'Great art, like sport, has the power to change people's perceptions of the surrounding world for the greater good - it is a civilising influence.'
- Roger Lewis, Chief Executive of WRU
2012 WRU Artist in Residence
Owen has been appointed the 2012 WRU Artist in Residence. Working with the Arts Council of Wales, this will be the first of three appointments made by the WRU over the next three years. Owen will observe and follow Welsh rugby at all levels, from the elite and national level to grass roots.
Poem printed in the Wales v France match programme, March 17 2012:
Now and Then
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present
- T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
There are moments in history when
regardless of your seat, a nation becomes a stadium.
When a country's gaze and speech,
tightens in one direction.
When a population leans, from sofas,
pub stools, in village halls, to watch.
Or strains to listen in cars at the sides of roads,
or in tractor cabs stilled in silent fields.
There are moments when the many,
through the few, become one.
A faithful but demanding tribe,
fed by the past, hungry for a win
but also more. For beauty as well as strength,
for art as well as war.
But romance, history, fervour,
are the privilege of watchers only.
For the men who must do, who must carry this burden,
though fuelled by the colour of the jersey,
the feathers on their chest, there can be no past
or future when, but only now.
For them those eighty tightening minutes
will be an ever-living present
composed of the angle of their runs,
the timing of cross kicks, the learned set piece
which like a trigger will fire the line
to light the match. It will be the focused practice
of what their bodies have learnt on the training pitch.
The thousands of hours of solitary pain,
the sacrifice which has led them,
and them alone, to this -
A nation watching, sharing a pulse
as the clock counts up to the final whistle
when, in an instant, now becomes then.
The moment, whichever way it falls, cast forever,
and theirs to carry for the rest of their lives
until, like those who've passed through
this crucible before, they too will join
the soil, the tir, the pridd of this land
they were prepared to fight and suffer for.
An early version of this poem below, which uses RS Thomas' 'Song at the Year's Turning' as a model, was printed in the Wales v Scotland match programme, February 12 2012:
Song at the Year’s Turning
After R.S. Thomas
The Millennium Stadium Cardiff,
Midnight, New Year’s Eve 2011/2012
The firework’s cannon-echo fades, the rocket’s falling star decays
as first with seconds, then minutes the year begins to carve its ways.
The pitch grass is pale and short, dew-damp underfoot,
the blades coaxed by low-suspended lamps further from their roots.
Everything is to come, the stadium a vessel, the quiet a settled dust,
a stillness anticipating the violence of a match day’s lust.
The stands of seats are a crucible of voices, everything still to say,
a hundred exit men between them, running their lives away.
The soundscape of a cave, dripping in the night. Or a winter wood
where every creak and sigh suggests the ear of tooth or blood.
A single bird takes flight across the opened roof as if lifting from a bough,
its feathers lit, as bright as a sub breaking from touch like the breaking of a vow.
A blessing? Perhaps. For seasons and matches also have their grace,
not only turning but returning too, beginning at the same beginning place.
We are grown from memory but alive only now, our past breaths upon the wind.
Whatever has been done, though there, is gone; whoever sinned,
whoever won, is recalled and forgotten here, where glory, bruise and blame
will all be washed away by now. The new grass shall purge us in its flame.
BBC Wales (March 17 2012):