Hiraeth

Creating the bittersweet sense of nostalgia, longing and connection to place or homeland in your writing.

I am drawn to words in other languages that say something about the human experience that might be hard to explain in English. If you are curious, here is a website full of them: Eunoia: Words That Don’t Translate. These can be interesting concepts to express in writing or prompts in themselves.

Aiming to align my creative writing workshops and writing here, I have picked five such words as themes for the next five weeks to create prompts and exercises around. I thought I’d pick from different cultures, but for now, I’m being drawn to Welsh words as this is my home culture - I was born in and grew up in Swansea, but left in 1990 when I was 18 to go to university and have lived in south east England since.

And so, the first word is one that I am familiar with and have spent time thinking about during the years:

Hiraeth

meaning a deep and nostalgic longing for a time, place or person that you can no longer see or touch. It is wistful, melancholic and can encompass grief. It is often linked with a homeland or home you can never return to or maybe one that never was. It represents a sense of belonging, connection and familiarity and is rooted in Welsh culture.

It is a poetic word and one found in the poetry of fourteenth century Dafydd ap Gwilym, who declared it the Son of Memory, the Son of Intention, the Son of Grief and the Son of Enchantment.

It was also used to entice Welsh emigrants back to their homeland in the nineteenth century. Welsh people would send postcards of places in Wales to their relatives who had decamped to America, New Zealand and Australia to create that sense of longing and homesickness. It worked - between 1870 and 1914, about 40% of Welsh emigrants returned to Wales, a much higher percentage than the rest of Britain, and it has been claimed that this is due to hiraeth.

I have always felt a connection to Welsh culture and stories. Despite not growing up in a Welsh speaking family, I did an A Level in Welsh Language and wrote dissertations responding to Welsh literature for my first degree and my MA in Creative Writing. And I sometimes feel as if the Wales that exists in my imagination does not match the real place as it is now. This, I feel, is hiraeth.

When we create a place, setting or world in the stories we are writing, whether memoir or fiction, we are creating our imagined version of that place, even if it is a real place - it might not be the same as someone else experiences it. And this we can never visit, except in our minds, except in our writing. Show me the place as you see it. Describe it with all of your senses. Hone in on tiny details.

This is an excerpt from a story I was writing in 2012, when I used hiraeth as a starting point for the feeling I wanted to create:

I hold onto the supermarket trolley with one hand and rub my swollen belly with the other. My belly is so big it seems to be separate from me, sticking out in front, unbalanced. I struggle to steer the trolley in a straight line; my belly making it impossible to get close enough.

Standing in front of a stack of gold Lindt bunnies, I pick one up, smooth the ears, and put it down again. “Eggs,” I tell myself, and not the chocolate sort. I need to stay focused and stick to the list. Every small task is taking longer and getting harder. The baby, heavy inside me is pushing down, squirming, shooting shivers of pain through the tops of my thighs.

“It’s going to be a girl.”

“What?” I say, turning to the voice, even though I heard clearly. I am used to people talking to me in public places, touching my bump, smiling at me, saying not long now. But pronouncing the gender of my unborn baby, right here in the middle of the supermarket as if it was fact. That is another thing.

The strong, accented voice is coming from an older woman with wrinkles set deep in her skin. She is small; the top of her head is no higher than my chest, with springy curls, the ends of which are a faded auburn.

She spreads her blue-veined, knuckled fingers on my bump. I flinch as they pass over my protruding and sensitive belly button.

“Yes, most certainly a girl. Another five days and she’ll be here, love her.” I stare down at this woman as tears catch in my throat, for her voice takes me to the kitchen of my Nana on a Sunday morning. The radio playing Welsh choral music, the warm vanilla smell of baking, the quiet hiss and glug of coffee percolating.

“You sound like my Nana. Are you Swansea?”

“Yes,” she looks at me as if I am taking her to another place, as if I might be someone she knew once, and then she opens her mouth for a big, white, straight false teeth smile.  “60 years I’ve been here. I left when I was 23. Still visit my sister in Ystradgynlais twice a year on the train. She’s in a home now. You?”

“I left a few years ago.”

“You don’t sound Swansea, mind.”

“Haven’t been back for ages. Too long.”

“No matter how long ago you left, it never lets you go. Do me a favour, cariad. Reach the sugar for me, there’s a good girl.”

I stretched up and pointed at packets of sugar until a nod confirms I’ve identified the right one.

“Thank you. Never forget.”

I shake my head as she looks down at her list and walks off, afraid that if I try to speak, the tears would start to come and not stop.

Writing invitation

Make a list of places where you’ve lived, felt connected to or as if you belonged. Pick one to describe with all of your senses. Write in the first person, present tense as if you are there and as if you are scanning the scene with a panoramic camera. Then:

Write about the place at midnight. 

Write about it in a thunderstorm.

Write about it in a heatwave. 

Write about it as if you are leaving for a long time.

Write about it as if you are returning after a long time.

What do you miss about that place? What are you nostalgic for?

Feel free to leave your writing in the comments for me and others to read.

Links to more writing about hiraeth:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/09/18/dreaming-in-welsh/

https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2021/03/hiraeth/

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