Most of us are rather tired of the same old quasi-racist assumptions and
cliches/all the best writers are dead /poets of England expect to be
standing next to other post-empire-running countries -/(they always were,
weren't they?) /to see, like schoolboys, who can pee furthest up the
wall?/opening this can of worms /DB like J. Redwood exercised behind closed
doors in ways exactly comparable with the actions of a colonial viceroy/all
the best writers are dead / There was an article in English on this in a
number of Poetry Wales last year/opening this can of worms (they always
were, weren't they?) /vacuum left by ignorance seems to have drawn in the
old half-truths and prejudices/all the best writers are dead
db
----- Original Message -----
From: Matthew Francis <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2001 10:24 PM
Subject: Re: Wales and Welsh Writing
> Sorry for reopening this can of worms. I understand if people are tired of
> it by now, but I thought it was important to get a couple of Welsh
> viewpoints on the discussion. This is one, from my colleague the poet and
> novelist Chris Meredith.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Matthew
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Meredith C (HaSS) <[log in to unmask]>
> To: Siopcoffi <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 12 February 2001 14:26
> Subject: RE: Wales and Welsh Writing
>
>
> >
> >Thanks for letting us see this, Matthew. Most of us are rather tired of
> the
> >same old quasi-racist assumptions and cliches masquerading as liberal
> >head-shaking at the depradations of the alleged centre on the alleged
> >periphery. Mostly we heave a sigh and get on with writing our books,
some
> >of which may turn out to be less good than we hoped, but then that's
hardly
> >news anywhere in the world.
> > DB's grasp of the reorganisation of Welsh govt. seems more profound
than
> >his knowledge of Welsh literature, but his knowledge of both on this
> >evidence is slender. Devolution isn't mentioned, but, piddling though
that
> >development may seem, it democratizes most of the powers of the Welsh
> Office
> >that people like J. Redwood exercised behind closed doors in ways exactly
> >comparable with the actions of a colonial viceroy. Which ever way you cut
> it
> >that's a significant change and it's already had a direct effect on the
> >relationship between arts, govt. and Welsh people.
> > The romanticising of Gwynedd as some beacon of hope - well a few of
the
> >best writers of the moment are northeners, though perhaps the most
> >interesting of them, the novelist Wiliam Owen Roberts, lives in Cardiff -
> >this romanticising rather falls into line with what's now regarded here
as
> >the most right wing kind of nationalism, ironically. I hardly imagine
> that
> >the writer intended that.
> > Perhaps there's a note of disappointment in some of these comments
that
> >Wales is turning out to be an ordinary, modern country.
> > The insistence that the automatic comparison is with Ireland and
> Scotland
> >is a revealing one. Get in to the Celtic ghetto, you lot. Do poets of
> >England expect to be standing next to other post-empire-running
countries -
> >the Dutch? the French? - to see, like schoolboys, who can pee furthest up
> >the wall? The very different and greater prominence of the Welsh
language
> >in the literature of Wales as compared with Irish in Ireland or Gaelic in
> >Scotland makes the comparison highly problematical. It would probably be
> >more to the purpose to make comparisons with say Galicia (which has
greater
> >political autonomy than Wales and devotes far mor resources to
literature),
> >or even Estonia. It's worth noting that the only translation into
English
> >of stories by Galego writer Xose Luis Mendez Ferin is published by a
Welsh
> >press. And which ever comparison you did make, if you based it on actual
> >knowledge of the literatures rather than vague impressions and a sense
that
> >all the best writers are dead (they always were, weren't they?), I feel
> >Wales would come out rather better than DB assumes.
> > For the record, I think some of the most interesting work in Welsh in
> >recent years has been in fiction. Certainly the developments in, for
want
> >of a better word, post-modern devices have happened there. There have
also
> >been some interesting developments in how cynghanedd is being handled in
> >some quite extraordinary ways by a couple of youngish poets - Emyr Lewis
> amd
> >Twm Morys. There was an article in English on this by Sioned Puw
Rowlands
> >in a number of Poetry Wales last year.
> > Sorry to pump facts at you, but, the vacuum left by ignorance seems to
> >have drawn in the old half-truths and prejudices for some of the
> >contributors to your discussion.
> >Chris
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Matthew Francis [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> >> Sent: 10 February 2001 00:38
> >> To: Siopcoffi
> >> Subject: Wales and Welsh Writing
> >>
> >> There's been a long discussion on the poetryetc mailing list, to which
I
> >> belong, about the above topics. Here are the edited highlights, for
> anyone
> >> interested. (The discussion also veered off into such subjects as rugby
> >> and the Welsh sense of humour.) I left the discussion at this point,
> >> feeling that I really needed some support from someone who knows
> >> contemporary Welsh writing better than I do. David Kennedy, meanwhile,
> >> posted a long extract from a review he's written putting forward his
own
> >> very critical views. Any comments?
> >>
> >> Best wishes
> >>
> >> Matthew
> >>
> >> David Bircumshaw: I was thinking of a) the utter unotherness of
> industrial
> >>
> >> South Wales these days, that is it has a popular culture that is
largely
> >> just as much
> >> sub-American as England's and b) literary Wales has lost its identity,
> >> there are a lot of
> >> 'Anglo-Welsh' poets aren't there who write flat mainstreamy kind of
stuff
> >> (Peter Finch might not like that statement but he's just one guy) but
> even
> >> more so Welsh literary culture now may be one of the least distinct in
> >> Europe: the Thomases are dead, Saunders Lewis and the London-Welsh
David
> >> Jones too. I gather there's some kind of kick still in the North, but
no
> >> really strong voice. Wales 'reads' to me like a culture that has truly
> >> collapsed under a colonial weight.
> >> One only has to look to Scotland for contrast.
> >>
> >>
> >> Me: I'm not the best person to reply to this, being still fairly new to
> >> Wales,
> >> but I'd better try anyway. [It] still has a great deal
> >> of otherness as far as I'm concerned....
> >>
> >> Anglo-Welsh, by the way, is not the preferred
> >> term nowadays; it's been replaced by the rather more longwinded but
less
> >> loaded Welsh writing in English.
> >>
> >> Peter Finch may be only one guy, but he isn't the only one who would
take
> >> issue with your comments about contemporary Welsh poetry. For a good
> >> cross-section, may I refer list members to the Welsh poetry edition of
> the
> >> net magazine Slope at <http://slope.org/slope/this.html> ?
> >>
> >> DB: There seems to a mild problem of perception on this list about the
> use
> >> of
> >> inverted commas as a stylistic device to indicate distancing.
> >> That was the context of my employment of 'Anglo-Welsh'.
> >>
> >> I respect the work Peter Finch has done over the years, but he is just
> one
> >> guy, and at the same time he's allowed himself an all too accomodating
> >> attitude to obvious mediocrity. I say this in sorrow, not anger, Wales
> >> needs
> >> writers, writers to speak for it.
> >> But they're all dead.
> >>
> >>
> >> Me: I understood the inverted commas as distancing *you* from the
phrase
> >> 'Anglo-Welsh' but felt they implied you were attributing it to
> >> contemporary
> >> Welsh poets and thus suggesting a complicity in their own colonization.
> >> Whereas it is precisely this generation of Welsh writers, not your
> praised
> >> generation of the Thomases, Saunders Lewis etc, who have rejected it.
> >>
> >> It seems to me you're romanticizing Wales's past at the expense of the
> >> reality of its
> >> present. Anyone can point to the great dead and ask where are their
> >> equivalents now? It's an old, tired rhetorical device. They've sealed
> >> their
> >> reputations by dying, whereas the mediocrities of those days have been
> >> forgotten. Contemporary Welsh writers are as intensely involved in the
> >> political and cultural issue of Welshness as any of their predecessors
> >> have been.
> >> They are not wannabe English or American, nor are they caricature
Welsh.
> >> The country deserves better than the easy dismissals it has so often
had
> >> from the English.
> >>
> >> DB: As I said in a post to Lawrence, regarding the language, I have
faint
> >> hopes
> >> of the North, of the idea of Gwynedd, but that remains to be seen.
> >>
> >> But any honest response to Welsh culture today has to compare it with
> that
> >> of Scotland or Ireland now and I'm afraid the comparison is not
> >> favourable.
> >>
> >>
> >> David Kennedy: I suggest that anyone who thinks there is a renaissance
> >> going on in Wales
> >> goes and reads the recent Seren antho Oxygen. With a few exceptions -
> >> Oliver
> >> Reynolds, Deryn Rees-Jones, Stephen Knight - it makes for dismal
reading.
> >> I'm not qualified to judge the Welsh poetry altho' judging by the
> >> translations it has more energy and wit.
> >>
> >>
> >> Me: 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.
> >>
> >> If the list had one or two Welsh members to stick up for
> >> their country, I would probably leave it to those better informed.
> >>
> >>
> >> DB: I think this is where our wires are being crossed. My original and
> >> aside
> >> remark on the topic was in the context of the cultural imbalance caused
> by
> >> the gravitational centricity of London in British culture as a whole,
> >> unlike
> >> the sitiuation vis-a-vis the capital cities of Spain, Italy, Germany or
> >> the
> >> U.S (my examples) during which I mentioned that Scotland could, in the
> >> British context, be regarded as, culturally, another 'country', the
> >> implication being that it was articulated and strong enough to maintain
a
> >> distinct cultural independence, unlike the situation in Wales in
_recent_
> >> years, which I considered to have imploded culturally, as a result ofv
> the
> >> pressures of 'colonialist' cultural gravities. And this was an occasion
> >> for
> >> regret, not English dismissal of Wales and the Welsh. I mentioned, as I
> >> keep
> >> mentioning, that there was some resistance, albeit threatened, in the
> idea
> >> of Gwynedd, alto' I could note with irony how the most recent
> >> reorganisation
> >> of local government had returned that area to its anglicized and former
> >> disintegation of poilitical units, but the literary/poetic culture that
> of
> >> the 'idea of the South' was largely one that was subservient to, and
> >> imitative of, models derived from the notional metropolitan centre.
> >> It's not that I dismiss all Welsh writing, but my general response
would
> >> be
> >> akin to David Kennedy's reaction to the Seren anthology, the writers of
> >> interest in Wales seeming few and isolated.
> >>
> >> I do not write from outside the culture of lower-class life, being part
> of
> >> it all my life, nor
> >> do I write from a perspective of distance to Wales, I love the country
> and
> >> what I wrote was in sorrow not anger, and the culturally colonised
> >> enfeeblement I attribute to it is one that I would also see as shared
> with
> >> the English regions...
>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -
> >> -----------------------
> >
> >
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