 I'm Gillian Clark, I read poetry, poetry's been my entire working life. That's how I stopped my day, penning ink, I love it, and maybe a poem will occur to me. My auntie Phyllis took me to see every new production of Shakespeare from when I was 10 years old. That was the start of it. I sent some poems off to Poetry Wales, and they accepted them and they rung me up and said, Who are you? And I had poems in Poetry Wales in every issue for quite a while and eventually the first book. I love reading to an audience, primary schools, secondary schools, once my poems were eventually included on the GCSE and they're still there now I think, answer their questions, and they taught me things about my poems that I had not noticed myself. I am very aware of the world beyond this beautiful, quiet place. I hear about things happening, catastrophes in many places. Those sort of things, it gets language going in my head. Wales is the home of poetry and so it was an extraordinary honour to be asked to be the national poet, I must say. I took that job seriously and thought I have to do things, I have to make changes, I have to put Wales on the map, I have to work for Wales, and I took every invitation. So every single poem I've ever written is me telling you something true as I can. It's in the blood and that's it. Bach at St David's. In spring, 15 centuries ago, the Age of Saints and Stones and Holy Wells, a blackbird sang its oratorio in the fan vaulted canopy of the trees. Before Bach, before walls, before bells, cantatas, choirs, cloisters, clear stories. The audience holds its breath when the soprano like a bird in the forest long ago sings the great cathedral into being. And apps to nave it calls back echoing till orchestra and choir in harmony break on the stones like the sea. And listen, out there at the edge of spring among the trees a blackbird answering.