A new poetry and visual art exhibition that explores protest, resistance and collective hope has opened Resistance is Fertile, created by Narberth Poets, is currently showing in the Tower Gallery, Oriel y Parc, St Davids, and runs until February 22nd. Entry is free.
The exhibition brings together poetry and linked artworks responding to social and environmental injustice, placing poetry not as an after thought, but as intervention. Six poets: Bean Sawyer, Jane Campbell, Jackie Biggs, Jean Riley, Christian Donovan and Emma Baines, have all produced new work since the exhibition’s first showing at Narberth Museum last summer.
Alongside the visual pieces, the exhibition now includes an audio installation featuring poetry readings by five additional writers: Dave Urwin, Mel Perry, Mark Lewis, Luise Thomas and Jai Wu Li. The result is an immersive space that invites visitors to slow down and engage with the world as it is, and as it could become. The poets describe the project as an act of resistance against silence. Resistance is Fertile argues that poetry can still sow the seeds of social change and keep hope alive.
A reading will take place in the gallery on Saturday January 24th at 1pm, with all welcome.
The exhibition is already well reviewed with Professor Emerita Menna Elfyn, President of Wales PEN Cymru, saying “a powerful exhibition… poetry as resistance against silence – and such beauty too – bearing witness – a reminder of what is happening in Gaza.” and Kate Sherringer of North Pembrokeshire Amnesty Group shared “really powerful and very moving,” adding that the poems “did what poems should – brought me up short.”.Writer Diana Powell praised the “great variety” poetry and visual art.
Resistance is Fertile is on at Tower Gallery, Oriel y Parc, St Davids, until February 22nd. More information can be found via the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park website and the Narberth Poets social media pages.
They are continually adding new pieces and looking for new venues for the exhibition.
More info on the exhibition can be found here.
Poems from Resistance is Fertile, Poetry as Protest Exhibition, Jan/Feb 2026
Beyond Kyiv
by Christian Donovan
A beam bridges the divide between
bloodshed and escape. Balanced on it
a flak-jacket cradles an AK47,
narrows his eyes across the flatness
as far as the eastern horizon. Camouflaged
beside him, a second soldier crouches,
holds in his arms a mite of a child.
Legs dangle from a blue-flowered coat,
a white bobble on her pink hat declares
non-combatant.
Her round face concentrates,
trusts he will not let go until other hands are sure
to catch her. She spreads her fingers,
reaches for broad shoulders.
Who owns the land?
by Jackie Biggs
An old man keeps a small handful of soil
from his granddaughter’s grave in his pocket.
He will nurture seeds in that clasp of earth
and new trees will grow in memory of her.
In one hundred years when his trees bear fruit,
no-one will know the soil was from her grave.
Who will own the land, then?
Who will own the land where his trees grow?
Who will own the land where generations
produced food to nourish their children,
where olive trees have grown for millennia,
where sun bakes the surface
where blinding dust flies into eyes,
who will own that land?
Those who sent tanks that wreck the groves
or whose ancestors lie beneath the soil
and whose children’s bombed and broken bodies
are buried there?
Peace Tank
by Bean Sawyer
Imagine exploding each other with joy,
blowing our socks off with appreciation,
bursting in with arms so wide
they could scoop everyone up.
Firing missiles of words that make us feel
brighter; like this day is the best day
because we are here together, because
despite everything, this world is beautiful.
Play your pipes.
Let your doves fly.
Let us all thunder with love.
A Weed Manifesto
by Emma Baines
We are petals of common folk, open,
we turn our blooms to the light. We are
violet, columbine, celandine, vetch.
Self-seeded settlers, indigenous
to being. Our instinct is to flourish—
dog rose, knapweed, stitchwort, flax.
We challenge your regime of forks and boots,
your exertion of force on our nature. Our roots
resist hoeing, mowing, digging or bigging
up the tamping down of anything organic.
We aerate your reactive compaction,
go with the flow of earthworms. Our ground is
friable, though never crumbles or clags,
it won’t comply to the shape of your fist.
We are
daisy and tansy and bluebell and foxglove;
meadowsweet and bladder campion.
We are
horehound, cuckooflower, goldenrod, clover.
We are selfheal
rising, the heart of the earth.
If you could see from here
by Jean Riley
She glides with a fisheye lens to the cupola. Traces the rolling
curve of Earth – a marble under broken fleece – from the thin blue line
to stars wide-eyed on black and the Aurora’s wild organza.
She came to see further but keeps looking back. At the Goldilocks’
planet’s precarious chemistry, that a million ‘clicks’ will not reveal.
You have to be here – to see, to feel – she thinks. Hair billowing
in micro-gravity, she drinks with a straw before work begins:
exercise regimes, experiments with chilli seeds, interviews
with journalists, asking how she eats, sleeps, if she’s lonely.
She’ll smile, say, that’s a very good question, and give one answer:
if you could see from here, you’d know your planet’s singular,
borderless beauty, its fragility, the consequences of neglect.
She lingers, slips feet from tethers, closes shutters, makes all
safety-checks; turns and spirals to the day’s routine as her crucifix
floats, tilts, oscillates, on its delicate rippling chain.
Dyke Wedding
by Jane Campbell
Marry me because our wedding
will punch a fat hole in patriarchy.
Marry my money, I want your kids to have the lot.
Marry my night terrors, my family story
of the dreaded dementia. I’m sixty and I don’t want to
put my tongue in anyone else’s mouth. Before you,
love was self-soothing, getting high or a duty.
You taught me sex wasn’t a job
or simply singing skin
but home to be recognised in.
Marry my naked biddy-body tattooed
with skin dangles, scuffs and scars.
I can forgive all your flaws,
they are not only yours.
I’m sorry you get my wiry chin, cellulite
and jowls but I know now how to love you.
I will be low notes on your piano, make my life inside
your warm home of careful concern. Marry me,
sweet-hearted woman, because love
is still something we can learn.
