A poetry workshop with children from local schools was held at the Retracing Footsteps exhibition in Betws-y-Coed. I was asked to assemble a book of the poems from the materials created at the workshop.
The children had written and drawn on pages from the contemporary visitors book using pencils. Unfortunately a lot of this was tricky to use as the children had rested on soft furniture meaning the pencil often pierced the page or was too light to use directly.
The solution was to take all the scraps of paper children had written random lines on, and collage landscapes for each of the children’s poems along with any elements they had drawn.
There was a group poem and this led this collage assembling the scraps of paper to create the Yr Wyddfa skyline. This mix of words, images and the landscape, in much the same way as pasting the Victorian visitor book texts onto the 3D landscape, offers an intriguing way to read the landscape and learn of the viewpoints of its users.
Printed copies were given to each child and I hand made three copies for the schools and one large format version for use at future workshops.
Here are a sample of pages and the book’s introduction below them.
These poems are a celebration of Yr Wyddfa, of imagination, and of the voices of children from local schools: Ysgol Dolwyddelan, Ysgol Betws y Coed, and Ysgol Capel Garmon.
Under the gentle guidance of poet Casia Wiliam, pupils took part in a special poetry workshop at Betws y Coed (March 2025), inspired by the Retracing Footsteps exhibition, led by the University of Chester. This project looks at how
people have historically connected with Yr Wyddfa through writing, poetry and drawings in Victorian visitor books, which were found in summit huts at the top of the mountain during the 19th Century.
During the workshop, the children were given prompts to spark their creativity. Some had climbed the mountain before, others hadn’t – but that didn’t matter. They used their senses, their memories, and their imaginations to bring the mountain to life in words.
It’s important for us, as organisations who help care for this place, to listen to what the next generation thinks and feels about Yr Wyddfa. These poems are not just reflections they’re reminders that this mountain belongs to them too.
We hope you enjoy this collection as much as we’ve enjoyed putting it together.