Description
Companion to East of the Astra and Preswylfa
About the Author
Russell Jones (Ronelly) was born in Tradega South Wales and lived with his mother in poverty, they lived like recluses, and mental illness showed its head and he missed a lot of schooling. When Ronelly was eleven he went to live in a special children’s home called Preswylfa, what was then an Oberservation and Assessment centre, where a care order was made and mental illness reared its head again. He lived in Preswylfa until he was seventeen when he went to live in Swansea to study art and English language as a condition. After chopping and diving, moved to Cardiff where Ronelly first exhibited his paintings and illustrations in a one man show in a popular nightclub. After Cardiff he went to live in Germany and next exhibited in Stuttgart in the south. Later he lived in Berlin for a while and made another show, but was unsuccessful and returned to England. Soon after he had a very serious mental breakdown and diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and prescribed very strong medicine but at first made him even worse, but after a lot of trials and experiments came to where he is today, better than he was and stable although still hearing voices and suffers from chronic depression. Ronelly manages to keep creative whether it painting, composing music or writing poetry or prose, the latter being a new passion that he has taken on and seems to be more prevalent in the last couple of years though he has exhibitive jointly in a mental health facility in Hove and Brighton over the last few years. Ronelly has read some of his poems on a local radio station and published them in a local magazine….
Book Extract
The News from My Fridge I
Effervescent Skulls in the undergrowth waiting to be discovered until a lower disposition sucks them down into clay. In my dreams I know what its like to walk in an empty city, desertion of person and beast, the total evacuation abandonment of possessions, the lights left on, a charade of twinkling lights, swaying back and forth on the Christmas spider web.
Rewind the dream on tape and see and feel the fear. In my old room I wonder why they have all gone.
There is no damage or disaster no end of the world, no war, or meteorite to chase the poor people away from the hill, vale, valley, empty as they have always been. Fields with scarecrow stuffed blindly hung on crucifix. The air is crisp, sharp as glass, unmoved, still as a shocked rabbit in the middle of a yellow striped road, eyes reflecting light.
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