We have
captured so much of folklore and legend as we roved through North
and South, finding rich native warmth amongst quaint and homely people.
The sweet smell of a peat fire still caught in some olden areas.
We are, all of us, partly, the products of where we were born,
and there is a danger that, as we age, we become trapped in the environment
into which we were wombed. "Born Welsh" can become "stage-Welsh".
The Irish, the Scots, the English can be insular or peninsular.
"I'm a local boy, bred an' born!" can mark the man
who can't see beyond the Preselis.
Roy Gaveston-Knight is a citizen of wherever he
is and, just now, he lives among the Preseli Hills. Rapidly, he is
becoming a Pembrokeshire man. Neither born nor bred here, he lives,
with his wife, Mary, in what he calls, "the beautiful Preseli National
Park". This new environment for has been a new inspiration
for his mental, physical and creative energy.
Bringing with him to Pembrokeshire his reputation
as "a Warwickshire Poet" and his collections of verse and prose writings
of a lifetime elsewhere, he spends hours sketching, writing, lecturing
and preaching as he captures for himself and for others the joy that he
feels in his adopted "down-below" land.
On my desk, as I write, I have "Blithesome
Sketches" - a first edition folio "of specialist prints from original artworks"
by Roy Gaveston- Knight.
In a blue folder beside it, I have "Voices in the Harp"
- a collection of poems "of a Warwickshire poet in Wales".
They complement the already published "Blithe Musings" dedicated
to Mary - "fellow rambler and boon companion" - and "Green Warwickshire",
written and published almost 40 years ago.
Once a pupil of R.A. Childs, R.A., and, still an indefatigable
draughtsman, this "retired" minister, poet, artist, is a driven man.
Taking new energies from the ancient hills around Tegryn that have
inspired the native Welsh throughout their history, he just refuses
to be a retired anything.
Younger than his years by a half a century, and
with twenty years more of living in other places to widen his wisdom
and to raise his eyes to even higher hills, Roy Gaveston-Knight
now qualifies for me as a Pembrokeshire poet. It is a pleasure
to place all the writings and drawings that he has so kindly given me in
my growing library of the writings of Pembrokeshire people "bred and born".
Gordon, Lord Parry
