… after watching a BBC Wales programme called Rugby: Poetry in Motion (thanks to BBC iPlayer). Five Welsh poets were commissioned to write poems about the positions in a rugby team (rugby union, of course); they spoke about them for the camera, and the poems were read over footage of the Welsh squad training for the World Cup last year.

It was a lovely programme, combining two of the things I’m most passionate about (with some good background music too), and it made me miss my country very much. How can I not love the fact that I’m from a place which values rugby and poetry equally as art forms?

What’s hiraeth? the non-Welsh among you may wonder. Well, the word doesn’t have a direct translation. It’s sometimes translated as homesickness but that doesn’t sum up the whole feeling of longing and nostalgia that hiraeth encompasses, and that I found myself feeling this evening.