Heartland - Penfro Festival Anthology

This collection brings together the twelve winning short stories and twenty-one winning poems from the 2019 Penfro Festival competition. Editor Niall Griffiths refers to the collection as evidence of the writers’ drive to grapple with the fundamentals of being human. These include grief, loss and fear, and they are confronted with skill, honesty and even humour. The title (and winning) poem by Elizabeth Wilson Davies sets the tone, with its speaker reflecting on a shared life with a partner no longer present. In Kathy Miles’ ‘Summoning’, the mourned figure does not appreciate being called back by memory, and memory is indeed not always to be treasured, as we find in both David McVey’s story ‘Everything Pie’ and Ben Wildsmith’s ‘Table for One’, although the final paragraph of the latter has a twinkle of hope. The traumas of stillbirth and miscarriage give rise to two intense stories which make clear how difficult and misunderstood these experiences can be for women. Kelly Van Nelson’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ is an indictment of bullying as part of male culture, mapping the desolation of Miles in an equally bleak Australian landscape. The grief of twelve-year-old Peter in Steve Wade’s story seems to be heading to the same disaster but draws back from the brink. A more nuanced exploration of masculine attitudes is found in the fine poem ‘Your Father’s Father had Eyes Like Yours’ by Phil Jones. There is a great sense of place, and you can feel and smell the house and garden in ‘The Tenant Joneses’ (by Morgan Davies), along with the low-level menace of landlord Gwyn. Another degree of rural darkness is found in the terrific Gothic horror of ‘The Islanders’ by Julie Ann Rees. Set against this, and perhaps all the more striking for its different tone, is the brilliant, hilarious ‘ Vaj-Nut Hut’ by Estelle Birdy. Naomi and Sonia are Dublin girls, not too far from the two friends in Edna O’Brien’s early novels, but these two are in post-crash Ireland. Having faced losses and trials in their young lives not dissimilar from those in some of the other stories, these two are indomitable. They are at Dublin City Council’s Business Boost Unit and Naomi could take on a whole ‘Dragons Den’ single-handed. The dialogue is full of life, showing their friendship and spirit, culminating in Naomi’s outrageous pitch. Although Estelle Birdy (from her biography) is more of a beginner than many in the anthology she is certainly a name to look out for in the future. Heartland is an interesting collection which shows a range of creative talent in both poetry and storytelling. -- Caroline Clark @ www.gwales.com