Emyr Humphreys Chair of Welsh Writing in English

Swansea University has announced that it has created the Emyr Humphreys Chair of Welsh Writing in English. It is named in honour of Wales’s greatest novelist and leading man of letters who will celebrate his ninetieth birthday in April. Emyr Humphreys is an Honorary Fellow of the University and (along with Seamus Heaney and Gillian Clarke) an Honorary Research Fellow of CREW, the Centre for Research into the English language literature of Wales.

The holder of the chair will be Professor M. Wynn Thomas, who currently holds a Personal Chair in the Department of English. It recognizes that, additional to his international reputation as a scholar of American poetry, Professor Thomas has been a longtime pioneer in the study of Wales’ English-language literary culture.

Professor Thomas said: ‘This is a landmark development, and wonderful recognition of CREW’s work. It is the realization of a longstanding dream of mine, and I am deeply grateful not only to the University for conferring this honour but to Emyr Humphreys for allowing us to grace the Chair with his name.’


Y mae Prifysgol Abertawe wedi cyhoeddi ei bod yn sefydlu Cadair Emyr Humphreys yn Llên Saesneg Cymru. Y mae’r teitl yn cydnabod cyfraniad enfawr Emyr Humphreys, prif nofelydd Cymru, i ddiwylliant ei genedl ac y mae’n cyd-daro â dathliad ei benblwydd yn naw deg ym mis Ebrill. Mae Emyr Humphreys eisoes yn Gymrawd er Anrhydedd ym Mhrifysgol Abertawe a hefyd, ar y cyd â Gillianc Clarke a Seamus Heaney, yn CREW (Canolfan Ymchwil i Lên ac Iaith Saesneg Cymru) yn y brifysgol honno.

Deiliad y gadair fydd yr Athro M. Wynn Thomas, sy’n arbenigwr yn llên Saesneg Cymru yn ogystal ag ym marddoniaeth y Taleithiau.

Dywedodd yr Athro Thomas: ‘Y mae hwn yn gam arloesol, ac yn dyst o bwysigrwydd y gwaith y mae CREW yn ei wneud. O’m rhan i, y mae’n benllanw ymdrech oes i sicrhau’r gydnabyddiaeth sefydliadol honno. Rwyf yn hynod ddiolchgar i’r Brifysgol am y fath anrhydedd, ac i Emyr Humphreys am ganiatau i’w enw gael ei ddefnyddio yn y cyswllt arbennig hwn.

Wednesday: Patrick McGuinness on Lynette Roberts

This Wednesday, 18th Februaury, at 4.15 in Kier Hardie 216, Professor Patrick McGuiness will present a paper on 'Lynette Roberts's Poetic Transpositions'

“Lynette Roberts (1909-1995) was one of the most original and exciting poets of her time. Her two collections Poems and Gods with Stainless Ears were published by T S Eliot along with Robert Graves an early supporter of her work. Roberts writes an extraordinary English, full of unusual words and images drawn from myth and technology. Yet for all its verbal and imagisitic energy, its mythical and futuristic conception and its epic dimension, Roberts’s poetry is unique in describing, also, the domestic life of women in wartime.”

Patrick McGuinness is Professor of French and Comparative Literature, Sir Win and Lady Bischoff Fellow in French at St Anne’s College, Oxford. He has published widely on subjects from French decadence to contemporary American poetry. He is himself a published poet (with two volumes from Carcanet) and is the editor of Lynette Roberts, Collected Poems (Carcanet 2005). Currently a Leverhulme Research fellow, he is writing a book French poetry and politics from 1871-1914, one on Thom Gunn and another on Lynette Roberts’ modernist poetry.

'Spaces of Comparison' Programme

The programme for the CREW organised Association for Welsh Writing in English Annual Conference 'Spaces of Comparison: Welsh Writing in English in Comparative Contexts' is now downloadable online. Things will inevitavbly change slightly by the time the conference happens, but it promises to be a great event with keynote papers by international leaders in the field of Comparative Literature and Art, poetry readings, the launch of a groundbreaking journal issue, and a whole range of papers delivered by leading figures in the field of Welsh literature and by a new generation of scholars presenting their innovative work for the first time. If you're interested in literature, in Wales, in criticism, and in lively debate, make sure you register! Both the programme and registration form are downloadable here:

http://www.swansea.ac.uk/english/awwe/AnnualConference/

Paul Robeson Seminars: Semester 2

After a very successful first semester of Paul Robeson Seminars in African American Studies, Semester 2 is already underway. It seems a long time ago that we kicked off at a packed Callaghan Lecture Theatre with Professor Jon Roper prophesying an Obama victory. Rachel Farebrother (American Studies) and Daniel Williams (CREW) invite you to attend the following sessions, 1pm - 2pm in the James Callaghan Conference Room.

Wednesday 4 February
Reading Group: Excerpts from George Hutchinson, The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White, and Houston A. Baker, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes poems.
Organiser: Rachel Farebrother

Wednesday 18 February
Dr Mark Whalan, Department of English, Exeter University
The Great War and the Culture of the New Negro

Wednesday 4 March
Jen Wilson, Women in Jazz, Swansea
African American Music in Nineteenth Century Wales

Wednesday 18 March
Ieuan Williams, American Studies, Swansea University
Jazz and 1950s America

Margiad Evans Centenary Conference

"Florence Morgan was close on sixty, had never done anything much amiss in her life that people knew of, and yet she was like Satan inside."

Margiad Evans, 'The Wicked Woman', The Old and the Young (1948)

Margiad Evans is best known for her border writing and Country Dance (1932) in particular, but she was also an extraordinary short-story writer, novelist, autobiographer and poet.

CREW is organising a one-day conference to celebrate and explore the achievements of this extraordinary writer. The day will feature lectures by Dr Katie Gramich (Cardiff University), Dr Clare Morgan (Oxford University), Dr Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan (Biographer of Margiad Evans) and CREW's Director, Dr Daniel Williams.

The event is for all readers of Margiad Evans's work, as well as students and researchers.

Tickets can be booked through the National Library of Wales box office, and further information is available from k.bohata@swansea.ac.uk

www.swansea.ac.uk/CREW/MargiadEvans