The First Branch by Gareth Prior

Description

The First Branch is a fusion of Pembrokeshire myth and family elegy, centred on a few hundred yards of the West Wales coast on St Bride’s Bay. The title sequence deconstructs two stop-frame moments from the tale of Pwyll and Rhiannon in the White Book of Rhydderch, exploding them into narrative fractals that each contain the whole myth. Around this, individual lyrics play with different frequencies of loss along the same stretch of coastline. Language belongs as much to the dead as to the living, and every echo dissolves in the indifferent sea.  

Gareth Prior is the author of Scattered Ashes (Oystercatcher, 2020), ibant obscuri (KFS, 2019), and Erinys: three studies (Oystercatcher, 2015). By day, he is Finance Bursar and Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford, and a trustee of The Poetry Society.