Blog

During each residency, guests will publish blog entries through which the interested public will be able to track their journey through the locations included in the project.

Ulysses's Shelter 1 (2018/2019) residents: Christos Armando Gezos, Greece, poetry; Lena Kallergi, Greece, poetry; Vasileia Oikonomou, Greece, poetry; Thanos Gogos, Greece, poetry; Lara Mitraković, Croatia, poetry; Jasmina Mujkić, Croatia, poetry; Goran Čolakhodžić, Croatia, poetry; Antej Jelenić, Croatia, poetry; Urška Kramberger, Slovenia, poetry; Denis Škofič, Slovenia, poetry; Aljaž Koprivnikar, Slovenia, poetry; Katja Gorečan, Slovenia, poetry.
 
Ulysses's Shelter 2 (2020/2022) residents: Maja Klarić, Croatia, poetry; Maja Ručević, Croatia, translation; Dino Pešut, Croatia, prose; Marija Andrijašević, Croatia; prose & poetry; Katja Grcić, Croatia, poetry; Josip Ivanović, Croatia, translation; Eluned Gramich, Wales, prose; Steven Hitchins, Wales, poetry; Lloyd Markham, Wales, prose; Elan Grug Muse, Wales, prose; Dylan Moore, Wales, prose & non-fiction travel writing; Morgan Owen, Wales, poetry; Maša Seničić, Serbia, poetry; Nataša Srdić, Serbia, translation; Danilo Lučić, Serbia, prose; Goran Stamenić, Serbia, prose; Katarina Mitrović, Serbia, poetry & prose; Vitomirka Trebovac, Serbia, poetry & prose; Dejan Koban, Slovenia, poetry; Davorin Lenko, Slovenia, prose; Katja Zakrajšek, Slovenia, translation; Tomo Podstenšek, Slovenia, prose, novel & short stories; Uroš Prah, Slovenia, poetry & translation; Ana Svetel, Slovenia, poetry & prose; Thomas Tsalapatis, Greece, prose; Marilena Papaioanou, Greece, prose; Dimitris Karakitsos, Greece, poetry; Filia Kanellopoulou, Greece, poetry; Nikolas Koutsodontis, Greece, poetry; Iakovos Anyfantakis, Greece, prose.
 
Ulysses's Shelter 3 (2022/2023) residents: Sven Popović, Croatia, prose, translation; Marina Gudelj, Croatia, prose; Tibor Hrs Pandur, Slovenia, poetry & translation; Ajda Bračič, Slovenia, pose; Sergej Harlamov, Slovenia, poetry; Tonia Tzirita Zacharatou, Greece, poetry; Marios Chatziprokopiou, Greece, poetry; Ivana Maksić, Serbia, poetry; Ognjen Aksentijević, Serbia, poetry & prose; Jake Butttigieg, Malta, poetry, prose & translation; Matthew Schembri, Malta, poetry, prose & translation; Jan Škrob, Czech Republic, poetry & translation; Marek Torčik, Czech Republic, poetry & prose; Esyllt Angharad Lewis, Wales, translation & prose; Ruqaya Izzidien, Wales, translation.

 

Marek Torčík: Soon All This Will Be a Picturesque Ruin

It was foretold already by an ad plastered on the back of a seat on my EasyJet flight to Manchester. Make OMG Memories sounded like an omen then, soft whispers from whatever gods there are, promising good times. I took a picture and now, all that remains of my two weeks in Wales is just my memory of it.

 

I had no idea what to do before meeting my co-resident Ajda and catching our train to Caernarfon, so I just walked around Manchester for a couple of hours. When we eventually met, the first train we boarded was somehow the wrong one. Either it was my fault, or one should never trust the employees of any train station. When we found the right train, our coach was so packed, I had my face pressed against the door to the bathroom. There were so many people that the train conductor’s voice came roaring down the intercom, saying those without assigned seats ought to get off and wait for the next service.

            I looked at Ajda, she looked back at me, and we both stayed where we were.

In contrast, our place in Caernarfon was almost too idyllic. The small white cottage sat in a valley just on the outskirts of the town, cut off from the nearby road by trees and a wildflower field guarded by chickens roaming freely around. At night, I could hear the cries of Afon Seiont river, bird song woke me up. Back in Prague, it would be sirens and drunk people screaming in the middle of the night.

            Later, we learned the location used to be a slate factory making tablets for schools. The current owners rebuilt everything from ruins, starting a workshop, converting camper vans. There was an overnight parking lot for motorhomes, along with accommodation for tourists like me.

            On the first night, we found a cycling path lined by gorse bushes and overgrown grass. It led us straight to the centre of Caernarfon and I saw the newly renovated castle for the first time. It was flooded in blue light, making it the only thing still visible in the dark.

            I soon found out there was almost no escape from its constant gaze. Built by Edward I. partly to remind Welsh people of their new king, of the fact they were no longer free, it looms over the town, sneaking into any picture.

            “Sometimes, I just want to tear it down to be honest,” somebody said to me one day.

 

I applied for the residency because I wanted to find time, hoping mostly that I will be able to work on my second novel. What I didn’t know was that time melts when it has no clear structure to hold on to.

            Turning tidal, like the sea, it comes in waves.

            For the first time in my life, I had freedom to write and think of nothing but writing. I became so fascinated by this privilege that I completely forgot about the outside world. I guess this is how art becomes separated, grows self-involved – you take it out of time and space, and it turns into just another artefact to put on a shelf, a funny story you tell your friends. All neatly safe and beautiful.

 

It’s hard not to feel ashamed about this.

 

The two weeks in themselves were full of dualities, mirror images, repetitions. Like when we decided one day to walk to Bangor, following the cycling path all the way through, stopping only in Y Felinheli for a while.

            We hoped walking would bring something nicer, something more transcendent than the few trees and the highway it eventually turned into.

            When we finally got to Bangor, the town was almost completely empty. We passed a few boarded-up windows.

            By the time we sat down at the only free table in the back garden of Black Bull, it wasn’t even 3pm and the pub was filled with a distinct wet smell. There were elderly couples drinking, holding hands silently, staring deep into their pints. A man in his thirties just next to us blasted music on his phone. A group of teenage girls, each with a beer of their own, chatted loudly just a few meters next to him. I became occupied for a while with a spider’s nest above my head, but when I looked down, there was a different man in a bright yellow t-shirt standing at what was arguably the best spot in the garden, demanding that the guy there moved. Even though he spoke Welsh, I think I could make out what he was saying, simply because any language tainted with alcohol eventually slips to this deeper, more universal tone.

            Ajda noticed him too. We have both met these men before. They look broken on the outside, but it is in their fragments where anger grows, waiting to lash out.

             He went away, came back again, lighting a massive cigarette each time, blowing out the smoke right into the other man’s face. Later, his partner appeared, wearing a dress of similar colour to his shirt, trying to get him back to their table.

 

 

Perhaps I would forget this experience if I didn’t drag Ajda to Bangor’s Saint Deiniol cathedral just a few moments before. It was completely abandoned except for a choir girl and her teacher, practicing evensong. The girl’s voice sounded so cut off, not woven from the same yarn as this world. It’s the contrast between the two that still lingers in my memory, even now as I write this from the comfort of my home.

I wonder whether it would be easier to speak only of the beautiful things. Describe:

 

the way on Sunday, soft rain reaches for my body

I stick my tongue out, taste the warm

light trickling down from the clouds

later: the thousand tiny ripples on the surface of lake Glaslyn

I lie down while Ajda has her cigarette, watching

a sky not too dissimilar from the surface of water

 

But that is my problem with poetry. I miss writing it, although it no longer feels like it’s enough. Instead, I circle back to a different kind of memory.

            One day, I walked around the town and stopped at Llanbeblig graveyard. The slate tombstones there were overgrown with weeds, some broken so badly you could almost see inside. I picked up my camera and quickly put it down.

            There was a group of kids and a man nearby. He was bulky, lifting gravestones with his tattooed arms, pretending it was heavier than it must have been. The kids screamed each time, scattering around, only to come back quickly, curious to peak in. I noticed one of them carried a plastic bucket and saw a bone sticking out.

            Later, I tried telling this story during a dinner with some of the writers based around Caernarfon, but perhaps I should have kept it to myself. I still think it must have annoyed my hosts and I was quickly overrun by shame.

But why should I remember the beautiful things more and turn my head away from those I perceive as lesser. The painful ones. Why talk more of beauty and less about the pain, the wound that often swells up underneath it.

            The truth is that often, it is beauty itself that is the source of our problems. Like when governments invest millions to renovate castles while real people blur in the shadow of all these picturesque ruins. Landmarks are simply more visible. I learned this already in Prague: beauty gentrifies, drives out all that is alive, until what remains is just memories, postcards for the visitors to share.

And for two weeks, I was part of this problem too.

 

After we returned from Bangor I became more aware of people telling us that the university and tourism there had a negative effect on the town. Driving rent higher, it “priced out people from the areas they grew up in”. Similar thing is happening in Caernarfon, and all over Gwynedd, which has one of the most extreme concentrations of holiday homes and holiday accommodation. A few days before I came here, around a thousand people gathered in the square near the castle to call for affordable housing. One research states that just between the last census in 2011 and 2022, resident population in the area dropped by 3,7%. That is roughly 41 second homes for 1000 homes and this figure doesn’t even include AirBnBs and various holiday lets. The reality is much higher. I found an article on the seaside town called Cwm-yr-Eglwys, claiming that out of 50 properties, only two have permanent residents.

            It feels weird for me to write all of this when I know next to nothing about Wales, having only spent a brief moment there. Why would a Czech writer feel entitled they could ever talk about such things?

            I always laughed at the stories from residencies being all romantic, using the area as a background for unrelated writing. But now, I find myself ashamed and guilty of the same literary tourism. I too have spammed my Instagram with pictures of the castle, the mountains, lambs in the rain. I stayed in a dreamy AirBnB in a place where many locals cannot afford a decent home. Precisely because of people like me. A proper tourist, I walked Yr Wyddfa thinking only of beautiful sceneries, and realised too late that the top is littered with people, waiting to take a selfie.

            I jot down “driven away by beauty” in my notebook and immediately cross the sentence out. As with this text, it’s too pretentious, artificial. Would it be truer to write about the reports of growing child poverty, failing health services and public transport? Brexit haunts any article I try to read. And not only that. On the beach just outside Caernarfon, there is a defunct tractor with a YesCymru sticker and a pro-EU one next to it. Nici, one of the residency organisers, and her partner tell me one day that only some Welsh people want independence, and the media call them nationalists. “We feel more European than British.”

            To be honest, I don’t know what being European means to me anymore, when in my own country, we face the same issues. Even refugees are being turned away just the same as anywhere else, and people claim to protect Czech borders too. I don’t believe writing can change that, but I still promise myself I will always keep trying.

 

 

 

On my last day in Caernarfon, we sat at Anglesey Arms with Ajda, drinking beer and watching the sunset. A seagull plunged from the castle’s walls, dived for a stray fry left on one of the tables, then laughed above our heads, and I ran out of things to say. It was almost dark, there at the end of the day. The castle was clothed again in its signature blue light. Its hue spilled on the cars parked around it, on my and Ajda’s faces. For a minute or two, everything looked the same colour, even the sky and the sea. It was so peaceful. All differences finally erased.


IMPRESSUM

 

Sandorf - publishing house founded in 2008, engaged in Croatian literature and literature in translation, and in a wide range of books in humanities.

 

Center for Research and Promotion of Urban Culture (CIP) is a non-profit association that has existed for twenty years. Established in 1998, it operates in the areas of culture and art, urbanism, youth mobility and social dialogue.

 

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