THE DYNAMIC / SEBASTIAN BRUNO
Abertillery, November 26 2015
“You ask about the paper called Dynamic. It was conceived a year or so
ago somewhere between the coast of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. I was on
holiday with a friend of mine who also churns out words and we decided that we might churn some out in Blaenau Gwent, the area we live in, and see what would happen. Four months later – give or take a few days peppered with swearing as I learnt the intricacies of basic design – the first issue appeared, a tentative exercise picked up at 7am from the print works and released without warning in one of the most deprived areas of post-industrial Wales.
If you think doing a paper is easy work, try getting up each day and producing, between two people, the equivalent of a small book each fortnight. Yet the pleasure you get when those batches of new papers are loaded on the van – that’s special, and you work your soul out to achieve it. There’s nothing quite like watching the dawn rising on distribution day as you make your way towards the print-works, or getting back and having a pint or five in your favourite pub as people read words you worked hard to get out all around you. It’s a different scenario I know, but referring back to Auden again I find myself thinking rather of the end of the film “Night Mail” when “The climb is done”, and “Men are longing for news” – there’s a descent into the new day that seems as exhilarating to me now as the arrival of the train must have felt to those postal workers almost 80 years ago. That is worth working for, if nothing else.”
Julian Meek
Editor