Enacting memory and grief in poetic landscapes

• Published in: Emotion, space and society space and society, 2021-11, Vol.41, p.100822, Article 100822
• Main Author: Griffiths, Hywel M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Absence; Grief; Memory; Poetry; Presence; Wales
• ISSN: 1755-4586; 1878-0040
• DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2021.100822

Much geographical work has focused on sites of memory, where memories and grief are inherently tied to particular places, monuments and landscapes. Memories and grief can also, however, be spatially and temporally dispersed and fragmentary, creating landscapes in which things are simultaneously present and absent. In this paper I trace the creation of a memorial poem - a marwnad - for my great aunt, who lived her entire life on the margins of Cors Goch, a lowland bog in rural south-west Wales, as part of a long tradition in Welsh-language poetry. Like many Welsh marwnadau, the poem highlights spatial and temporal complexities of memory, emotion and grief. They are both inherently tied to shifting, ephemeral, fluid landscapes and politicised in changing regional and national cultural landscapes, speaking to challenges faced by rural communities and the changing geographies of the Welsh language. As well as reflecting the temporality and seasonality of site-specific memory and grief, the poem contributes to that temporality as memories resurface and intensify during composition and in subsequent personal readings. I discuss the place of such performative poetry in mapping grief and the implications of poetic grieving and memory-making for absence and presence and relationships with the landscape. •The Welsh elegy, or marwnad, is analysed as a poetic form of grieving and memory-making.•An autoethnographic approach is used to explore everyday encounters with landscape, grief and memory.•Welsh poetry can be virtual, vernacular and embodied, and exemplify the complexities of the spatialities and temporalities of grief.•There are exciting opportunities to critically and creatively engage with place, politics, memory, emotion and geographical potential of Welsh language poetry.