Read a poem penned by former National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke

Since it is the first Sunday in March, as well as being the second day of Karen’s month-long Reading Wales 2025 event, I will share a poem written by Gillian Clarke about the joys of rising early one Sunday morning in her Cyncoed home, a community in the northeast of Cardiff where residents enjoy stunning views of the surrounding mountains. Thanks to some brilliant detective work by Josie Holford at RattleBag and Rhubarb, I can now tell you that Sunday appears in the collection ‘Letter from a Far Country‘, which was first published by Carcanet Press in 1982.

For the benefit of A-level Literature students, Gillian made the following remarks about this work on her official website:

“This poem is a detailed description of the pleasures of getting up early on a spring Sunday morning in Cyncoed, a leafy suburb of Cardiff, of enjoying the sunshine and silence before the family wake up. Then I turn to the newspapers, and the world’s news of war, famine, cruelty, terrorism, bring the shadow of a warning to spoil the morning’s simple joy.”

Sunday by Gillian Clarke

Getting up early on a Sunday morning

leaving them sleep for the sake of peace,

the lunch pungent, windows open

for a blackbird singing in Cyncoed.

Starlings glistening in the gutter come

for seed. I let the cats in from the night,

their fur already glossed and warm with March.

I bring the milk, newspaper, settle here

in the bay of the window to watch people

walking to church for Mothering Sunday.

A choirboy holds his robes over his shoulder.

The cats jump up on windowsills to wash

and tremble at the starlings. Like peaty water

sun slowly fills the long brown room.

Opening the paper I admit to this

the water-shriek and starved stare

of a warning I can’t name.

Categories: Reading Wales

Tags: #ReadingWales, #ReadingWales25, Dewithon25, Gillian Clarke, Poetry, Welsh Poetry, Welsh Poets