Read on Twitter
I found a nice time to explore @Triaglog 's ode to our relationship with home & migration. It’s a picture book whose words weave as much magic as the pictures. Join me & this family as we travel from rural Wales to America #TNNO2021 #lovereading @Books_Wales @LlyfrauCymru (1/10)
The cover introduces us to a family looking up perhaps waiting to board the ship (or the title). Look closely & you’ll see a mixture of feelings. Also, note the bundle that the child’s both parents hold together. Are its colours mirrored elsewhere on the cover? (2/10)
A double-page spread greets us as the narrative journey begins. A stream guides our eye down to the shore. Birds fly from left to right & wind-shaped hawthorns lean. A family lives ‘amongst’ the elements. Quilt colours remain. The last, written resonates & will echo later (3/10)
From wind-swept rich colours to a tonal subduing of the landscape, winter arrives & the family tire. A pair of swallows leave for warmer climes. Here, we’re asked to look down on the home, powerless & hidden in the snow. There’s little pause between grey sea & sky here (4/10)
The palette darkens &, as rain drives us onwards, the land’s barrenness reveals itself. ‘Rough’,’shrunk’,’hungry’,’rarely’ mirror the hardships of living off & on the land. A shrinking, dreamy frame distances us from the family. Is there something better over the horizon? (5/10)
Finally, we are invited into this tiny cottage. Damp clothes hang draped over the peat-fire. As the child plays with her peg figures, her parents craft. Mam is singing as she sowing, threading into the quilt a story of her family and home. (6/10)
The quilt balloons, globe-like & pregnant with ripples of red thread. It carries dreams & song & hopes. As it grows, so the furniture in the cottage disappears (the child is sheltered from the why). As the family begin a new chapter, 3 swallows return where there’d been 2 (7/10)
Several pages on, we find the family at sea. On the recto there tiny ship cuts through a deep ocean & again we look down upon them. The journey may seem endless (emphasised by lack of horizon & double-page bleed) but I feel hopeful; we’re closer to reaching that next page (8/10)
On the voyage, the child is sick with hiraeth (a longing for home). Mam wraps her in the quilt. Each piece, each thread carries in it the curve of a valley, a twist of a stream, the ripple of water over stone. Its warmth soothes her & she realises that home is quilt-woven (9/10)
Several pages on, the family has settled in a new land. Lines echo from that first spread. Rolling hills replace the rolling waves of the sea. The land is rich here yet the quilt hanging beneath the sun's warmth reminds us that we inhabit hiraeth as it inhabits us. (10/10)
