Canolfan Richard Burton Centre
David Lloyd of Le Moyne College, Syracuse reviews Slanderous Tongues: Essays on Welsh Poetry in English 1970-2005, ed. Daniel G. Williams Bridgend: Seren, 2010. Hardback: 220pp, £24.99; Paperbacck: 274pp, £14.99
A one-day conference arranged by CREW (Centre for the Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales), Swansea University with the R.S. Thomas Centre, Bangor University.
Dai Smith and Daniel Williams were in Tokyo at the end of September attending a conference on Raymond Williams. ‘Fiction as Criticism / Criticism as a Whole Way of Life’ took place on Saturday, September 25th. In his opening remarks Shintaro Kono noted that the event was a development of the CREW conference ‘Raymond Williams In Transit: Wales – Japan’ that took place in October 2009. Yasuhiro Kondo delivered a paper on Williams’s neglected novel Loyalties, offering a close analysis of the concept of history informing Williams’s intricate novel. Yuzo Yamada drew on Williams’s criticism to offer a fascinating comparative account of Gwyn Thomas and the mother turned poet, writer, and activist, Ishimure Michiko. During the ensuing conversation Dai Smith drew attention to a further connection between what Yamada referred to as the ‘far West’ of Europe and Japan, in the figure of American photographer William Eugene Smith. Eugene Smith’s famous photos of south Wales in the 1950s were a prelude to his more famous photos of the effects of Minamata disease in the 1970s which was the major subject of Michiko’s work. There are certainly grounds for further comparative work here….
On the previous Thursday, September 23rd, Hideaki Suzuki, Fuhito Endo, Takashi Onuki and Shintaro Kono all delivered terrific papers on Raymond Williams’s thought and invited responses from Tony Pinkney, Dai Smith and Daniel Williams. This again was a stimulating and intellectually lively session.
Bu Dai Smith a Daniel Williams yn Tokyo ar ddiwedd mis Medi yn mynychu cynhadledd ar Raymond Williams. Cynhaliwyd y gynhadledd ‘Fiction as Criticism / Criticism as a Whole Way of Life’ ar Ddydd Sadwrn 25 Medi. Yn ei sylwadau agoriadol nododd Shintaro Kono fod y digwyddiad yn ddatblygiad ar y gynhadledd ‘Raymond Williams In Transit: Wales – Japan’ a gynhaliwyd ym mis Hydref 2009. Cyflwynodd Yasuhiro Kondo bapur ar y nofel Loyalties gan ddadansoddi’r cysyniad o hanes yn nofel gymhleth Williams. Tynnodd Yuzo Yamada ar feirniadaeth Raymodn Williams i gynnig dadansoddiad cymharol, hynod ddiddorol, o Gwyn Thomas a'r fam a ddaeth yn fardd, llenor, ac ymgyrchydd, Ishimure Michiko. Yn ystod y sgwrs a ddilynodd tynnodd Dai Smith sylw at gysylltiad pellach rhwng yr hyn y cyfeiriodd Yamada ato fel yr 'Gorllewin pell' yn Ewrop a Siapan, yn ffigwr y ffotograffydd Americanaidd Eugene William Smith. Tynnodd Eugene Smith luniau enwog o dde Cymru yn y 1950aumac yn 1960au a 1970au fe dynnodd luniau enwog o effeithiau clefyd Minamata a oedd yn destun pwysig yng ngwaith Michiko. Mae testun gwaith cymharol diddorol yma....Yn y prynhawn traddododd Tony Pinkey o Brifysgol Lancaster ddarlith ar rôl Iwtopia yng ngwaith Williams meddwl, gan gyfeirio'n benodol at drydedd gyfrol y ‘drioleg Cymreig’, The Fight for Manod, ac at syniadau Iwtopaidd William Morris. Trafod ‘realaeth’ Raymond Williams wnaeth Daniel Williams, gan archwilio honiad Williams fod Border Country yn ymgais i ysgrifennu 'yn erbyn graen y ffurf'. Daeth y gynhadledd i ben wrth i Dai Smith drafod neilltuolrwydd profiad diwydiannol de Cymru a dealltwriaeth Williams, mewn theori a ffuglen, o’r profiad hwnnw.
Ar y dydd Iau blaenorol, Medi 23ain, cyflwynodd Hideaki Suzuki, Fuhito Endo, Takashi Onuki a Shintaro Kono bapurau hynod ddiddorol ar Raymond Williams, gan wahodd ymatebion gan Tony Pinkney, Dai Smith a Daniel Williams. Roedd hon eto yn sesiwn ddeallusol fywiog. Trefnwyd y cyfan gan yr athro Yasuo Kawabata a cynhaliwyd y ddau ddigwyddiad ym Mhrifysgol Merched Japan, Campws Mejiro. Y gobaith yw y bydd rhagor o ddigwyddiadau a phrosiectau yn datblygu o hyn yn y dyfodol.Trefnwyd y digwyddiadau gan y Raymond Williams Kenkyukai (y gymdeithas ar gyfer Astudio Raymond Williams yn Siapan) gyda chefnogaeth y Gyfadran / Graddedigion Ysgol y Dyniaethau, JWU, a ‘JSPS/MEXT Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research’.
Ceir y wybodaeth am y digwyddiad yma:
http://www.jwu.ac.jp/grp/lecture_news/2010/20100925.html
Volume 8: Issue 2 of the journal Comparative American Studies appeared during the Summer and is a special issue entitled 'The Celtic Nations and the African Americas'. It is guest edited by Daniel Williams whose introduction to the issue is free to view online for all. The journal contents are as follows:
Kirsti Bohata reviews Rhys Davies: Writers of Wales, by Huw Edwin Osborne
On Wednesday, August the 4th, CREW, the Welsh Books Council and Parthian Press arranged an event at the Swansea University stand at the National Eisteddfod to celebrate and discuss the Welsh Assembly Government funded series of classic Welsh Anglophone Literature, The Library of Wales. Proceedings were opened by Swansea University’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Richard Davies who celebrated the institution’s connections with the series and discussed the establishment of Welsh Writing in English as a significant field of research in Swansea by Professor M. Wynn Thomas. The Welsh Government’s Heritage Minister, Alun Ffred Jones, expressed his admiration for the series and the role of some the key texts of the tradition in his own views of Wales and the world. Daniel Williams, Director of CREW and the Richard Burton Centre, made the case for the significance of the series and the need now to make these texts part of the inheritance of all the people of Wales through the English literature curriculum in our secondary schools. This might be the next stage in the long revolution. This message was reinforced by Dai Smith who discussed, in Welsh, the formation of the series and the importance of literature and culture in the fostering of a civic Welsh identity. The WAG Minister for Education, Leighton Andrews, brought the session to a close with a powerful description of the inclusive cultural vision that informed the series and the need to disseminate these works as widely as possible. Ebbw Vale, due to its history and location, seemed a particularly appropriate place to in which to hold the event, which attracted a good audience and was widely reported in the press and in the blogosphere. 
Thanks to the sterling work of the University’s Welsh Language Officers, Swansea University had much higher profile at this year’s National Eisteddfod at Ebbw Vale than ever before. A successful, packed, Alumni event with Jason Mohammed and the launch of Academi Hywel Teifi with Huw Edwards were among the highlights, and the week came to a magnificent climax with Dr Tudur Hallam of the Welsh department winning the Chair for his long poem in tribute to Professor Hywel Teifi Edwards.
[Helen Mary Jones, AC a chyfrannwr i Canu Caeth, Daniel Williams, Susan Robeson] 
On Thursday 17 JUNE 2010 the creative writing departments of Swansea University and Trinity University College, Carmarthen, in conjunction with the Dragon Innovation Partnership, held a successful day of discussions and readings to a packed out audience at the Dylan Thomas Centre. This was the first time such an event had been held outside the university, and it provided a wonderful opportunity for students and the wider community of Swansea and Carmarthen to enjoy a day of discussion about writing and publishing, to learn more about the creative writing departments of both universities, and to meet with key figures in the industry. The event featured prominent names from the publishing industry in Wales, such as Dominic Williams from Parthian Books and Gwen Davies from Alcemi Press, as well as featuring top London agent Euan Thorneycroft from AM Heath, who talked eloquently about his role as an agent. The established poet and singer-songwriter Paul Henry also finished the day with a flourish, with a special music and poetry performance, followed by a book signing.
A big thanks from me and Lyndon Davies to all those who performed and turned up to the 2nd Hay-on-Wye Poetry Jamboree, 3-5th June.
As usual, the post-Jam session wind-downs took place in the garden of Church House in Talgarth, with food brought in – thanks to Chris and Debbie for premises and for the cooking – and plenty of yattering and drinking in the shade of David Greenslade’s yurt (and Georgetta’s devastating Romanian poitin), warming ourselves around a fire fed by slim Faber and Picador volumes, ho ho, as last year’s owl returned to whoo-whoo through the dusk from the trees bordering the stream at the bottom of the garden.
After which it was time for the band – Chris Twigg and Chicken of the Woods (think a Bromsgrove bluegrass Tristan Tzara accompanied mandolin and double bass) – and Geraldine kicking away the furniture and getting everyone (OK, the girls anyway) for a Bacchantic fling, before departing to a final meal and drink back at Church House, Lyndon and me swearing we would never do it again / just had to do it again.
If the CREW blog has witnessed something of a summer hiatus, members of the centre have been very busy throughout the summer months. We’ll try and catch up with all that’s been going on in the next few entries, starting with our Research Fellow Peter Lord at the Hay Literary Festival. Peter introduced his award winning book The Meaning of Pictures to a packed audience.
A CELEBRATION OF WRITING AT THE DYLAN THOMAS CENTRE
It isn’t easy to capture the essence of a region between the covers of a book, even one as compact as Gower, a kind of micro-Cornwall stretching west of Swansea, a peninsula about fifteen miles long and about five miles across. There have been several ‘Gower books’ over the years and the annual volumes of the journal Gower have been, for over fifty years, combining essays with photographs. This handsomely-produced volume consists of ten essays (one of them introductory) and ten poems by Nigel Jenkins, and about eighty seven colour photographs by David Pearl. This is not a topographical or antiquarian travelogue, and the pictures entirely avoid picture-postcard or calendar views. This is simply (or not so simply) two artistic reactions to Gower....
Jasmine Donahaye’s second poetry collection is a confrontation that leaves the reader bruised, exhausted and yet subtly seduced by the strong, female voice that sings here of the poet’s relationship with the Israel-Palestine conflict. It has been described as ‘erotic’ and yet the Eros that haunts each meticulously constructed poem is not one of pleasure, but of the cold mechanics of the genital... http://www.swansea.ac.uk/CREW/CREWReviews/SelfPortraitasRuth/#d.en.45983
Not all writers, it seems to me, lend themselves to the ‘Sourcebook,’ or ‘Reader’ format. Dannie Abse, on the other hand, is a natural candidate for this kind of treatment. Over his long and distinguished career he has excelled in a variety of different forms (including plays), in most of which his writing has tended to be episodic in nature. Indeed it might even be argued that he is particularly well served by the ‘Sourcebook’ approach, because otherwise he would be liable to pay a high price for his fluent, subtle, quietly insinuating diversity: few would otherwise be sufficiently inward with his work as a whole to be able to appreciate the distinctively inflected yet faithfully integrated character of his multifaceted and variegated vision...
While not directly related to Welsh Writing in English, this seminar may be of ineterest top many of our readers:
One such leading figure addressed us on Friday night as Dai Smith delivered the first keynote of the conference. His assertion, as series editor, that the Library of Wales was not a canon formation exercise was not a view with which we necessarily agreed. Though his explanation of the method used in choosing the texts for publication was enlightening and interesting. The following day’s speaker Jane Aaron directly equated the anthologising of writers and their works with a process of canon formation. This was a fascinating and entertaining paper tracking the erratic presence of female writers in the anthologies and compendiums of the last 10 decades. The downturn recorded in the ratio of women represented in the collections, since the 1970’s, was a surprising trend. Jane’s paper proved perhaps that the need for a female only press, as Honno is, still very much exists and, furthermore, that critical studies recognizing the valuable contributions of women to the field of Welsh Writing in English continue to be an essential area for research. This felt very much to me as if the speaker was passing on a baton to the younger generation of academics.
One of the most stimulating speakers came on Saturday. For Kieron the “Aftermath of Bertolt Schoene's paper on cosmopolitanism” was definitely the highlight of the conference. Schoene’s controversial ideas on the globalised future of cultural identity proved a unifying force in itself, as Ed explains “he seemed to unify the room into a canon of not agreeing with him”. Being the last speaker on Saturday evening ensured that the debate continued over dinner and beyond. Although Shoene’s ideas were hotly debated for their extremity, other speakers too challenged the definitions of what should constitute a canon of Welsh Writing in English and the way in which we relate to other canons. I was particularly struck by Kirsti Bohata’s paper which highlighted how texts vigorously engage with other writing genres, her example looking at representations of lesbian desire in Anglo-Welsh literature. On Sunday morning Geraint Evans proposed a whole new field of critical enquiry, under the working title of Cambrian writing, which could take under its wing writing about Wales by non-Welsh writers and in other languages apart from English and Welsh.
Peter Lord’s The Meaning of Pictures (University of Wales Press). Peter Lord is Research Fellow at CREW, and his The Meaning of Pictures has also been long listed for the prestigious Berger Prize for British Art History 2010.
Jamine Donahaye’s collection of poetry Self-Portrait as Ruth (Salt). Jasmine Donahaye completed her PhD with us, and is a CREW Research Associate.
Emyr Humphreys’s collection of short stories The Woman at the Window (Seren) is the third CREW presence on the list. Emyr Humphreys is one of three honorary patrons of CREW. This volume was assembled by Professor M. Wynn Thomas, Emyr Humphreys Research Chair at CREW.
The next seminar in the Richard Burton Centre’s series on ‘The State of the Nation: Ten Years Since Devolution’ will be delivered by author and gay rights activist John Sam Jones.
Cafodd llwyddiant Dr. Fflur Dafydd yn Eisteddfod Genedlaethol y Bala ei ddathlu mewn noson arbennig ym Mhrifysgol Abertawe.
Prof. Rowlands said that the novel has been hailed as one of the best ever to win the Daniel Owen Prize and that Fflur is one of Wales’ most interesting and talented writers.
Professor Ian Gregson (Prifysgol Bangor University):
