The internationally renowned poet, author and playwright, who has had work made into a major hollywood film (Resistance), graced the West End stage (The Two Worlds of Charlie F) and won an array of writing awards is no stranger to the phrase best seller.Â
But the man who was given a year of unprecedented access to the Welsh rugby team in 2012 – coinciding with a third RBS 6 Nations Grand Slam in eight years – has entered a new world with his new offering ‘Calon – A Journey to the Heart of Welsh Rugby’.
Sheers, who launched the book on the eve of this year’s 6 Nations Championship just over a fortnight ago, has already entered the top 20 of UK sports books listed by Amazon and is flirting with a top 200 listing in all genres.
It’s early days for predictions but the product of the Welsh Rugby Union’s inaugural Artist in Residence appointment has had sparkling reviews and is keeping a firm hold on Amazon’s highly coveted, top, five star rating.
One commentator, Dylan Hartley writing on Walesartsreview.org, has backed the book to rank highly alongside the author’s other successes.
“Sheers has done it again, repaying the faith shown in him by the WRU’s Roger Lewis and ACW’s Dai Smith, who, on the occasion of his appointment, described Sheers as ‘a proper artist’,” writes Hartley.
“..his poetic credentials run through the book like the stitched seam of an old-fashioned rugby ball, quotes from Keats and Eliot and Yeats…”
The Artist in Residence concept was the brainchild of the WRU’s chief executive Roger Lewis and Arts Council for Wales chairman Dai Smith, neither knew exactly what Sheers would produce after his year-long encampment within Wales national sport headquarters but both will be more than happy with the way Calon has been recieved.
“The ‘heart’ of Welsh rugby to which the subtitle’s journey refers is multi-faceted; it is place, it is people, it is history, tradition, heritage, pride. Sheers, as we might have expected, manages to pull off a book that carefully treads such lines, like a winger timing his run to receive the ball at exactly the moment a space opens up in front of him,” adds Hartley.
“Calon is a book that satisfies the hardcore rugby fan’s desire for intimate details of the backroom experience, the writer capitalising on the unprecedented level of behind-the-scenes access he was afforded for the project, but also satiates the general reader’s desire for a novelistic plotline, character development, a hero’s journey.
“The difference, of course, between Calon and a novel is that the hero is the team rather than any individual, and as Sheers also ably demonstrates, this particular team is the embodiment of an idea, a ‘fifteen-headed’ personification of a nation.”
Sheers puts it best himself when, in the book, he says: “There are moments when the many, through the few, become one.”
It seems Calon has already begun to capture the imagination of the nation and has already taken many of us on its journey into the heart of Welsh rugby.
Book summary:
At the 2011 Rugby World Cup a young Welsh side captained by the 22-year-old Sam Warburton, captured the imagination of the rugby-watching world. Exhibiting the grit and brilliance of generations past, an ill-fated semi-final ended in heartbreak. But a fledgling squad playing with the familiarity of brothers had sent out an electrifying message of hope: could this be a third golden generation of Welsh rugby?
It was with this question hanging in the air that Owen Sheers took up his position as Writer in Residence for the Welsh Rugby Union. Calon is the document of a year spent at the heart of Welsh rugby; the inside story of a 6 Nations campaign that galvanised a nation and ended in Grand Slam success for the third time in 8 years.
What does rugby mean to Wales? Where does the heart of Welsh rugby lie? In Calon, Owen Sheers takes a personal journey into a sport that defines a nation. Drawing on interviews and unprecedented access with players and WRU coaching staff, Calon presents an intimate portrait of a national team in the very best tradition of literary sports writing.
