Catrin Webster and I began each session talking to the whole group about Dylan Thomas. We wanted everyone to know some basic facts about him, and that we could use our eyes and imaginations as Dylan Thomas did. We also asked everyone how long they thought it could take us to make a book.. A year? A month? A week? A day?

When the groups had divided, I began each storytelling session by talking a bit about storytelling (and telling one or two stories) and also exploring some of Dylan Thomas’ characters and story ideas. A lot of people liked the thought of Captain Cat in Under Milk Wood, also the grandfather in one of Dylan Thomas’ stories who thinks he’s driving a cart and horses when he’s in bed at night. The idea of a boathouse set some people thinking and a lot of us liked the Voices of the Drowned. Whose voices could they be today? And when might we hear them? 

The Drowned, some children suggested, would live in shipwrecks at the bottom of the ocean. If these were raised, we would see that the ghost ships of the drowned are crumbling wrecks, pitted with holes but patched where the ghosts of the drowned have pieced into them bits of wood they’ve found from other wrecks. They would also have added other pieces of wood to make their ghost wrecks float. And the ghost ships, when we saw them, would be glinting with gold – the gold that the Drowned had salvaged from the treasure chests lying on the ocean bed.