Well-known published Tenby Poet Nicky Lloyd recently had what he feels was an absolute privilege and honour, of performing his poetry at the UK Premiere of Internationally renowned Composer and Pianist Javier Rodriguez’s new work ‘Unique Moments’ at St Mary’s Church Putney, London.

Aptly entitled ‘Unique Moments’ it was, in fact, a unique moment that led to Nicky meeting Javier back in July, after Nicky attended Javier’s wonderful ‘Handmade’ concert at the Acapela Studios in Cardiff.

On leaving the concert Nicky, who was staying in Cardiff due to work commitments, spoke to Javier to express his thanks for what he felt was a mesmerizing performance.

Thinking no more about it, Nicky visited a bar for a quick ‘Nightcap’ before retiring to prepare for his input to a conference the next day.

Lo and behold, Javier, who was waiting for his transport back to London, entered the bar and Nicky, with all the ‘Tenby cheek of the Devil’ asked Javier to join him!

There ensued a conversation about what Javier was working on next during which he explained that his forthcoming project ‘Unique Moments’ would include music scores composed to poetry and he was still several poems shy of the ten, or so, he hoped to include in the project.

As quick as a flash, Nicky advised Javier that he is a published poet with a body of work numbering over 250 poems, to which Javier kindly responded with a request to read some. Nicky had many of his poems stored in his phone and sat back while Javier perused Nicky’s carefully selected pieces. When a silence fell, after Javier had read five poems, Nicky feared the worst, expecting Javier to politely and kindly declare that they were not the sort of poems he was looking for.

Javier finally broke the momentary silence with these words: “Nicky, they are absolutely beautiful, breath-taking even, I would love to use some of your poems for the ‘Unique Moments’ project.

Between that first meeting and the UK premiere of the new works Javier and Nicky maintained contact and engaged in several conversations and Nicky wrote a brand new poem for the performance based on what Nicky felt was his own “Unique Moment” back during the lengthiest shutdown of the Pandemic, when local, national and global travel was all but banned, and, in the Moment, whilst walking alone, and being the only person, on the North Beach in Tenby, Nicky felt that he could hear, see, smell, and even taste Mother Nature repairing herself.

So back in late July, Nicky presented Javier with the poem ‘Mother’ and Javier duly selected it as one of two poems that would feature in the live concerts and the finished project.

Fast forward to Wednesday, December 6: Nicky arrived at St Mary’s Church Putney to be advised, by Javier, that his poetry recitals/performance, entitled Le Griot (French for The Poet, The Storyteller, or Bard) in the programme, would close the main body of the show.

The whole show proved to be absolutely breath-taking and after a post concert drink with Javier, and his incredibly talented team of musicians and singers, Javier later messaged Nicky to say “Such a beautiful reading Nicky, I knew, beyond all doubt, that this was going to work, we have to work together and record together in 2024”

Nicky explained that the experience of performing his poems to a music score written specifically for those poems was an incredible experience and Javier’s love of his work is truly humbling from a man who Nicky considers a musical genius.

She is not sad when she cries,

She is beautiful.

She is a tear upon a fractured river, a drop upon the sting of a cracked lip.

She is a dance of the children,

collecting her tears like diamonds

and seeing their face, in hers,

for the first time,

looking back with a smile,

sipping the crystalline that ran so still,

when her eyes were dry.

She will cry sometimes,

where no reason or rhyme,

swells the pregnant river,

when somewhere else

she dulls her shine.

She is not sad, when her tears run dry,

when her shine beats down and

chars the greens to brown,

for somewhere yearns her warmth,

the sky reach corn, to feed the

ageing fallen and the newly born,

and to shed her Spring robes

for her Summer dresses, to pin her

colours to the mast with her

mermaids’ tresses.

She will thaw, somewhere,

the frozen lake, and she will

mop each brow where her

new dawn breaks, in her unbroken

skies her smile will shine, until

her playful clouds play pantomime,

in shapes and dances, across her blues,

and treads, her pebbled stalls in her

tap-dance shoes, and, somewhere, a child

will run with glee into her sea.

She is not sad when her thunder roars,

she clears her throat and slams her doors,

she is mad, not sad, with the air she breathes,

from the man whose footprint never leaves.

And her rolling hills and bitter pills,

she swallows in her horizons, with tea and

tainted tastes, of a senseless waste, she will

conjure tears, to douse her fears, and

cleanse her burning vessel, that sails

somewhere, inside her head, but sits,

marooned, a dusty riverbed,

barely alive, but a tear from death,

but before she dies,

she will be sad,

when she cries.