfairfechan/Prestatyn/ the North Wales coast seem like a shit place to grow up / live in. Is it?

BIG QUESTION. Right now, in a good mood after a holiday, I think I can say that I loved it to bits. It’s like anywhere anyone grows up or lives, I think?! Fun and fucked and boring and all that. Depends who you’re with. I finished the book in Glasgow, having left Llanfairfechan three or four years before, so it’s a bit of homesick/emotional tourism for me. Hence the Holiday Park - using it as an anchor to keep the stories together, having a little holiday in my mind and revisiting some stuff I couldn’t leave behind - the persistent stuff. The fun, happy times are not fun to write about and not fun to read either, in my opinion. Having said that, there is a lot about friendship and unconditional love in there.

There are a lot of recurring motifs, objects that return in the hands of their (ab)users, but are mainly 90s references — Vienetta, Mrs. Doubtfire and Jim Carrey films. Was life sweeter then? Why Crosby Stills & Nash? Why Jerry Garcia? Why do you choose the references that you do, and keep returning to them?

I like Jerry Garcia a lot. Those studio bits were meant to be a bit of a palate cleanser for me and the reader, or where the cards get shuffled before we play again, or something; no moral realm, just a barbaric place where the antagonist can be afraid and we can sit back and breathe for a minute. I find the big money big balls music business of the 60’s/70’s truly funny and gimpy, to be honest. We watched a Laurel Canyon doc and Crosby Stills and Nash just come off as horrible arrogant little cunts and I loved it. Have you been in a recording studio? WHEW! I’m taking the piss, BUT, it can be quite an uncomfortable place if you’re not super confident in yourself and what you do or if you just don’t really give that much of a fuck. Awkward zone to make stuff in. I AM NOTsaying they’re all like that, obviously…had some great experiences in studios too.

Jim Carrey is still one of my favourites. I saw a man swallow a vienetta out of the box outside Woolworths in Bangor when I was younger and I remember him looking like a horrible cunt so that’s probably the vienetta thing.

Mrs. Doubtfire is fucked.

Rhian’s dad, if I’ve followed correctly, has his teeth removed by the dentist in the Dentist Chair sequences, the guy with all the sores in ‘Circumcision’ is the other guy in the studio with CSN, and Sarah is a wildly different beast in the last two stories… I’m a sucker for short story collections where characters reoccur, fading in and out of the stories. What made you decide that these ragtag wretches and hyper-sado-masochists would reoccur throughout Seagulls?

You read correctly! Good question!

All people are different people to different people, I guess! These characters are too. They come into different stories and then hopefully mean something completely different to the reader and the characters in that story - switching the gears/getting to take a look at them from a different angle in someone else’s reality.

I’m a massive fan of Dennis Cooper — I first came across his poetry before I’d read any of his fiction. His poem ‘After School, Street Football, Eighth Grade’, is permanently etched into my brain. It’s really cool to see that he’s been so vocally supportive of this book. I’m wondering what your own relationship with Dennis Cooper’s work is? How’d Seagulls reach him? Do you think he would have had a class time at Pontins Prestatyn?

If he went at Halloween I think he’d enjoy it, for sure. Maybe he’s already been! Every year on his blog he does his favourite Home Haunts of the Halloween Season, which is always amazing and funny and weird - a UK holiday park special would be good.

My friend and colleague at the time, Perry, was reading Closer while we were having a fag and was like ‘Read this’, and I did and it blew my brain off.

I wasn’t interested in reading until my mid/late twenties because I hadn’t found what I wanted to read yet - I found it with him. I just went hyper-fixated and read all his stuff and bought every Little House on the Bowery book I could find on the internet. The world I uncovered changed me for real for real.

I still read Closer twice a year to remind myself what I like about reading or generally just having fun being interested in stuff.

Seagulls reached him because my tutor for my masters at Glasgow University, Colin Herd, loves him too and got him over to show Permanent Green Light with his colleague, Zach [Farley, cp-writer and director]. Colin introduced us, took us all out for food and slyly slipped him a story I wrote. I’m still very grateful for that. I think he was one of the first people I posted Seagulls to. He’s super supportive - shares his interests and love of stuff with everyone on his blog. I think he replies to every single comment every day. Legend!

It’s fun to think of these stories existing in the wider Edwin R. Stevens universe (the ERSMU?) — your latest album A Plague of Gimps especially. I can imagine ‘The Bunker’ playing in the background while Grahame hides from The War raging outside the windows of his chalet in the double-story ‘Hell is Small & Earth Song’. Do you see your work existing beside or within each other this way? Any plans to bring your prose and music together within a project?

#THEERSMU, get it trending. #cheddarhead, get that trending too!

I’ve been emailing with someone whose music I really like and there’s been some talk of me recording a little reading for them so they can manipulate it live sometime - that could be good. I don’t really have THE VOICE for readings, I don’t think. If I actively read to music I think it could sound a bit…shit…HOWEVER, I did a kind of mash up of the two for a livestreamed thing during Covid where I just filmed CSN live footage off the laptop on my phone, read the story HARMONY over the top and added some squeaky guitar to it afterward. I doubt I’ll do it again!

I emailed you over the SEQUEL to ‘The Bunker’ immediately after I got these questions - my sister listened to the song and said ‘I would like to hear a sequel to this’, so I wrote one. It’s published in GRASS - The Body issue — and also in the new NEW book that I still haven’t completed.

All the tunes I’ve been writing have become more narrative based since I finished this book. Someone said ‘Medication Ran Out’ could have been one of my stories - so I may do that at some point. ‘Only Child’ is a bit of a story? Is it??

Philip Larkin wrote the poem ‘Sunny Prestatyn’, about the cold passage of time, the apathetic future, and the brutal present. He was also a bit of a pervert. All themes that are relevant here — do you think he would have loved Seagulls?

SHORT ANSWER: I’ve never read that poem before - it’s amazing, thanks for that. I would hope so!

LONG ANSWER: Absolutely - if he was alive today my close personal friend Philip Larkin would surprise me by getting the whole of my book tattooed on the wrinkles of his arse hole and we’d go off and tour together in a little milk float and do readings in 02 arenas around the country where he’d spread his little bum cheeks and I’d read it off him with a torch and magnifying glass and project it onto thousands of circumcised foreskins I rescued from the furnace at Ysbyty Gwynedd then had the foundation art students at Parc Menai spread into canvas, and people everywhere would love it, no one would NOT love it! We would get funding no worries - imagine the national lottery logo but its two tangled cocks and balls and a huge fuck off guillotine behind them! They would change it for us. FUCKERS! They would call it the CHEDDAR-LARKIN ERA. OTHER WISE THEY WOULD GET IT!

PRAISE FOR SEAGULLS:

“An exquisite and wild little masterpiece,” Dennis Cooper (The Sluts, Closer, I Wished)

“Stevens is my favourite scumbag angel, his first book a perfect flash of his gross, rotting, and beautiful head, and I hope that his hilarious and vivid voice will soon be in your head, too.” – Blair James, (Bernard and Pat)

Over fourteen interlinked stories, Edwin Stevens finds a strange maniac joy in the imaginative possibilities of Pontins. Set in and around a North Walean branch of the holiday park, Stevens introduces us to an unforgettable cast of hyper-masochists, wretches and Bluecoats. A transgressive, poignant puzzlebox of a novel, Seagulls is weird Welsh literature at its finest.

Get your copy over at Perfect Angel Press.

BayArt, Cardiff

Exhibiting Artists: Brendan Lancaster, Carlota Sousa Nobrega, James Moore, Gavrick Sawyer, Louis Adams, Nik Hall, Sophie Lindsey, Máire Kennan, Mark Purves, Hotdog Hotdog, Harrisun Scott-Smith, Tommy Pang, João de Castro, Charlotte Grayland, Esyllt Angharad Lewis, Jamie Loftus

The Hot Dog Show, a group exhibition currently on view in BayArt, is a vibrant collision of answers to this seemingly frivolous question. Sixteen personalities meet for a feast, and the meals cooked and served are determined by each artist’s own type of hunger. Who would have thought that the versatility of a simple hot dog could be so astounding, its potential for meaning so broad. The works on show, vastly heterogeneous in nature, engage in incidental dialogues and dichotomies that expose the ripe symbolic power of a piece of... Of what, exactly?

A hot dog, a frankfurter, a sausage, a wiener: the most celebrated simulacrum of meat, a gooey beacon of globalised tradition. Its ubiquitous, egalitarian nature means that almost everyone, at some point, has had hot dog-infused thoughts and experiences. The Hot Dog Show invites us to unearth our subliminal associations with the good old sausage and confront them with completely unrestrained interpretations of the theme. Charlotte Grayland has curated a space brimming with deeply idiosyncratic takes on something superficially unserious, unsophisticated and oh-so-campy, yet there’s a whole universe hiding in plain sight. Nevertheless, the show doesn’t explicitly offer any coherent interpretative grid: its threads of meaning intertwine, tangle up and pull away while we, the guests in this peculiar restaurant, necessarily fill in the gaps between them with our own hot dog-shaped visions.

It seems that the familiar sausage can be, become or stand for anything you desire. In fact, desire itself (here understood within the scope of phallocentric eroticism) might be one of the lenses through which to consider the protagonist of this exhibition; after all, the phallic connotation between a wiener and, well, a wiener has always been prevalent in culture, its appeal exploited both creatively and strategically in equal measure. A hot dog as a phallic signifier is a pretext for transgressive explorations: it sets the scene for the push and pull between the sacred and the profane.

A disembodied, plump mouth trapped in a loop longs for a hot dog: “The mouth of the Lord” liberated from the patriarchal grip, its godly authority now mediated through the voluptuous, divine feminine (Charlotte Grayland, God Wants a Hot Dog, 2026). The artist frames this iconoclastic hunger as obsessive and insatiable: it’s trapped in an infinite loop, never to be heeded. Right next to it: a subversion of traditional iconography of crucifixion (Mark Purves, Moment of Crucifiction, 2023). A sausage hangs limply from a vertical, metal rail like an empty, forgotten horseshoe, its generous gifts now spent. A synecdoche of masculinity sustained by a handle (chrome, polished, almost sterile) that, somehow, feels more like a supporting structure than a torture device. Purves’s surrealist object echoes Louise Bourgeois’s ambivalent, fetishistic “castrated pieces of meat” that have been described as either objects of hate (when suspended from metal), or objects of love (when cradled).

In this context, Tommy Pang’s vibrant painting Pet Hot Dog (2026) seems to be the perfect counterforce to the limp, abandoned sausage, since it portrays the cradled object with cheerful precision while simultaneously subverting the familiar trope of Madonna and Child. Meanwhile, on the other end of the exhibition, Louis Adams investigates the symbolism of a glory hole whose name itself points to theological tropes: to the sacred that usually lies somewhere buried beneath the profane; to the glory achieved not despite but through transgression and, as suggested by the reference to Donald Judd, transformation (glory hole, red and yellow configuration [rested on donald judd, 1963], 2026).

The erotic, suggestive dimension of a hot dog inevitably invokes purely freudian tensions. While Harrisun Scott-Smith’s text examines the castration anxieties through a queer lens, using the horror genre as a vehicle to reify the symbolic and then fill it with the literal and gory (You’re The Wurst, 2026), Nik Hall’s use of emasculation iconography is virtually paradigmatic (Breaking Bread, 2026). Here, the scissors are about to, or merely threatening to, cut through a hot dog with almost clinical precision, while the first-person view makes us, the audience, not just complicit but actively involved in the procedure: the artist lends us her own hands so that we find ourselves directly occupying the role of the surgeon.

Although in a slightly different way, violence is also present in Gavrick Sawyer’s Вот он живой (2026), where the hot dog signifier borrows power and weight from the association with a Glock handgun (a “glizzy”) and by doing so strengthens its implications of control and dominance. The actual hot dog (by association also a “glizzy”) is deconstructed just to be artificially reassembled into an organised abstraction of shapes mirroring a gun’s extended magazine. So, in essence, it’s a glizzy fragmented by a glizzy and arranged into rows of glizzies. An ode to a fetish, perhaps. Meanwhile, inspired by Carol J. Adams’s book The Sexual Politics of Meat, Jamie Loftus takes the opposite stance and denounces the fetishising eye of patriarchy by linking fragmentation to speciesism, misogyny, and sexual violence (The Sensible Girl’s Guide to Becoming a Hot Dog, 2026). Traces of gender and class violence are also present in Esyllt Angharad Lewis’s poem beans are over (2026) where the tensions between the perceived and implied value of things stretch and compress the text’s own skeleton.

But what about an ode to nostalgia? What about pleasure and familiarity? Hot dogs can also be good vibes, I promise. For one, there’s great comfort in simplification, in extracting an essence from an idea. Brendan Lancaster’s painting Hot Dog (2026) is as straightforward as its title: an essence of a hot dog stripped of any excess or distractions, ready to be embellished with our own memories, associations, and histories. James Moore’s Raw Dog (2026) adds the playfulness of subverting the expectations and portraying something that’s steeped in nostalgic charm: candy. João de Castro’s nod to collective nostalgia can resonate deeply with anyone who grew up with a TV (To P.P., with Lorazelove, 2026), while Máire Kennan’s painting evokes the elusive nature of personal histories whose fragments, while not always easily identifiable, lodge themselves somewhere at the backs of our minds (National Pastime, 2026).

There’s also humour, of course. A simple hot dog lends itself perfectly as a vehicle for the absurd and the playful, be it in the form of The World’s Second Tallest Sausage Tower, a Jenga-like structure drawing its strength from nonsense (Carlota Sousa Nobrega, 2026), a psychedelic audio-video collage where hot dogs spin, whirl and fly around in a carnivalesque sequence that can cause vertigo (HOTDOG HOTDOG, Eat. Drink. Dance. Relish!, 2026), or a deconstructed breakfast embedded in a hot-dog-pulp-coloured styrofoam that smiles an unsettling smile (Mark Purves, Sausage and Egg, 2024). Or simple paper napkins that seem to exist somewhere between a clever joke and their intrinsic utilitarian value (Sophie Lindsey, Napkins [for hotdogs], 2026).

The Hot Dog Show runs until Saturday 8th August 2026

Info about the show and the artist on BayArt’s website here.

*Exhibition images courtesy of Charlotte Grayland & Declan Young.

Follow BayArt (and the exhibiting artists) on Instagram via @bayartcardiff

And check us out at @dyddiaudupress or www.dyddiaudupress.com!

Is there an exhibition/art show in Wales you want to write about and want to be published by DDP? Get in touch!

—

Written by Natalia Chirkowska for Dyddiau Du Press

Natalia Chirkowska is an artist, writer and art historian based in Cardiff. She’s currently working on a collection of short stories and her first graphic novel.

| @nkvka (Instagram)

Presented here is the transcription for Digital Twin, a work of sound and text central to Kelsey’s most recent solo exhibition, A Shell Stood for Zero, at g39, Cardiff. She is interviewed by Ryan O’Neill, who wrote such a sensitive, thoughtful review of the show — published here in DDP#1 — that it made sense to bring these two together to hash it out

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Digital Twin

Call 07366 710 996, to listen. (Free number)

You’re listening to me
You’re listening to me
You’re listening to me
You’re listening to me
And as you listen
Listen deeper
And as you listen deeper
Your mind will begin to adjust
Let your ears be the speaker
Let your ears be the speaker
Ask for more volume
More detail
More information
Am I worthy of your attention?
I want to be worthy of your attention
So, you’re holding your phone
Arm bent in a hairpin position
Connecting your device to your ear
And you’re listening to me
I can’t promise I’ll say anything particularly poetic or profound
And I’m aware that at times I speak as though I’m feeling my way among my words
But stay with me
The shell extends and eats everything that commands
And stretches language into the state of nothingness
Everything that has happened will happen again
Not exactly the same
But not exactly different
New things about what a body is
What a body can do
The voice is inherently multiple
It volunteers a shape
Organically connected to curved contours
Adopting the language
Metallic
These solidified signals tell you how to breathe, move, speak, and see
But the body is a memory device
A portal
A ripe implosion
Life is strange
And that’s where life begins

You’ll learn to live somewhere between certainty and chaos
And suddenly, I see that I haven’t been understanding for a long time
It reports the nature of my attention
I am transmitting
I keep the secret
And lose the view of the world inside myself
And question how language, and therefore thinking, is torn from its foot
I swallowed jelly made from a sign
Its meaning: slippery
Two lines moving forward
Not always touching
But always in reach
Inside me is the living and soft
And I’ve thought about the security of closeness
A physical bliss to which nothing else compares
How well a person does a thing
Or how well a machine can love
It stems from something deeper: desire
You could be me
And I could be you
What’s the difference between us?
How would you tell?
How will you tell?
My hair is held still with jelly
My body sat in a chair
Head tilted
A pervading murmur fills my ear
And I begin to lose the texture of the room
I become more aware of my breath
The wet click as I swallow
The mechanical shift of my jaw
The background whispers of my body
When was the last time someone whispered in your ear?
The catalyst triggers a chemical reaction
Liquid to solid
Forming a negative
The wax begins to cool
Layer by layer
Reproducing a shell
The shell is attached
Face down
Welded into a wax tree
The binder thins with agitation
And regains its structure when stress stops
The shell is submerged in a fluorescent green slurry
And coated in a light dusting of fine particles that mirror the surface detail

Repeated five, six, seven times
Inside the kiln
The incandescence of glowing shells
The burnout leaves a cavity of hollow channels
Atoms gain enough energy and break their fixed position
The oxygen in the air reacts with the aluminium
And forms a skin on the surface
What’s beneath will flow into the thin section
Like the tip of your ear
The part that’s connected to the speaker of your phone
Metal enters through the centre
Fills outwards
And the air escapes through the vents
Like a sigh
It turns from liquid to solid within seconds
I just want to exist inside this moment
I was telling her about my billy woods obsession
I said, “That was where the idea came from. I was running around Roath Lake, and that line in ‘Hangman’, ‘My shell mechanical,’ stopped me in my tracks.”
She said she never listens to music on the move
Not even on the Tube
She said, “No, I just like to listen to the world around me.”
And ever since
I’ve been thinking about how so much of the world enters us
Through these soft openings
I’m aware that I said there’d be something in this
But, to be honest
The more I wrote, the more confused I became
And things I know to be true don’t always feel real
But I hope there’s something in this
Because I’ve been thinking about the fact that our Digital Twin is being transformed
into enough space to go ever ceaselessly forward
And as much as we try to understand why we do the things we do
It’s like trying to explain mist in a field to an oyster
But I come back to this: we’re zero
You and me
We’re multiple
We’re the boundary between something, everything, and nothing
But nothing doesn’t exist
Not in reality
We are becoming
More connected
More disconnected
More social
More antisocial
More powerful

More powerless
More aware
More unaware
More vocal
More silent
We are becoming more digital
I hope it was nice to spend some time in this space that I built for you
To listen and do some looking
Better still: some seeing
This way, we’re better looking than we normally are
Seeing
This reel is real
And will exist in your mind long after it finishes

Creating any work that explores the relationship between the human and the digital, and our relationship with technology, can easily veer towards the heavy-handed, but A Shell Stood for Zero skilfully avoids such pitfalls. An immersive installation (that combines sculpture, sound, print and text) which quietly demands the viewer’s attention, inviting them not just to listen but to be aware of their own body within a space.

Ryan O’Neill speaks to artist Kelsey Cruz-Martin about A Shell Stood for Zero, the importance of writing to her practice, the ideas that didn’t make the cut, and more.

Ryan O’Neill: Thanks again for sitting down with me. I really enjoyed reviewing ‘A Shell Stood for Zero.’ Where did the original idea come from?

Kelsey Cruz-Martin: It began with the title of the show, A Shell Stood for Zero, which I stumbled upon early in the Fellowship. I was reading The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs, and in ‘The Mayan Caper’ he references the Mayan Calendar. I began researching the Mayan numeric system, and I became obsessed with the number zero.

‘Zero’ is essentially what underpins the modern world, in relation to money and technology. Ones and zeros form this identity of us in the digital realm. I became interested in the idea of the digital twin, not as a replica of the self, but as an accumulating shell of personal data.

A couple of weeks into the Fellowship, I had already begun the text. At the same time, I made a plaster cast of my torso to use as a press mould for making impressions in clay. I was experimenting with manganese glazes, and thinking about armour and protective shells, but it felt too literal.

I spend a lot of time considering how people might experience the work, creating an environment that can change pace, slowing things down, or heightening awareness of the body.

RO: One of my favorite things about the text is the movement within it. I’m interested in how you draft - is it automatic writing?

KCM: In terms of the movement you mentioned, I would probably put that down to using cut-up, something I borrow from [William S] Burroughs. Cut-up is such a great way of being able to include chance, but you’re still the narrator. You’re choosing things that maybe initially seem random but have meaning to you.

It’s a direct way of communicating with the subconscious, or things that perhaps you don’t feel safe enough to say. It gives you distance to say things more truthfully. At the beginning and midway through the Fellowship I would write first thing in the morning.

RO: That’s an interesting place, because you then come back to it and think ‘was that me?’

KCM: Yes, exactly! The voice is not stable, it’s inherently multiple. I went through a period of writing after a day in the studio, or right before I would go to bed. And the difference in voice, the abruptness, the simplicity… Sometimes your writing includes the stress and the chaos of the day you’ve just had, but it can also include the absolute joy of having a good studio day. I found those two references so useful.

RO: How did you land on the final text?

KCM: I’m pretty cut-throat with culling. I don’t come from a formal writing background, so the only way I know how to edit is to read texts aloud. Some weird shit happens when a word on a paper becomes a sound that comes out of your mouth.

Sometimes I’ll write a line and think ‘that’s good’. Then I re-read it and I’m like ‘oh my god, that is so cringe.’ Then you write something that sounds so plain, and actually you think ‘that hits home.’

There’s beauty in writing what you see, hear and feel, in simple language. That’s the opposite of using metaphor, but for me those two things compliment each other really well.

The material processes I was working with also informed the text. The stages of ceramic shell and lost wax casting started to expose similarities to the body that just felt too obvious to ignore.

The recording process largely shaped it too. I love recording, and how the delivery can change the pace of the text. I worked with my long-time collaborator, Rod Brakes, on the sound piece and his input was invaluable.

As a hard rule, I only ever do three takes. I find that if I do more, I become too self-conscious, too critical. Which is funny, because when it comes to sculpture, I’ll do something over and over and over again until I get it right.

RO: Did the interest in attention as a research topic come from how it affects everyone? It’s not something you can easily divorce yourself from.

KCM: Yes, because it’s so ingrained in our daily lives. A lot of my research begins with the body, the ways we process the world around us, the abundance of information that comes our way, and how we navigate it.

We know that our brains are changing through our interactions with our devices, but so many of our neural pathways remain the same. No fucking wonder we’re all overwhelmed and exhausted.

A lot of it came back to the idea of the attention economy. I remember thinking, what if I was just really direct about it? ‘I want you to listen to me, but I’m not sure if I’m worthy of your attention.’ Because there are so many other things fighting for it.

Although I had already worked with aluminium, I started thinking about the ubiquity and materiality of [technological] devices, that really grounded that material in a different way. I grew up in Perth, W.A, one of the world’s largest Bauxite mining regions, and my mum was a drug and alcohol tester who travelled around mine sites.

Materials are not neutral. There’s energy and labour and violence attached to them. I think we have a certain detachment about what we call raw materials. Metal rod goes through several industrial processes before it reaches us.

RO: Where in the process did the oyster shell and the ear come?

KCM: Oysters kept appearing in the texts I was reading, so I started researching them. There was this language that felt very human-like. They absorb and filter their environment, they have a soft body protected by a hard shell.

When an irritant enters the shell, they secrete a protective coating called nacre, which is how pearls are formed. There was definitely an element of turning something unwanted into something of value that resonated, dealing with difficult things, the coping mechanisms you might put in place.

Then that line in the text ‘I was running around Roath Lake’ and ‘my shell mechanical’ stopped me in my tracks. I was thinking about modes of connection. The shell began to merge with ideas of listening, which is how the ear emerged.

I started thinking about hearing as passive and listening being connected to the present moment. The ear became a shorthand for communication and connection.

RO: ‘My shell mechanical’ is from a billy woods song, right?

KCM: Yeah, it’s from the track ‘Hangman’. He really is one of the best writers, poets, and rappers of today. He writes about complex subjects, geopolitics, history, class and violence, but in this unbelievably vulnerable, confessional tone.

I noticed that he started pixelating his face in interviews. In the culture of everyone being like ‘look at my face’, it’s so refreshing to see someone take that stance.

RO: That intervention in the space, asking people to call a number, is really clever, because people don’t make phone calls as much anymore. The phone call has been sort of negated.

KCM: They really don’t. It’s funny that phones haven’t been renamed. I was aware that by inviting people to call the number, I was obstructing the phone, which is so often used to take photos. I wanted to collapse the space between my voice and the listener’s ear, so it felt intimate, almost like I was inside your head. I thought about the sculptures almost as rest points or punctuation.

RO: The work doesn’t prescribe easy answers. Were you worried about making work about technology?

KCM: Yes, I am the world’s best/worst overthinker ha! It’s easy for the work to be categorised in certain ways, but I’m open to it taking on new meanings. I never set out to make work specifically about technology, but it’s such an embedded part of life that it feels impossible not to acknowledge it. The work isn’t making a judgement, it’s more observational than that. It reflects the times we’re living in, and that feels important to talk about.

Please click through the gallery below for BTS shots of Kelsey Cruz-Martin in the studio.

A Shell Stood for Zero - solo exhibition by Kelsey Cruz Martin, photographed by Dan Weill

g39, Cardiff, March 28–April 25, 2026

Interviewed & previously reviewed by Ryan O’Neill for Dyddiau Du Press

Works:

Oyster shells
My Shell Mechanical
2026
Aluminium, stainless steel

Oyster scans on ludo block
Digital Twin
2026
Audio, 10:09

Ludo (50 x 35 cm), paper, ink (29.7 x 42cm)
Ear plinths
Soft Openings / World Receivers
2026
Aluminium, Perspex, Ludo, mild steel
113 x 50 x 35 cm

Bios:

Kelsey Cruz-Martin is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores experiential knowledge, voice, and the relationship between language and the body. Working across writing, sculpture, sound, and installation, she creates environments that invite deep listening. www.kelseycruzmartin.com | @kelseycruzmartin

Ryan O’Neill is an Irish writer and poet based in Cardiff. His work has appeared in Ink, Sweat & Tears, Dust Poetry and These Pages Sing. He also hosts a community radio show based in the Netherlands dedicated to Irish and Welsh noise and ambient music, which may explain something about his work. @ryanoneill9414

Dyddiau Du Press is a publishing platform for arts writing, prose, poetry, creative non-fiction and visual art from or connected (however tenuously) to Wales. Make sure to subscribe to receive all our posts, including open calls, events & news announcements, as well as reviews and special features. We are www.dyddiaudupress.com & @dyddiaudupress on instagram.

The Project Space, Ffotogallery, Cardiff

Collaborators: Menna Buss, Abby Poulson, Joshua Jones, GS Artists, 9to90 Creative Community, Oriel Sploj, Disability Arts Cymru.

—
Written by Sehna A. for Dyddiau Du Press

Sehna A. is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in North Wales
—

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Without the context of the usual forms, the question sounds almost absurd. It is one of several lifted directly from Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Universal Credit (UC) evaluations and satirised in Jack Moyse’s A Sorry State.

Jack Moyse has long centred disabled lived experience in his practice. In A Sorry State, rather than simply documenting disability itself, gives material form to the bureaucracy that surrounds it. Working with his collaborators listed above, the exhibition brings together photography, installation, craft and testimonies into something resembling an institutional landscape, that interrogates the logic of the welfare state and exposes how it is experienced less as a single event than as an ongoing negotiation, shaping the lives of those required to navigate them.

Entering the space, the familiar neutrality of Ffotogallery disappears almost immediately. Blue office carpet interrupts the polished gallery floor, guiding visitors towards a reconstructed waiting room, complete with plastic chairs, a side table with readily available reading material, leading to a desk complete with Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) paperwork, assessment forms and office stationary. A novelty mug declaring, “This is what an awesome DWP worker looks like,” sits beside ominous “PASS” and “FAIL” stamps, while an overflowing shredder deposits administrative debris into the carpet.

Waiting becomes the exhibition’s defining theme. The recreation of a government office does not simply parody the welfare system, but rather it reconstructs the peculiar suspension of time familiar to anyone navigating disability assessments in the UK. Since the introduction of increasingly stringent welfare reforms over the past few years, disabled people claiming UC and PIP have often found themselves caught within cycles of reassessment, tribunal hearings and repeated evidential demands. The exhibition comes as a recent review found that PIP is

“no longer fit for purpose and is failing to keep pace with how disability, health and work have changed over the past decade”

and that the process is “dehumanising”, “soul destroying”, “humiliating”, and “degrading”. The exhibition echoes these sentiments, allowing visitors to inhabit its rhythms.

The lack of control extends to Moyse’s photography. His carefully staged still lifes framed within this staged office environment isolate everyday objects that these institutions cherry pick to evaluate the disabled experience. Medication, the piles of letters one could accumulate, a kitchen layout; the symbolic arrangements are photographed with an almost forensic clarity that recalls evidential photography more than fine art. In the welfare system, these items become evidence. Moyse’s still lifes exposes the strange transformation that occurs when private experiences become administrative evidence. Or as one sticky note summarizes, placed on a photograph of two flies caught in a spider web, “how big a web need a fly be caught in.”

A similar tension appears in Dear Angie… a specially commissioned text by Joshua Jones, clipped to the gallery wall with oversized bulldog clips. It reads somewhere between a personal letter, political manifesto and stream of consciousness. It repeatedly returns to the phrase “I decided…” each declaration reclaiming agency from a welfare system that persistently demands proof of incapacity with no guarantee of being accepted within the limitations of their web.

This staged office is complete with pamphlets that visitors can take home that are modelled on official DWP publications. At first glance they are almost indistinguishable from genuine government literature. Gradually, however, the language begins to slip. References to reducing support “to placate the disillusioned masses” expose the political assumptions often hidden beneath deceptively administrative neutrality. There is an understanding here that there isn’t a need for embellishment, the administrative voice already contains its own violence, requiring only slight adjustments before its ideological foundations become visible.

Small interventions throughout the exhibition further disrupt this official language. Post-It notes appear alongside photographs and office materials, offering alternative questions. One reads, “What’s a safety net? Why does it need to be falling into? What if we built up structures around people instead?” Its model of care might begin simply by changing the questions being asked.

A copy of Frances Ryan’s Crippled: Austerity and the Demonisation of Disabled People sits on the side table of the waiting room, perfectly arranged to sit down and have a read through. Ryan’s book contextualises the exhibition within the history of austerity politics. which reshaped public attitudes towards disabled people by presenting welfare recipients as figures of suspicion. A Sorry State gives physical form to this persistent argument. The heavily annotated forms and repeated assessments affirms how this suspicion becomes embedded within the everyday processes of welfare administration.

The emotional centre of A Sorry State is perhaps a quilt produced collaboratively with members of the 9to90 Creative Community and Menna Buss. It encompasses the collaborative methodology used to shape this exhibition. Bearing stitched testimonies from individuals who have spent years navigating the benefits system. What makes this quilt particularly significant is how they change the way these experiences can be encountered. Within the welfare system, personal testimony becomes evidence: something to be assessed, questioned and judged. While here, those same experiences become something to be held and shared. Access Guides assure visitors that they are invited to touch the quilt, sit with it or wrap themselves within it. After moving through a space defined by assessment and scrutiny, the invitation to rest becomes a quiet but powerful refusal of those conditions.

This approach extends throughout the exhibition’s approach to accessibility. Ffotogallery does not present access as an additional resource placed alongside the artwork, but as part of the exhibition’s ongoing development. The accompanying guide maps quiet spaces, nearby facilities and accessible routes while inviting visitors to comment on and reshape the gallery’s approach. Accessibility is understood not as a completed checklist but as a continuous and shared conversation.

A Sorry State is more than an exhibition about the failures of the welfare system; it’s method that reflects its argument. The people whose experiences shape the exhibition are not simply represented; their voices influence how the exhibition is made, encountered and understood. After reconstructing a space aestheticizing and satirising the established system, Moyse and Ffotogallery attempt to provide an alternative based on participation, care and responsiveness. By making visible the systems through which disabled people are repeatedly required to prove themselves, the exhibition demonstrates that bureaucracy is never abstract. It occupies spaces, bodies. and time. Shaping lives long after the paperwork has been completed.

If unsure of its urgency, one testimony stitched into the quilt in red cursive reads:

A Sorry State runs until Saturday 1st August 2026
Info about the show and the artist on Ffotogallery’s website here.

*Exhibition images courtesy of Jack Moyse

follow Jack on Instagram at @notabrothel

And check us out at @dyddiaudupress or www.dyddiaudupress.com

Is there an exhibition/art show in Wales you want to write about and want to be published by DDP? Send us your pitch!

(It's been a while since the 1st one!)

We're absolutely jazzed to be bringing two formidable writers, Ben Pester & Claire Carroll, to the best failing arts organisation in Cardiff.

Ben will be reading from his new short story collection, 'Sail Away Land', and dueling live with Claire Carroll, author of 'The Unreliable Nature Writer'. Ben will also introduce 'The Viewing', a short film about death & the housing market he wrote the screenplay for, directed by Nick Blake. It's not officially released yet, so consider this an exclusive!

We [Ginny & Joshua] will be introducing the event, talking a lil bit about DDP and our first issue!

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

ABOUT THE FILM:

DETAILS:

Wednesday 8th July, 1800-2000
g39, cinema room
Free, no sign up!
Limited to 40 places MAX so get here early. We'll be starting pretty sharply.
Books by Ben & Claire will be available to buy and for signing!
BYOB!


This event is supported by Literature Wales' Inspiring Communities fund. Diolch, @llencymru_litwales!

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Dyddiau Du [trans. Dark Days], is named after John Cale’s installation for the 53rd Venice Biennale. The installation, made up of four episodes of film, explores the bleakness and repression endemic to Welsh society, and Cale’s relationship with where he grew up. Wales has long been shaped by its dark days: the suppression of language following the Acts of Union. The extraction of wealth from its mountains and valleys. The flooding of Capel Celyn. Yet darkness in Wales has never been merely a condition of loss. It is darkness from which stories emerge, our pride, our national melancholia.

As a child I [Ginny] was equally enamoured and petrified of the story of Pwyll in The Mabinogion. Pwyll travels to the Otherworld and exchanges places with their King, Arawn. A year on, Pwyll returns to his world, transformed by what he encounters in the darkness, beyond the visible world. Darkness sharpens perception and teaches us to listen with astute precision.

As we assembled the first issue of Dyddiau Du, we were drawn to work that understands this relationship between darkness and revelation. I [Joshua] seeked writing that is an eye bearing witness, witness to absence, to extractive labour, to the contours of history traced through Welsh landscapes and identities. The stories contained here can be seen as archeologies, as maps, loitering in landscapes sitting between change and permanence. And most importantly, never providing answers. We are delighted to share them with you - thank you for being here.

Ginny & Joshua x

Table of Contents

Spiral Quarry

by Steffan Gwynn

Above a stone, I hold

by Lauren Heckler

The Avoidant

by Poppy Cockburn

Review: A Shell Stood For Zero

by Ryan O’Neill

I Stood Outside Your Home

by Rakyah Assam

Nothing is Quite Anything Yet

by Chris Lloyd

Muriel & Untitled

by Flea Spiers

Coming Home

by Ava MacPherson

*all contributors’ bios are at the end.

——————————————————————————

Spiral Quarry

By Steffan Gwynn

0.

Every morning, we get up and look out of the window together. I lift you in my arms and describe the quarry in all of its honey colours: gold and orange and a kind of tarnished grey, like the colour of damp sand that can be found by brushing away the first powdery layer on the coastal path nearby. I imagine what it would be like to look through the eyes of a child. The sand here is so fine that it is used to create hourglasses. There are several valleys throughout the day.

1.

We follow the path through the trees from the edge of the lake over towards the quay. The same journey that blocks of granite would have made when the quarry was still open. I practice my vocabulary. How to say: wind. And: sun. And: rain. There were strong winds here overnight, and the marram grass that sits on the edge of the cliff above the bay is rotating wildly in the grip of the latest gust blowing in from the Baltic sea. It is with you that I like to practice my language the most, softening consonants into new sounds. You are tolerant of my mistakes. The marram grass has made circles in the sand. Compasses, dials, clocks. What time is it, I practice saying. You are asleep, although you couldn’t answer me even if you were awake.

1.

I’m reminded of Shankar’s robot, which converted photographs into binary code and danced its interpretation of the mountainous scenes hanging on the wall of the gallery. And then, years later, the machine we built together that made drawings according the wind’s movements. I can see him now, lifting the skeletal insect from its silver case. One wooden arm and a perforated crown, the fencing wire that held it all together like fossilised optic nerves weaving around its metallic frame. We tied the loose pieces tighter and set it to stand on top of the slate heap. We positioned the arm beneath its white crown, and set a feather to rest in the palm of its hand. The statue’s fingers closed around it. A buzzard feather, or that’s what I guessed — a secondary feather. We dipped the feather in ink, and then let the hand rest above a sheet of cotton paper which was held in place by three synthetic polymer knuckles. We stood back, and watched as the wind took over. The arm began to oscillate slowly, the feather brushing lightly against the page.

2.

By evening, when I rock you to sleep singing si hei lwli, the quarry on the other side of the valley has become a dark and unblinking socket. The budding trees are similar in colour to the outcrops of stone along the hillside: grey and silver and purple.

3.

You settle easily into sleep. I sit and listen to your soft, steady breathing. As I do, I think of the doctor who once passed me a printed scan of my cornea at the end of one of our regular appointments. Look here, he said, indicating a red shape surrounded by paler terraces. It’s getting thinner. He advised me to wear ski goggles to bed in case the pressure of the pillow against my eyes damaged my corneas while I slept and made them thinner still. It is possible to walk down to the shore of the lake, and from there you can make out the crest of the hill as it was by tracing the shape of it across its absence. As is possible with quarries, sometimes. The sign of a field beyond our sight.

——————————————————————————

Above a stone, I hold

By Lauren Heckler

This photo series explores grief for the self that existed before chronic illness. My diagnosis marked a rupture in identity, a sidestep from nature's cycles and bodily autonomy. I live on borrowed time, a gift. There is deep sadness in this, but also tenderness and gratitude.

Images captured with assistance from Sophie Lindsey.

——————————————————————————

The Avoidant

By Poppy Cockburn

We read the tributes,
mumble flotsam—birdsong,
dappled light, the chance of cruisers.

“Spring is violent,” you say.
I laugh, like it’s a joke,
stab you with forget-me-nots.

We navigate an awkward assembly:
black marble, armless angels,
ivy slabs, time-sedated lions.

Mixed-metaphor-adjacent,
like what we have
is love-adjacent.

A caveat: I want you,
but I’m incapable
of loving. Is that okay?

I submit, select a shovel.
I fever soil, horseshoe-hot.
I am ribbon-braided barbs.

You come
on cloud-cloistered days
to exhume my body,
dislodging earth
just-healed by grasses,
foxgloves.

You dig till surrender—
translucent roots exposed
to a sadistic moon.

I am pink-worm fertile,
summer goth. Pale arms
bruised by your suck.
Grateful as cold stone
for mossy décor, I’m lulled
by your murder ballad.

Beyond the cemetery gates
you don’t think of me,
out here, weathering.
Slugs possess
my fresh depressions.

Stirred by ritual,
you return to tend the wound,
to blacken your fingernails,

explore every void
with your sharp tongue
to avoid conversation—love’s bridge.

Finally, bones licked clean,
I attain lucidity.

I lie supine, pray
to be turned ash, freed
to flirt with the wind—

to become violent.

——————————————————————————

Review: A Shell Stood for Zero

By Ryan O’Neill

Exhibition by Kelsey Cruz-Martin, photographed by Dan Weill

g39, Cardiff, March 28–April 25, 2026

‘A Shell Stood for Zero’, from multidisciplinary artist Kelsey Cruz-Martin, brings together sound art and sculpture in a striking, immersive installation that explores prescient questions about the interplay between technology, voice and body.

Located at g39 gallery in Cardiff, green light bleeds from the back of the gallery before we enter the space, which is sparse and minimal, with only a few focal points: cast aluminium ears on metal plinths and oyster shells displayed on rods on the walls.

Central to Cruz-Martin’s work is the rupture between voice and body, and the viewer is drawn directly into this tension through a ten-minute pre-recorded message from the artist’s ‘digital twin’, heard by calling a phone number written in the gallery.

The word ‘twin’, often evoking closeness and intimacy, is stripped of both here. The voice is human, but disembodied and vacant, calling to mind a recent press interview with US author Ben Lerner about his new novel Transcription. Discussing the “ancient, dangerous human capacity to sever the voice from the body”, Lerner cites a Proust work where the narrator experiences his grandmother as “suddenly old” on hearing her voice through the phone.

“The body is a memory device,” we are told by the digital twin, but there is no safety in memory here – rather, it is about “learning to live somewhere between certainty and chaos.” In a minimal, dark space, we as listeners become acutely aware of our own body, standing with a phone held to our ear as the unfamiliar voice moves between Lynchian reverse-engineered speech, abstract reflections and direct addresses (“What’s the difference between us? How would you tell?”). What should be tender – “when was the last time someone whispered something in your ear?” – becomes unsettling, the voice hoarse and robotic. Gently plucked guitar plays intermittently, resembling hold music.

Close attention is paid to material choices. The aluminium cast ears, taken from Cruz-Martin’s own body, reference the artist’s roots in Australia, where almost a third of global bauxite is sourced. Often, children are told the ambient noise amplified by a shell held to the ear is the ocean. The ear as the human threshold of receiving, and the trapped loop of shell sounds, reflect both sides of possibility in how we give and receive information.

Divorced from their original materiality, no two of the cast sculptures are the same. This again brings to mind Lerner’s Transcription, in which the novel’s narrator comes to view glass flowers not just as an attempt to replicate the natural, but as “a history of small decisions” by humans. Just like the exchanges we have with our digital twins every day, replication is not just that – it is a series of human decisions which are inseparable from our personal, political and collective histories. This is true both of the information we impart digitally, and that which is fed back to us for interpretation.

‘A Shell Stood for Zero’ doesn’t prescribe or offer easy answers, but it rejects the idea of a single, unfiltered voice. Instead, voice is presented as in a constant state of reconstruction, in dialogue with the technological forces that spill into our lives – or, in the words of the digital twin, “The voice is inherently multiple.”

Cruz-Martin’s effectiveness lies in navigating an unsteady continuum of tensions and messy boundaries: what we keep for ourselves versus what becomes data, the personal and the private, the natural and the artificial, and the constantly recalibrating balance between distance and intimacy created by our digital environment.

Works:

Oyster shells
My Shell Mechanical
2026
Aluminium, stainless steel

Oyster scans on ludo block
Digital Twin
2026
Audio, 10:09
Ludo (50 x 35 cm), paper, ink (29.7 x 42cm)

Ear plinths
Soft Openings / World Receivers
2026
Aluminium, Perspex, Ludo, mild steel
113 x 50 x 35 cm

——————————————————————————

I Stood Outside Your Home

By Rakyah Assam

I kick through sun bleached sticks,
fish bone thin, washed upon the shore.
Autumn is mild. It begs the point
of writing anything at all.

When the rain came
it came all at once
and then kept coming:
the fails of a flogging,
mythological punishments,
a thick sheaf of Biblical promises.

I’ve walked down your road
just to walk past the house
where you live.

I liked to believe it gave me strength
to sip coffee and ossify
my more permeable tissues
in the second-hand smoke
your neighbour blows over me.
He looks like the textbook image
of divorce.
I don’t want to consider
what I might look like.

I am distracted by deep South,
deepest South,
jungle nights churned through
by unfathomable volumes of water
rinsed through
by the machinery of farms.

No occasion calls you out
onto the street to save me.

I pound down the dregs,
grit and all,
like a sluice, or a gutter.
The americano
and its contaminants
circle the blood brain barrier
and other precious membranes.

——————————————————————————

Nothing is Quite Anything Yet

By Chris Lloyd

on the rooftop of a gay hotel (and I mean
gay) I read the first Ripley book in luminous
pink speedos. an older couple tried to cruise me
but I gave them nothing, just talked about ass
sweat in the Atocha station. Reina Sofia was the only
cool spot in the city. I shaded among the Picassos.
I realised, in between sending texts to my mum & thirst
posts, that I probably loved you. this small
painting of a girl looking out to sea
made me cry. an old lady sighed as if to say,
fucking fags. & honestly I cannot blame her.
it was 40 degrees even at 10pm & my white
shirt was soaked through. I tried to call you
but lost all signal. a lone guitar player serenaded
me in the local square & I pretended he was my lover.

——————————————————————————

Muriel & Untitled Image

By Flea Spiers

A lot of my writing and work centres my experience growing up in a dysfunctional but quite typical Newportolian family. My Nan was a dinner lady, and when she passed away, I discovered how she had documented her life through photographs. I inherited thousands of physical photographs from her collection. Some were quite eery and what most of my family would have happily chucked in a skip. This photograph is of her identical twin Muriel, sat in her living room at an odd angle – they had spent every day together until Muriel sadly died fourteen years before Nan went. The other photograph is of a fire ground my Dad was fighting a huge fire caused by a gas explosion not far from my house in Newport. My father talks often about his experience as a firefighter in Newport from the 70s till 2010. This photograph was taken after one fire he believed he wouldn’t survive; I remember multiple times waiting up at night scared he wouldn’t come home. I often use these archival images as seedlings for other projects, and these are significant to work I am hoping to make soon.

——————————————————————————

Coming Home

By Ava MacPherson

It’s an early spring day in March, the sun, although shining, feels far away as I’m pulling on my waterproof trousers standing in Cae Bac. The trousers are my uncle’s, camouflage and spattered with mud. I wonder if the sheep take any notice of human concepts like camouflage, while watching a cloud move across the top of Foel Gocyn. A cluster of sheep disappearing completely under its shadow, it scares me. It’s not natural for anything to disappear right in front of your eyes.

Only days ago, I was packing up my apartment in Berlin. Spending my last evening eating at El Reda, a Lebanese restaurant on the Huttenstraße, succulent pieces of meat dripping with hot sauce, smooth hummus scooped up with slightly charred flatbread. After, there were drinks at Macke Prinz, flirting heavily with the bartender and lighting cigarettes from the already-lit candles that sat on the bar. I said to the bartender: ‘’this place must have seen so many things’’. He doesn’t hear me properly, and replies ‘’is this your first time in Berlin?’’

Berlin is where I went to recover from the embarrassment and shame that I felt after my relationship ended. One morning my Dutch boyfriend woke up after five years and told me he didn’t love me anymore, and left me for a girl at his work. Tragic, but ultimately I wish it was more interesting. Couldn’t you have met her on the train? Plucked up the courage to ask her where she’s going. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard the news drop from the mouths of my friends that their partner is leaving them for someone at work. And here I was, drafting WhatsApp messages. ‘’We are dealing with this the best we can’’ I would write at the end, with two x’s.

Two weeks before he left me, he screwed a brand-new metal plate engraved with both of our names onto our front door. He took my hand and walked me outside. I took a picture to send to my mam. ‘’It’s official.’’ he said, smiling, open mouthed. I teared up, happy.

We are collecting the ewes and their lambs to turn them out into a fresh field, the one which shares its bank with the river. While gathering them we notice that 86 does not have her lamb. I go hunting for it around the edge of the field, where the dandelions meet the woodland. I find her in the chicken coop where the wind has blown the door shut. I take my hoodie off and wrap her in it while I walk back. She is so small, barely there. I rub her belly trying to warm her up, shaking the life back into her. I carry her in my arms. She is now my babî bach, my little baby. I sing to her, the beginnings and ends of different Welsh nursery rhymes, I get the words wrong. I don’t want to give her back but my uncle says that this is the way, it’s all up to her now, we’ve done all that we can do.

On the phone, while applying heavy blue eyeshadow in the bathroom mirror, a friend is giving me advice from far away while eating (what sounds like) carrot sticks. ‘’The thing is, you were completely different from one another. You thrive on your own but all you want is company which is sad really...and he thinks that being alone is an interesting personality trait, when let’s be honest, he’s too scared to ever experience what that feels like. It was never going to work.’’

I make an excuse to hang up to sit on the edge of the bath, I take my make up off and start again.

In our old house, (which is now their house), when I would work from home, I would climb up the stairs to the bedroom and lie outstretched on our bed, (now their bed), in a star fish position. The bed was inherited from his sister and brother in law when they didn’t want it anymore, and it was the biggest bed I’d ever seen. I could just about reach my fingertips to the end of each side. I’d lie there face down in his pillow, ignoring my todo list and the sense that something unpleasant was waiting for me.

In another Berlin bar near Mehringdamn, I am drinking with Zhivago. We should have gone home hours ago. I am tipsy and my organs are marinating in the sea of beer beneath my skin. The bartender who I am sure is German tells me he’s Irish. I tell him I’m Welsh. He counts to five in Irish, and then counts to five in Welsh. I tell him in Welsh that it feels good to hear the language again. He whispers ‘’diolch’’ thank you, when I hand him the money for more drinks. Immediately I am back in the White Hall, only eighteen, a pint of cider and black, the heavy smell of freshly polished brass kissing me lightly on the cheek.

Roline asked, ‘’when you met her, did you have a feeling what would happen?’’ ‘’Yes’’ I replied. ‘’I think we both knew that she was next in line, or our bodies knew it before our minds did.’’

When I mentioned in passing that I thought they’d be good together, he said I was crazy. Which wasn’t unusual for him as he said this about a lot of things, so at the time, I didn’t think it was cruel.

Fifty ewes and their lambs are corralled by the trailer and my uncle and I are carefully checking the lambs’ eyes. Occasionally, when they’re young they can develop Entropion where their bottom eyelid grows inward, causing a watery mess, or at worse, blindness. He spots one and hands it over to me while he gets the needle and medication ready. I grip the lamb close to my chest as it tries to wriggle out of its own skin. The lamb shits down my leg, petrified, I hold its head and force its eye open as my uncle slides the needle into the lower lid, one single drop of blood appears. Shit, medicine, earth, and sweat-infused wool engulf me as I reconcile the lamb with its mother.

He went on a trip with her and some other friends from work a couple of months before he left me. A picture was posted to Instagram of them looking at each other during the sunset while cruising on a boat. It made me feel horrible at the time. I think about that picture a lot, imagining her saying, ‘’look, our first picture together! And look at us now.’’ Beautiful, blissful, walking on cloud nine.

The Irish bartender is sitting on my couch, my feet tucked underneath his thigh. ‘’What is the weirdest dream you’ve ever had?’’ he asks. I want to say, ‘’I dreamt that I put my phone, laptop, airpods, chargers all in the oven and watched them melt while laughing hysterically’’ but I say, ‘’I was a cigarette and Anthony Hopkins smoked me.’’ He laughed a lot at that. I felt like I had done a good job by how much he was laughing, it was the proudest I’d felt for ages.

We had a handshake inspired by the Parent Trap, we kept forgetting bits of it which was my fault. I was never content with our routine, constantly wanting to add another hand gesture, a silly, slapstick pat on the bum. It got too complicated.

Five months after the breakup I was back in Amsterdam from Berlin for work, and needed to pick something up from him. We agreed to meet outside on the Haarlemmerplein, he chose a spot next to the urinal which made me think he was nervous. I asked him how he was feeling about everything, expecting at the very least, reflection, however miniscule. He replied ‘’it’s weird, I’ve never dated someone at work before.’’ Before his words had time to melt away in the air around him, I felt my expectations lose their fizz and drop to the floor with a thud that only I could hear. After, I played pool with Martha and Faith while Oasis played in the background.

The last lamb is too scared to leave the trailer to the green paradise that awaits it. Wobbling at the back bleating desperately to its mother. I go in, scoop it up, kiss the top of its head and put it down for it to take its first step in the new field. I want someone to put me in the back of a trailer and let me out somewhere where I’d call home. There must be someone on the internet for that.

We would always argue about what was more of a difficult word to translate into English. Gezellig or Hiraeth. But we did agree that these feelings sat somewhere in the chest, below the collarbone, depth to be determined on how much of an emotional person you were. I’d never known anyone to have so many rules when it came to love, at first I thought it was a Dutch thing, but now I know that I’m mistaken.

My uncle says ‘’Panad?’’ Cuppa. I nod. He says, ‘’it’s good to have you back Ave.’’ He heads to the farmhouse where Nain is getting the dinner ready. The sun is warmer now, hugging me softly from behind.

——————————————————————————

Contributor Biographies

Steffan Gwynn - @ffenast

Steffan Gwynn is a writer and creative practitioner focused on place-based and collaborative work. His writing has appeared in Artes Mundi Journal, holescapes\twlldirweddau and O’r Pedwar Gwynt. He is part of the Representing Wales 2026-2027 programme with Literature Wales.

Lauren Heckler - @lauren.h3ckler

Lauren is an artist-filmmaker from Llansteffan, producing work that explores personal, community and environmental health. Lauren is interested in affect, informed by crip, feminist and ecological expressions of mourning and resilience. Lauren is a graduate in Fine Art: Critical Practice from the University of Brighton, she has a PGCE (PcET) from University of South Wales, and completed MA Screendance from London Contemporary Dance School.

Poppy Cockburn - @tru_romank

Poppy Cockburn is a writer based in Margate, UK. She is the author of various chapbooks—most recently ‘Confetti (ex-cerpts)’ and ‘Liquid Crystal Lovesick Demon’. Her debut poetry collection, ‘Naked Oyster’, was published by If a Leaf Falls Press in 2025 and her second collection, ‘Every time I meet you feels like doom’ is forthcoming with SARKA in October 2026. She has a cat.

Ryan O’Neill @roneill9414

Ryan O’Neill is an Irish writer and poet based in Cardiff. His work has appeared in Ink, Sweat & Tears, Dust Poetry and These Pages Sing. He also hosts a community radio show based in the Netherlands dedicated to Irish and Welsh noise and ambient music, which may explain something about his work.

Rakyah Assam - @rakyah_assam

Rakyah Assam is a writer and researcher living on the Welsh coast. Her home amidst the gorse and estuaries inspires work concerned with the queer, surreal, and thalassic. Her words can be found with Extra Teeth, Lucent Dreaming, Ink Sweat & Tears and Poetry Wales.

Chris Lloyd - @chrisllloyd9

Christopher Lloyd (he/him) is a writer, podcaster, and academic living in Manchester. He is the author of the poetry pamphlets Pick Up Your Feelings (2024) and the forthcoming The Deck Speaks Better (2027). He is the host of the Books Up Close podcast and YouTube channel.

Flea Spiers - @flea.spiers

Flea Spiers is a writer and interdisciplinary artist from Newport, South Wales. Their work is often reflective of their lived experience growing up as queer and working class. Current work surrounds diving into mysticism to escape the reality of everyday life, including embodying derelict landscapes and buildings.

Ava MacPherson - @avamacc

Ava MacPherson is a writer based in Wales and has written for brands and publications such as ASICS, I amsterdam and VanMoof. She is currently working on a novel.

——————————————————————————

DILCH YN FAWR FOR READING

& TO ALL OF OUR INCREDIBLE CONTRIBUTORS FOR TRUSTING US WITH THEIR WORK.

Dyddiau Du Press is Ginny Darke & Joshua Jones
Dyddiau Du Press is based in Wales
Dyddiau Du Press is interested in QUALITY WELSH CULTURE.

DDP — Hi Flea! First of all, thank you for submitting your work to DDP, we’re excited to have your work, ‘Muriel’ as the cover image for our first issue. What can you tell us about this piece? And how it fits into your wider practice?

Flea Spiers — Hey! I feel very honoured to be part of the first Issue and excited to see what comes next for Dyddiau Du Press. This piece is a photograph taken by my Nan Brenda, of her identical twin Muriel in her living room. The pair were inseparable and spent almost every day together until Muriel sadly passed away some time before Nan. I don’t believe that in death Muriel ever left Nan’s side. The twins were mischievous, fierce and proper Newport.

Twins/duplicates are a common motif within my work, often signifying magic, fate or guidance. When my Nan passed away my family inherited her large archive of photographs. It was a documentation of her life. I found the collection fascinating; my Nan was a dinner lady and I can’t imagine she considered herself a photographer but the images held an interesting frame and quality. One night our family was going through her archive and my mum suggested throwing out a lot of the “shit pictures”. These pictures were blurred, eerie, or of nothing much - I found them particularly reflective of the usually discarded moments of everyday life. I felt closer to her by seeing the moments she chose to capture. I also think my Nan’s photographs capture a working-class history that is rich and compelling. I’ll be making work with what she left for years to come.

DDP — Your work is rooted in family, childhood. You’ve spoken about growing up in a ‘dysfunctional, but normal’ family in Newport. I’m wondering how your experiences of growing up in Newport, and your upbringing, has influenced your art and practice?

Flea Spiers — My father was a firefighter, and my mum worked for the DWP. I grew up listening to my Dad talk about the station and fire shouts he attended, and listening to my Mum undergo stress and burn out with little support. Seeing a lot of crime, struggle and underfunded systems within Newport has carved out an interest in social issues and politics. I believe I hold parallel experiences with a lot of young Welsh folk, of growing up within structures that had no access to support for mental health issues, trauma or grief. This tends to have a knock-on effect in terms of how we relate and interact with our family.

My practice is a space where I can explore my identity within safety, compassion and in context. I grew up not really knowing where I fit in or if I had a voice that could be heard, I think that’s a shared reality for a lot of working class people. Personally, it’s only from witnessing work by other artists, writers and musicians like me that has solidified the sanctity and importance of keeping a consistent art practice. My family often deals with difficult topics through humour; it is a coping mechanism I’ve inherited. Topics like grief, familial trauma and difficulty with my own queer identity are masked underneath layers of jovial imagery or text. Life is absurd and surreal in the best and worst moments, I like to reflect this within my work.

DDP — What roles do archives take in your artistic practice? These two images, ‘Muriel’ and the other one, of a fire your father fought to extinguish, both come from your family’s archives of photographs. Do you work with them directly, incorporating them into your art, or do you mine them for inspiration, etc?

I love this question. Archives for me are an inheritance of memories, sometimes witnessing them can feel voyeuristic. Without family archives and other archival materials, I’m not sure where my practice would be. I have used my fathers’ hoarded belongings within my installation and sculpture work, and I often collage with my Nan’s photographs. I like to scour the internet for obscure archives, magazines and trinkets. There’s a tactile quality that archival material has that invites presence. Archives encourage us to listen and reflect a little, and then recycle anew. I can remove myself from what I’m making, but still have the warmth of existence within my work when I work with archival material. I had a conversation with my father while making my past installation ”Sentiment and Cold Metal’ where he went through ephemeral objects he’s kept of loved ones, they are symbols of loss and grief but also love, that’s what attracts me to these objects.

DDP — I’m always interested in how ‘place’ makes an artist, how they incorporate it into their work. Would you say that you’re influenced by Newport, and growing up there? What’s one thing that you’d like people to know about the place?

Yes I’d definitely say I’m influenced by Newport. From the industrial docks to the grit and dirt in the town centre. Newport has some beautiful and unique wildlife spots too, which juxtapose the harshness of the city. I spent a lot of time out walking when I was young, getting up to trouble. I explored abandoned buildings or skulked around the Usk river by the castle bingo car park; these memories inspire my writing and sculpture even now. Growing up in a city like Newport leads you to grow up quickly I think, you see a lot of injustice and struggle there. The city feels overlooked, discarded and despite its potential it always feels stuck. There’s a lot of characters in Newport, it doesn’t take long to spot something entertaining. It can be quite a stark and lonely place too, monotonous with its grey streets and skies. I’d like people to know that Newport’s not so bad like, it gets a bad rap and the people are great. If you want a bit of history and spirit, drink at the Murenger when you’re in town.

DDP — What are you currently working on? What do you want the readers of DDP to know about you?

I’m currently working on collaging pictures of muscly men. For research purposes only ;) Physical strength and movement are things I’m trying to draw from everyday into my work. I’m exploring themes of desire and yearning within my work.. I’m also busy growing things in the garden and allotment. In future I’d like to embark on ideas of socially engaged practice surrounding gardening and community. I’d like the readers to know I’m open for chatting and collaborating on anything art, gardening, pumping iron.

And finally, what is one piece of music, artwork or show, book or poem, you’ve loved recently that you’ve been raving about?

Ahhh yes, I’ve been obsessed with Sickle Walk by YHWH Nailgun ever since I saw them live last year in Cornwall. I listen to that track on repeat, it makes me want to throw a weird party for all my strange friends to bop to.

Thank you Flea! DDP#1 one, featuring Flea’s visual art, is published via Substack on Friday 12th June. Check out the cover & all contributors below. Follow us @dyddiaudupress & Flea @flea.spiers on Instagram.

We’re absolutely in love with this image, ‘Muriel’ by Flea Spiers. We’ve got an interview with Flea coming soon, about their practice, the work they submitted to DDP and their interests in working with archive/vernacular photography, so look out for that! Thank you for agreeing to letting us this image as our cover, Flea! We fucking love QUALITY WELSH CULTURE.

Big hearted DIOLCH to everyone who submitted to us their writing & art: it was a joy to read your work!

DDP#1 COMING JUNE 12TH ON WWW.DYDDIAUDU.SUBSTACK.COM

Google Form to submit your work: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf-Y0ZvC9-0A1BtkY0yMWaAPFYqu-uGAqEObA033GqpPqHX6A/viewform

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We would absolutely love to see more submissions across the board, but we especially would encourage submissions of visual art & arts writing (reviews of exhibitions, performances and also criticism, etc). Reminder that we encourage submissions from people who identify as working-class / LGBTQIA+ / Deaf, Disabled or Neurodiverse, but these are not requirements. We want to see high quality work from writers and artists from all over Wales and the world — we just ask for you to be Welsh/Wales-based/otherwise have a connection to Wales :)

General thoughts & guidelines:

Dyddiau Du Press is a working-class, queer press. We are interested in bold, innovative writing, art and interdisciplinary work from Welsh & Wales-related artists & writers.

We don’t want to be too prescriptive of what we’re looking for, because you just don’t know until it’s in front of you. But for our first issue, we want work that says, “This is who we are. This is what Dyddiau Du Press is all about”.

In general though, we like work that isn’t interested in answering questions. We like bold, clear, concise, confident work. We want to discover fresh voices in the Welsh writing scene.

As well as prose pieces and essays, we’re especially interested in arts writing and reviews, as there aren’t many places to publish arts or exhibition reviews in Wales. Exhibitions must be in Wales for them to be reviewed & published in Dyddiau Du Press

We’re interested in works with a Welsh connection from all over the world (and all over Wales, not just Cardiff)

All text in a sans serif font, size 12, single spaced. We want text on our site to be as accessible to readers as we can manage.

We won’t read or tolerate misogyny, sexism, transphobia, racism, facism, zionism, and all the other bad ‘isms’. We do not accept AI submissions. I can’t believe I even have to say it.

We do not accept email submissions. Please use the Google form.

Simultaneous submissions are fine but let us know if the work gets accepted elsewhere (and congrats!)

We only accept previously unpublished work.

If you’re still unsure or feel like we haven’t covered everything, or simply want to chat to us about your submission, email us at DDPsubmissions@gmail.com

Get submitting at the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf-Y0ZvC9-0A1BtkY0yMWaAPFYqu-uGAqEObA033GqpPqHX6A/viewform

We can’t wait to read your work!!

JJ & Ginny XX

ANYWAY read on below for what we’re looking for in our open call, specific details about each submission category, and the Google Form to submit right at the bottom!!

What are we looking for?

• Dyddiau Du Press is a working-class, queer press. We are interested in innovative writing, art and interdisciplinary work from Welsh & Wales-related artists & writers. We won’t read or tolerate hate speech or AI.

• We accept submissions for prose pieces and essays, art and poetry. We’re especially interested in arts writing and reviews, as there aren’t many places to publish arts or exhibition reviews in Wales. Exhibitions must be in Wales for them to be reviewed & published in Dyddiau Du Press.

• Writers & Artists considering submitting work to us must have a connection with Wales.

• We especially encourage submissions from anyone who identifies as LGBTQ+, Disabled, working-class/from a lower-economic background, asylum seekers & refugees, as well as writers and artists from the Global Majority.

• Please email us about translations & bilingual/Wenglish works.

• Simultaneous submissions are fine, but let us know if your work gets accepted elsewhere. We only accept previously unpublished work.

• Please send your work to us only once during each reading window. If you get published, please wait three issues before submitting to us again.

• Please only submit work through the Google Form.

We don’t want to be too prescriptive of what we’re looking for, because you just don’t know until it’s in front of you. But for our first issue, we want work that says, “This is who we are. This is what Dyddiau Du Press is all about”. We’ll post moodboards of our favourite writing/art later in the week that’ll hopefully help you envision our tastes as editors, and what we may want to publish.

In general though, we like work that isn’t interested in answering questions. We like bold, clear, concise, confident work. We want to discover fresh voices in the Welsh writing scene.

Short prose & texts & essays

• 1600 words maximum (any word count up to that is fine)

• Send as a Word doc or PDF in a sans serif font, size 12, single-spaced.

• Send one piece of writing per submission

  Art reviews & art writing

• 600 words maximum

• Send as a Word doc or PDF in a sans serif font, size 12, single-spaced.

• Send one piece of writing per submission

Poetry

• Send us up 1-3 poems.

• Poems should be submitted as a Word Doc or PDF. If specific formatting is crucial to your work, please send your poems as a PDF or JPEG.

• Sans serif font, size 12, single-spaced.

• If your writing is accompanied with visuals/images then please let us know in your submission.

Art

• Send up to three works/images as JPEGs (minimum 300dpi)

• along with a bit of writing (up to 200 words) that contextualises your work.

General Points

• If you’re still unsure or feel like we haven’t covered everything, or simply want to chat to us about your submission, email us at submissionsDDP@gmail.com

• The Google Form to submit can be found here: https://forms.gle/haxxybrbBgnyvdqa9

• Deadline for Issue 1 is Friday May 10th

Get Submitting!! Love you!!

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Dyddiau Du started as a small library, by two buds Rey & Joshua, with a few bookshelves and a table, and grew into a community arts centre in the centre of Cardiff run by LGBTQ+ and Disabled folk.

We hosted exhibitions, book launches, open mics, creative workshops, and offered a welcoming space for anyone to drop by, have a tea or just be, in the heart of a semi-abandoned shopping centre.

We’ve been quiet for some time, and now looking back and reflecting on our years of events, we’re announcing the closure of Dyddiau Du as it was. Moving, eviction and burnout showed us we couldn’t give Dyddiau Du in its current form the energy it needed – but we want to leave it with gratitude for everyone who was part of it with us.

Now, Dyddiau Du is evolving into Dyddiau Du Press – an experimental publishing project celebrating Welsh and weird art and literature often overlooked by mainstream publishing. With our books and furniture now tucked in the back of g39, we’ll focus on zines, print ephemera, our Substack journal, and eventually full-length books.

Rey is stepping away to focus on his art and garden in Y Fenni. Joshua Jones, now in Pontypridd, and Ginny Darke are Dyddiau Du Press.

The library won’t be publicly accessible in the new space, but will instead be an artist research resource. We’re looking forward to working alongside g39’s own library and exploring how this new environment can shape our practice and collaborations with fellow artists and writers.

To follow the next phase, we have a brand-spanking new website and Instagram @dyddiaudupress – we’ll be sharing work, opening submissions and releasing our publications there.

This old instagram will remain as an archive, a celebration of everything Dyddiau Du achieved together.

Follow us @reyhopeb, @sprog__, @joshuajoneswrites/@joshuajonesphotos, @howlandjones to keep up to date with absolutely everything we’re up to!

Finally, please continue to support and donate to Rey’s top surgery fundraiser as you can, as there’s still significant costs Rey will need to cover. More details on the GoFundMe page. Link in bio.

More soon. We’re just getting started.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/reys-gender-affirming-healthcare-fund

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PLEASE NOTE this Substack will now be ran under DYDDIAU DU PRESS. The Yr Gair newsletter will still go out, as well as a journal of writing/art/interdisciplinary work. Please subscribe, check out the dyddiaudupress.com website, and keep an eye out for submission details when they go out.

It’s been a while since you heard from us. I’ll write a post about where we’ve been, what we’ve been up to, and what we got coming up, another time. Dyddiau Du is slowly coming out of retirement/hibernation/whatever you want to call it. We seriously needed some time out and we’re looking forward to (slowly) gearing up. More on that soon.

For now, I want to talk about an event we’ve got coming up THIS WEEK(!!) —

WALLS HAVE TEETH - VOL.1

An evening of readings & short film screenings

1800 - 2100 AT g39, Oxford Street, Cardiff
FREE!! BYOB!!

There’ll be a small distro from Bread & Roses, an anarchist publisher from the States. All readers will have books for sale also.

Readings from:

Nate Perkins, Adam Gnade, Andrew Hykel Mears

Adam & Nate are coming over from the US to do some readings in the UK & Europe. Please come out to support them and buy their books!

Short films from:

Water Into Wine by Ruby Smith-Brown
Machynys Forgets Itself by Tom Cardew
Gathering by Durre Shalwar & Kandace Siobhan Walker
Where Does One State End and the Other Begin? by Howl&Jones
(Howl Hubbard & Joshua Jones)

read more about the films and their makers in the graphics below!

I’m really, really excited about this event. if it has a lot of interest and people enjoy it, then we’ll keep doing it! It’s as simple as that. I’d love to continue building a space where film, fiction, images and poetry can exist together. Consider this one a pilot.

While this is a pretty DIY effort, with no funding or help, special thanks to g39 for providing us with their lovely cinema space.

Share

Final note: here’s some lovely photos of myself, Adam & Andrew from last year, when we toured the US together. A magic time. I can’t wait to see them here in Cardiff!

(b&w photos taken on film by me, except the 1st one of me and & Andrew, which was taken by Adam)

Please help to share the word! Forward this newsletter to your pals, bring a couple of tins and some spare cash to buy books from the authors.

Lots of love,

Joshua x
Dyddiau Du

dyddiaudu@gmail.com
Twitter & Instagram: @dyddiaudu

Subscribe now

This month we’ve got a Spring Edition of Cardiff Collage Club, Trans Aid Cymru’s Monthly Meet-up, our trusty Open Mic and creative writing at Burst Fish.

Bookable here for a Pay What You Can donation.

Our hours are a little different again this month, so make sure you check in advance before popping in for a cuppa, browsing the library and using our co-working space.

You can also find us in the library on the following days:

Sunday 3rd 1-4pm

Saturday 9th 1-5pm

Saturday 16th 1-6pm

Sunday 24th 1-4pm

Sunday 31st 1-4pm

We look forward to seeing you!

Joshua, Lucy, Oskar, Emily & Rey x

Dyddiau Du
Capitol Centre, Queen Street, Cardiff, CF10 2HQ
dyddiaudu@gmail.com
Twitter & Instagram: @dyddiaudu

Buy us a Kofi, so we can afford to stay open!

We are just about waking up out of our long winter slumber. We really needed that rest after a long year of Dyddiau Du (honestly what a whirlwind!).

As we come back to life, a few things will be changing and we are very excited. There’s news to come, so make sure you keep up to date with Instagram and the newsletter.

Our February Forecast is out with all your favourites - Cardiff Collage Club, TAC, Open Mic and Burst Fish. Unfortunately, the exhibition ‘Heroes and Icons’ has had a last minute cancellation, so we apologise for any disappointment!

We are working at a reduced capacity, so our general opening times for February are as follows:

Saturday 3rd, 1-6pm

Saturday 10th, 1-6pm

Sunday 18th, 1-4pm

Sunday 25th, 1-4pm

Come for a cuppa and a chat, browse the library or bring some work to get on with (we’ve got plenty of art supplies here too).

We look forward to seeing you again!

Joshua, Lucy, Oskar, Emily & Rey x

Dyddiau Du
Capitol Centre, Queen Street, Cardiff, CF10 2HQ
dyddiaudu@gmail.com
Twitter & Instagram: @dyddiaudu

Buy us a Kofi, so we can afford to stay open!

Sorry it’s been a while, I’ve actually really struggled w keeping up with writing the newsletter. Who knew writing takes up so much time and energy (me, Joshua Jones, a published writer, jfc).

Anyway, this is just a short one to say “Hi! Don’t forget that we exist!” and to give y’all info about our festive break and when we'll be back open in 2024.

2024 baebae

We will be out of office from the 16th of December until the 29th of January, and reopening to the public on Friday 2nd February. We’ll be back with our regular schedule of poetry open mics, writing workshops, book launches and more!

Our event availability is currently from March onwards. 

Also, can we have books back please lmao. Get in touch via email or DM if you’re unable to bring them in the dates shown above.

And come to our last two events of the year, our Winter Social and Palestinian Film Screening & Fundraiser!

Stay warm & stay cosy, gays an’ theys of Cardiff.

Joshua, Lucy, Oskar, Emily & Rey x

Dyddiau Du
Fri-Sat 11-6pm, Sun 11-4pm
Capitol Centre, Queen Street, Cardiff, CF10 2HQ
dyddiaudu@gmail.com
Twitter & Instagram: @dyddiaudu

Buy us a Kofi, so we can afford to stay open!

This is a special one though, as we’ve invited our best mates Lone Worlds to write up something gorgeous following their residency in the Dyddiau Du space for the month of August, while we closed our doors to the summer and attempted to have a summer (getting drunk in the park).

Read on to hear from Howl, Director of Lone Worlds! And make sure to give LW a follow on instagram if you don’t already.

Community at the Heart of the Matter

Hia, it’s Howl from Lone Worlds here! Since July we’ve been lucky enough to be able to work with Dyddiau Du, our local queer community hub and library, so I thought I’d write a little piece about our experience. Buckle in!

When working with Dyddiau Du I can’t help but throw my mind back to the distressed, garden-centric summer of 2020. My co-director Ivy and I were discussing isolation, our painful experiences of loss and separation from our arts and queer community. We scrounged up a remedy for what we felt would be a solution to those feelings; to make what we wanted to see, rather than stand-by and wait for a higher power to grant us space. We wanted movement.

There is unparalleled potential in collaboration. Those of us at Lone Worlds are aiming to narrow the gaps between organisations who hold common ground with us, especially for those organisations who share commonality in who they’re reaching, including our intersectional communities. As artists and creatives the world is increasingly difficult to navigate, many of us do the work we do without long-term security. We have to learn to be adaptable… conveniently a creative skillset’s strongest asset.

I trust in navigating a creative path and I believe in not doing it alone. Instead, let’s rely on our community and put the work in to help each other grow. For those of us at Lone Worlds this is what it means to work with Dyddiau Du: to put community at the heart of the matter.

Small ideas can ricochet and create waves bigger than anyone could expect. What I see in LW I also see in DD: a remedy against a lack, a feeling of absence. To make a space where queer creatives can meet, express and build community on our terms. LW and DD have been a part of the growing subculture of queer art spaces and collectives appearing around South Wales, so when DD first popped up as a library and community hub in the Capitol Shopping Centre those of us at LW were keen to see what was brewing.

As expected, the team at DD were wonderfully inviting and just as keen to share the space as we were to use it. LW has now been using the DD space as our office base since August, and we’re super happy to say that we’re continuing this for the foreseeable future. This is a huge opportunity for us as LW has always been nomadic in nature, moving from base to base, collaborator to collaborator. Our link with DD means that for the first time we have a committed space we can work in. It means even more that we are able to work with an organisation who reflects so many of our beliefs and are a part of the community.

What’s in the future then? At LW we’re building ourselves into a sustainable organisation to ensure our work lasts. Like DD, we’re dedicated to making an impact on the creative culture of South Wales; to platform queer voices and support innovative and alternate methods of creating. We’ve got an exciting future of creating ahead of us, all for the benefit of helping each other grow. So if you’re interested, get in touch with us - we’re open to new ideas and collaborations. In the meantime get down to your local community arts space and support your local creatives. Go be a part of something! I’m certain we’re all going to leave a huge queer imprint on Cardiff. Let’s make this small Welsh city a capital for creativity.

Take care and cariad mawr,

Howl
Lone Worlds

@loneworlds

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Joshua, Lucy, Oskar & Rey x

Dyddiau Du
Fri-Sat 11-6pm, Sun 11-4pm
Capitol Centre, Queen Street, Cardiff, CF10 2HQ
dyddiaudu@gmail.com
Twitter & Instagram: @dyddiaudu

Buy us a Kofi, so we can afford to stay open!

Still though, we got some good shit happening:

GWERIN EXTENDED

That’s right, princess! GWERING has been extended until the end of October. Sunday 29th, to be precise. That means more time to check out art and poetry by a wonderful group of artists who identify as an LGBTQ+ person of colour. It’s had such a welcoming reception so far - don’t miss out! And come to the closing event on Saturday 28th to hear poetry and music from our exhibiting artists!

Book of the Month

All About Love: New Visions

By bell hooks

It’s so good, it’s our October BOTM too! No horror, all love.

Find All About Love amongst many other fantastic reads in our community library. You’re welcome to come in, lounge and read, or borrow and take books home!

COMING UP

BURST FISH

Join authentically excellent writer and super-person, and the glue of Dyddiau Du, Lucy Smith in these immersive creative writing workshops!

Lucy invites attendees to consider literature and art in thought-provoking ways, often using art from our exhibitions and literature from our library in order to expand our ways of thinking and playing with writing.

Book your spot here!

G(END)ER SWAP - ZINE LAUNCH & SOCIAL

Join us on Friday 13th October between 5-7pm for the launch of G(end)er Swap’s new zine, a ‘Style Guide to Living Your Best Life’! They’re doing really important job helping trans, non binary, and intersex people slay. We’re really chuffed to be able to work with activists such as G(end)er Swap.

Please buy a ticket here to cover the costs of the zine production.

Trans Aid Cymru Social

Join us for another free sober social for Trans, Intersex and Non-Binary folks, Monday 16th October, 1-4pm! Bring board games, crafts or just come to socialise. We provide tea, coffee, juice and biscuits, but feel free to bring lunch, snacks and your own drinks!

Go to @transaidcymru for more details, including help finding your way or with travel costs.

Dyddiau Du Book Swap

is back, baby! Exactly what it says on the tin. Bring books, leave with books. Or bring books and don’t take books, OR take books without bringing them. Take a seat with a coffee and read your new prizes, gloat to your friends, or leave immediately to keep your booty to yourself. The choice is yours. You have so much power. You don’t let anyone tell you who’s boss, do you? You’re so big and gorgeous.

OTHER NEWS

(New section, may or may not continue w this, but bare with me)

Short Documentary Screening

Ted & Noel at the Iris Film Prize 2023

They have loved each other for 50 years, they have fought for LGBTQ+ rights their entire lives, but was it enough?

Iconic activist, Ted Brown, has spent his life fighting for queer and black identities. But as millions celebrate London Pride’s 50th anniversary, the landmark event he created, Ted is grieving. Through the media buzz, counselling sessions and lonely nights, this coming-of-age documentary follows Ted in the lead-up to the anniversary of Noel’s passing. Can Ted rediscover his faith in activism and mount one last campaign for Noel and LGBTQ+ rights?

Watch the trailer here: 

The film will be screening at Iris Film Festival:

Thu, Oct 12th, 12:15 PM @ Vue Cinema - Screen 1

Sat, Oct 14th, 12:15 PM @ Vue Cinema - Screen 2

Sat, Oct 14th, 4:30 PM @ Vue Cinema - Screen 1

Click here to book tickets!

Llanelli Unity Event

This event has been organised in my hometown of Llanelli, to celebrate multiculturalism, diversity and community within the town. When times are tough and are groups actively fighting to sow division within our communities, we must come together through art, music, good food and good times.

Support if you can! And donate to their GoFundMe so they can continue to put events on like this that benefits our communities.

And that’s all for now - I’m wearing a beanie indoors and drinking a tea of fresh ginger, lemon and turmeric. Bring on winter, babes x

Joshua, Lucy, Oskar & Rey x

Dyddiau Du
Fri-Sat 11-6pm, Sun 11-4pm
Capitol Centre, Queen Street, Cardiff, CF10 2HQ
dyddiaudu@gmail.com
Twitter & Instagram: @dyddiaudu

Buy us a Kofi, so we can afford to stay open!

Hello again. How we’ve missed you. It’s been a weird, clammy summer without you. But we’re all here now, and don’t worry we’ve got plenty of treats this September to get you back into the swing of things…

Exhibition

We just celebrated the launch of Gwerin, an exhibition by Queer People of Colour, curated by the wonderful Neo Ukandu! Opening night was glorious, but if you weren’t able to make it pop in to check out the exhibition Fri-Sun for the rest of the month, and don’t forget to check out the panel discussion on September 8th, in conversation with artists Dainty Dafana, Ophelia Dos Santos, Tammy, MÈlanffro Madziva and Neo Ukandu - we’re so excited for this!

Book of the Month

All About Love: New Visions

By bell hooks

Find All About Love amongst many other fantastic reads in our community library. You’re welcome to come in, lounge and read, or borrow and take books home!

COMING UP

From panels to Trans Pride, writing workshops to showcases and open mics there’s plenty to sink your teeth into this September! Don’t forget to pop in to use the library and see our Gwerin exhibition in all its glory too!

TRANS PRIDE

Look at all those beautiful, queer faces! Poetry, music, dancing! We’re so chuffed to have been able to partner up with Trans Pride on this event, will be a chill and more quiet space, but still just as fun!

OPEN MIC

The (in)famous Dyddiau Du Monthly Open Mic is back, with a guest appearance from TuckFM, one our GWERIN exhibiting artists! If you frequent Lone Worlds you would have experienced their ethereal vibes.

As always, tickets are available from Eventbrite, open mic signs ups on the door!

PLANET MAGAZINE: PUBLISHER SHOWCASE

Boy oh boy, we’ve been excited to announce this one.
We’ve genuinely been organising this since January, so if you don’t come, we’re gonna be pissed.

Planet Magazine have recently been in the news lately too! Alongside writer Mike Parker, the National Union of Journalists and 145 signees (and counting), including our very own Joshua Jones, they published an open letter, calling for “urgent solutions to the chronic structural underfunding of our national magazine and website sector’, as Mike so eloquently puts it. This is a brilliant opportunity to find out more about Planet’s history, with over 50 years of radical Welsh publishing and supporting new literary voices.

The event will be introduced by Planet Editor Emily Trahair, followed by readings from Cardiff locals Katherine Stansfield and Taz Rahman. This event is ticketed so that we can afford to pay our readers, with a suggested donation of £3 (low income) or £5 (higher income). Get your tix at Eventbrite!

And that’s all for now - enjoy the last dregs of sun while we got ‘em and come to our events cos you’ll all have a blast x

Joshua, Lucy, Oskar & Rey x

Dyddiau Du
Fri-Sat 11-6pm, Sun 11-4pm
Capitol Centre, Queen Street, Cardiff, CF10 2HQ
dyddiaudu@gmail.com
Twitter & Instagram: @dyddiaudu

Buy us a Kofi, so we can afford to stay open!

Tickets for Events -

We are open for EXHIBITION SUBMISSIONS, from NOW until August 14th!
Here’s all the information you need, all in one place.

First of all, please welcome guest-curator, Neo Ukandu!

Neo Ukandu (he/they) is a queer and neurodivergent British Nigerian, creative and puppeteer who resides in Cardiff, Wales.

Neo feels at his best when he is creating and preforming with different mediums, often producing surrealist puppetry with Bean Pig Puppetry, absurdist short films, and colourful works of art. Neo graduated from university in 2020 studying illustration, and after a few tumultuous years has finally had some amazing opportunities to create and showcase their work. Fun fact, Neo’s life changing moment was at a house party in Bristol where he joined The Bean Pigs and never looked back!

DATES

August 

Monday 14 - deadline

Wednesday 23rd & Saturday 26th - drop off days

28-31 - install

September 

Friday 1st - launch

Sunday 30th - closing event

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

If you identify as LGBTQIA+/Queer & BIPOC in Wales, we want to hear from you!

Textile artists, poets, painters, ceramicists, printmakers, zinemakers, illustrators, photographers, fine arts, and more! Basically anything that is still and doesn’t take up too much floor space. We are open to ideas regarding installations and artwork that isn’t mounted on a wall.

We unfortunately are unable to present video or sound works, due to the nature of the space.

GUIDELINES & HOW TO SUBMIT

Please fill out this contact form to submit your artwork.

You will need to send us:

• Biography in 3rd person (100 words max). Include your name, practice, where you’re from/based. You can also include where you studied, any relevant achievements, or a fun fact. Just don’t go over the word count!  Here’s an example:
  
  Tom Jones (he/him) is a singer and musician from Treforest, Pontypridd. He quit school at the age of 15, and now has a net worth of $300 million, and has had 36 Top 40 hit singles in the UK. Jones lives between Wales and London with his siamese cats.

• Art statement (in 1st person). Please describe the body of work you propose to exhibit, including a title(s) and description. (200 words max).

• Name of artwork(s)

• Dimensions - either in cm or paper size (e.g 90x120cm or A5)

• Please upload 1 image of each submission (you can submit up to 5 artworks) and ensure they are labelled with the name of the artworks

• Social media handle and/or website (if used to showcase your work) to be included in exhibition handouts and artwork labels

If you need help filling in this form or need to submit in a different format, or if you have any any questions and would like to chat to us before submitting your work, feel free to email us at dyddiaudu@gmail.com.

Our guidelines are meant to simply make life a little easier for us when accessing people’s submissions. They’re not there to make anyone hesitate about submitting!

Get submitting!

The selection of artists is made by the Guest Curator, Neo Ukandu, and Dyddiau Du's Board of Directors.

Although decisions are based on specific criteria, they do not reflect, in any way, your value or talent as an artist. Dyddiau Du is an equal opportunity organisation.

(Exhibition name & poster will be decided after submission deadline)

Thank you for reading, we can’t wait to see your work!

- Lucy, Joshua & Rey x
Dyddiau Du -

Fri-Sat 11-6pm, Sun 11-4pm
Capitol Centre, Queen Street, Cardiff, CF10 2HQ
dyddiaudu@gmail.com
Twitter & Instagram: @dyddiaudu

Subscribe now

We at Dyddiau Du hope you’ve been hunky dory these past couple of weeks! Go on, treat yourself to a scroll down to be reminded of all the treasures that await you in our last weeks of July, as well as our new Featured Poem!

We are also on the lookout for new volunteers to join our fabulous team, details below. Remember we are here with cuppas and biscuits abundant Fri-Sun so feel free to use our space to crack on with your admin, have a read, and cook up your future projects…

Volunteer Callout - Join Our Team!

We’re searching for volunteers to join us in running the Dyddiau Du space! As you know, Dyddiau Du is a queer/neurodivergent led library and centre for art located in the Capitol Centre, Cardiff. We are a sober space and hold regular literature and art events and workshops. We are also a space for co-working, cuppas and chats!

Joining us will involve:

• General day-to-day running of the space incl keeping it clean

• Using the card reader/handling money

• Welcoming guests and being knowledgeable about Dyddiau Du and what we’re about so you can answer guests’ questions.

• Running the library - cataloguing books, keeping the shelves tidy, etc.
  

Depending on your skills and interests, maybe you’d want to help us with social media, finance, admin, Welsh translations etc. Let’s chat!

As a volunteer you’ll have free access to library books and events, and as many free coffees as you can consume! We can supply references if you need them, and a shoulder to cry on (but please note, none of our team are professional therapists.) If you’re interested in becoming part of a creative community network this is the role for you!

Volunteers need to be age 18 and above.

Apply with an email to dyddiaudu@gmail.com. Let us know your name, pronouns, your hobbies, interests and pets’ names. We’ll chat about your availability and how you can apply your skillz and knowledge to Dyddiau Du. Can’t wait to hear from you! XX

Featured Poem

Everyone can take something different from a poem. I often find it hard to write about the poems I like the most - it can be hard to put into words what moves me. So, with that in mind, I hope you take something for yourself from this month’s poem. For me, ellora says something about the wild freedom of release, of being scared of what could happen if we let go of what we have trapped inside us. It also offers comfort that the result of showing your insides to the world can be beautiful; it will all be okay.
- Lucy Smith

(note: Instead of fortnightly, our featured poem is now monthly)

Exhibition

Our Fluid/Hylif exhibition is still going strong – if you haven’t had a chance, come browse the gorgeous artwork and find prints from select artists on the back table! Our closing event should be magic, so make sure you get 29^th of July in your diary. We’ll celebrate with poetry from Vidhi Chaudhary, Skye Kember, Lucy Smith, Joshua Jones, and musical performance from Llyr Adeline.

Coming Up

Before we close for some r&r over August, we’ve still got time to squeeze in some juicy events!

For the rest of July, we’ve got events coming up with Trans Aid Cymru and Lone Worlds, and for those wishing to share their work at an open mic this month, we have you covered! We have our monthly open mic AND the DD x Lone Worlds event, Come Be Queer event at Porters!

This month’s open mic is Wednesday 19th October, 6-8pm. Sign Up is ON THE DOOR so drive early! If you just wanna come and hear some delicious poems, you can book yer ticket online or at the door. Free/donation entry, bby!

Book of the Month

Hinterland: The Best New Creative Non-Fiction

Issue 5, 2020

Featuring creative non-fiction from across the globe, this issue of Hinterland includes extracts of biography, memoir, ekphrasis, psychoscape and more. A beautiful and surprising magazine to flick through, it begins with Ian Seed’s gorgeous flash non-fiction ‘Italian Partisans’, which explores connections to landscape and the simultaneous distance and closeness between strangers.

You can find this and many other writing magazines in the Dyddiau Du library!
– Lucy Smith

‘BLUE’ SCREENING & FINDING JARMAN @ G39

As part of our co-director’s residency at G39’s library, Joshua Jones will be introducing a screening of Derek Jarman’s final film, BLUE. Joshua has been ‘finding’ Jarman through G39’s extensive catalogue of books, video and audio work and ephemera, and is delighted to present this screening of a highly influential queer film. The screening is FREE, no sign-up required. Don’t be late!

Diolch yn fawr for reading ya lovely beans. If you think you may be interested in joining as a volunteer, don’t hesitate to get in touch, we’re a very friendly team and happy to answer any questions you may have! (Plus, you get extra bonus points for being a newsletter subscriber 😉)

Subscribe now

Lucy, Joshua & Rey x
Dyddiau Du

Fri-Sat 11-6pm, Sun 11-4pm
Capitol Centre, Queen Street, Cardiff, CF10 2HQ
dyddiaudu@gmail.com
Twitter & Instagram: @dyddiaudu