I am not making any particular claims (David K) for a Welsh poetic
renaissance. I still don't know Welsh poetry well enough to be able to say
one way or another. But I don't think it was fair to single Wales out (David
B) as culture-starved and lacking in a sense of identity. That has been very
far from my experience of the country. And I am only too aware, as one who
lived for many years within a hundred miles of the Welsh border without much
curiosity about what might be on the other side, how prone the English are
to be dismissive of Wales and the Welsh.
Individual points:
>I hardly think R.S.Thomas was a supporter of Welsh colonisation.
I didn't say he was.
>Believe me, working-class self-deprecatory humour is not peculiar to Wales.
Maybe not. My feeling is that this humour (specifically Valleys humour) has
a character of its own. I can't prove it, but I do experience it regularly.
>I know rugby union is a working-class game in Wales, unlike much of
England,
>but sports mania does not indicate cultural florescence, otherwise the
>pub-centre of Newcastle on a Saturday night is an artistic renaissance, and
>standing among a crowd of Liverpool supporters at Whiteheart Lane hearing a
>guy goin 'fucking yids' without stop for half-an-hour represents the growth
>of awareness of others, while watching a guy getting all his ribs kicked in
>Aston Park by about a dozen Villa supporters because he wasn't one of them
>is obviously a street art recreation of Goya.
What you're talking about has little to do with sport. If football had never
been invented, these thugs would find some other reason to beat each other
up. Wales has its share of thugs too, of course. Nevertheless this kind of
violence is not generally part of the Welsh rugby culture I was talking
about. It's the preserve of young males, whereas Welsh rugby, as I was
saying, seems to unite both sexes and all ages. In fact even in the rest of
Britain rugby fans are not generally violent - the violence is all on the
pitch.
>You might like to know too that the number of Welsh speakers in the South
has been >greater than the North for a longtime, the difference being that
the speaking >communities of the South are not as homogenous as in the
North.
This is not very meaningful given the huge difference in population between
the South and the North. The *proportion* is higher in the North. But in
any case it wouldn't affect my argument, which is that the Welsh language,
if not exactly thriving, is in a healthier state than it has been for years.
As John Davies points out in his history of Wales, children can be heard
playing in Welsh in the streets of Cardiff.
I agree, arguments of this kind do become tedious, and they also take us
away from poetry. If the list had one or two Welsh members to stick up for
their country, I would probably leave it to those better informed.
Meanwhile,
Nos Da
Matthew
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