Celebrating the life of Ray Howard-Jones, who lived right beside the Marloes Deer Park. What a character: I only met her once, in my late teens – when she took off all her clothes in order to, successfully, drive me off “her” beach. I only learned years later that this was a standard tactic of hers for guaranteeing solitude when she went for a swim!
Brecon historian David Moore has just had his biography of RH-J published by Graffeg Press; he will be bringing his book launch tour to this village on August 23rd.
I wote this poem first thing this morning, having been toying with the idea a good while; I don’t know what decided me on the acrostic form, but I think it works. N.B. I fluffed the first draft, didn’t I?
Recorder, land-ranging interpreter of moods of sea and sky;
Artist in oils and more; creator of mosaics.
Youth to old age, a life of visual exploration.
How they struggled, back then, to understand you:
Ownership of beaches you claimed, as if Oceanic Royalty;
Wore nothing in the water – nor on the shore, to the great alarm of some!
Artist reporter of the war, you were, but many knew that not;
Roughed it in peacetime, too, you did, out on the island:
Days and weeks and months, none of the current comforts.
Joy of the wild, seeking Nature’s colours and God’s compositions:
Oppression and opposition of society left on the staid mainland.
Now we better understand you in retrospect, as is the way with many creatives:
Evidence uncovered, memories dredged, works tracked down like rare fauna…
Seeing down time’s telescope we wonder at what you achieved, RH-J.
© Christopher Jessop 2023
