Auction for Geiriau Diflanedig: Golden Otter

I’ve lived in the beautiful land of Wales for near on 28 years now. My children were born here, grew up, learned Welsh in school. Their great grandmother lived her life near and in Cardiff. As a child she had a sign hung around her neck. It said ‘No Welsh’.

The language of this land in human tongue is Welsh and it sings of the landscape, runs with the rivers, carries a music and with it a different way of looking at the world. It’s tied to poetry and the life of it has been preserved in valleys and towns and cities by the many who still speak Welsh as their mother tongue, their first language, older than English, but not as old as birdsong.

It is a great joy to me that Graffeg commissioned Mererid Hopwood to adapt the book into the Welsh language AND have begun a campaign to raise enough money to place a copy of the book in every school in Wales.

The translation is wonderful. It’s such a perfect thing to hear the voices of Mererid and Robert singing in harmony through the pages of this book and to have my images alongside the craft of two such giants of the literary world in a great privilege. I have loved Mererid’s work for years.

Over the next few months Robert and I will do all we can to help the campaign to grow. Graffeg are providing the books at cost (£13 pays for one book for a school, including delivery, and if we can find a way then we hope to cut this delivery cost).

To begin Robert is offering up one of the premium quality Lost Words prints from Aquarelle. These are gilded, embossed and signed by both Robert and I and he will hand write the otter spell on the reverse for the winner of the auction, and dedicate it. You can see below how the foil glows like gold leaf. Aquarelle did such an amazing job with these that they sold through quickly, and this is the artist’s proof, I think, from Rob’s own collection. So, in a way, more special.

This is how the auction works. Leave a comment below this post with your bid. ( All bids must be in pounds sterling, and I have to action the bids so they won’t appear straight away. I will contact people if bids have crossed over) When there have been no more bids for 24 hours I will contact the last three bidders to see if they wish to increase their and if not the winner will be the highest bidder. There’s no timed limit and no eBay style race to get a bargain and a last minute bid in. There’s no reserve price, but we hope to raise as much as we can.

I loved listening in on emails between Robert and Mererid, both steeped in language and the shapes of words, during the making of this book. Here’s the otter page from the pdf of the book, which is available for pre-order from Graffeg. My hope is that, as with the English language version it will be taken to the hearts of all ages in Wales.

Please share this post, to help us spread the word, donate if you can, and let the otter bidding begin.

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