Matthew

Congratulations on your book etc. Really this all should go back-channel but
as things are, unfortunately: I cannot say I am enamoured on your
introducing extraneous, uninterrogable third parties into a list debate. I
would also like to point out in no uncertain terms that as a member of the
working-classes you so patronisingly approve of I take extreme exception to
middle-class professionals telling me what I can and cannot think. I would
also like to remind you and whoever else you seek succour from that the
'British Empire' was precisely that and more: a racket run for the benefit
of the middle-classes of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, England and elsewhere,
for example the Eastern Seaboard of the States or Argentinian Jockey Clubs,
not an exclusively English preserve, as can be evidenced in the numbers of
West Indians who took Welsh surnames from plantation overseers.

Likewise, its victims included English and Welsh alike. Falling like my
great-uncles and David Jones' Welshry in the mud-fields of Flanders.

best

david


----- 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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