Slanderous Tongues

“It’s been a long time coming / But Slanderous Tongues is gonna come” this Friday at the Association of Welsh Writing in English Conference in Gregynog. Aretha Franklin could have had this volume in mind when she sang:

“Sometimes I had to cry all night long /
Sometimes I had to give up right / For what I knew was wrong /
Yes it’s been an uphill journey/ It’s sure been a long way comin’”

But the volume, edited by CREW's Daniel Williams, is here now. Published by Seren, Slanderous Tongues is made up of engaging, thematic chapters, exploring the field of Welsh poetry in English since 1970 through the prisms of tradition, nationhood, gender, class, comparative studies (American and Irish), translation, formal experimentation, and ethnicity. It includes essays by Hywel Dix, Jasmine Donahaye, Jo Furber, Tudur Hallam, Matthew Jarvis, Nicholas Jones, Daniel Williams and Nerys Willams.

Professor Helen Vendler of Harvard University had this to say about the volume in her report for Seren press:

“The explosive nature of Welsh literature is present everywhere in Slanderous Tongues, as the authors reflect on the tensions between languages, between cultures, between an ardent nationalism and its isolationist twin, between an inherited tradition and the modern world, between a male canon and female expression, between a local point of view and a global one, between the individual’s right of self-expression and the culture’s critique of that selfhood, and between the avant-garde and poetic convention. The eight essays, each one different in orientation, not only provide recent ways to map the development of modern Welsh poetry in English but also raise - and raise intensely - questions about literary culture in general, applicable to poetries beyond that of Wales. Conscious of scholars in Welsh culture who have preceded them, from Raymond Williams to M. Wynn Thomas, they exemplify a welcome sobriety in their approach to such critical matters as nationalism, bilingual translation, American influence, and the place of immigrants in a literature hitherto composed principally by the Welsh-born. This enlivening collection will alert readers to the ferment of imagination and language generating an array of new voices in Welsh poetry in English.”

http://www.seren-books.com/books/p/2156/

Research Seminar: Alan Rice

PAUL ROBESON SEMINAR SERIES IN AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES / SEMINARAU PAUL ROBESON

Dr Alan Rice

Reader in American Cultural Studies, University of Central Lancashire

“Ghostly Presences and the Histories they Unfold: Utopia and Dystopia in the African Atlantic Vistas of Ellen Gallagher’s Bird in Hand”

4pm Wednesday 3rd March, 2010
KH 216

Abstract: The African Atlantic visual artist Ellen Gallagher has created in her signature canvas Bird in Hand (2006) perhaps the most stunning visual depiction of the black Atlantic to be created since Paul Gilroy’s seminal text. This paper will discuss the way the painting interprets multiple chronologies and geographies as it exhibits historical wounded memory whilst seeking redemption in a futuristic Aquatopia made possible by the imaginative leap of Drexciya. This idea, developed musically in Detroit techno, that the dead babies of pregnant women thrown overboard during the middle passage lived to form new mutant sea creatures that survived to build a new civilization enables Gallagher the imaginative scope to create her visual new world order. The paper explicates the way that whilst talking of this futuristic Utopia, she does not lose sight of the middle passage realities that created it or of the commodification of black bodies that has accompanied diasporan Africans since the ending of the slave trade. Using the works (amongst others) of Edouard Glissant, Marcus Rediker, Ian Baucom, Kobena Mercer and Avery Gordon, this paper explores and explicates the wonders of Gallagher’s Utopian vision created in response to the Dystopian realities of slavery and racism.

Mae’r arlunydd Ellen Gallagher wedi creu yn ei chynfas Bird in Hand (2006) y darluniad gweledol mwyaf syfrdanol, o bosib, o’r 'Atlantig Du' ers cyfrol arloesol Paul Gilroy. Gan ddefnyddio gweithiau Edouard Glissant, Marcus Rediker, Ian Baucom, Kobena Mercer ac Avery Gordon (ymhlith eraill), mae’r papur hwn yn archwilio ac yn egluro rhyfeddodau Iwtopia Gallagher a grëwyd mewn ymateb i wirioneddau Dystopaidd caethwasiaeth a hiliaeth.

White Ravens, Owen Sheers

The first of the New Stories from the Mabinogion series is reviewed on the CREW Reviews website.

"In the first line of the introduction to Seren’s 'New Stories from the Mabinogion', Penny Thomas legitimately suggests that “some stories, it seems, just keep on going.” Although the series editor then goes on to painfully romanticise such stories as being “a whistle in the reeds, a bird’s song in your ear”, the opening eight words of this introduction are enough to suggest why Seren have commissioned this series. There is evidently a market for the modern retelling of ancient myths, as Canongate’s recent sequence has shown, .... " Read more

Dathlu / Celebrating Fflur Dafydd

Cafodd llwyddiant Dr. Fflur Dafydd yn Eisteddfod Genedlaethol y Bala ei ddathlu mewn noson arbennig ym Mhrifysgol Abertawe.

Mae Fflur yn ddarlithydd yn Adran Saesneg y Brifysgol a hi oedd enillydd Gwobr Daniel Owen 2009, am ei nofel Y Llyfrgell. Yn ogystal â bod yn nofelydd ac academydd, mae Fflur Dafydd hefyd yn adnabyddus yng Nghymru fel cantores a chyfansoddwraig.

Yn arwain y teyrngedau roedd yr Is-ganghellor, yr Athro Richard B. Davies, y Dirprwy Is-ganghellor yr Athro Iwan Davies a’r Athro Stevie Davies, Cyfarwyddwr ysgrifennu creadigol yn yr Adran Saesneg. Yn y digwyddiad fe fu Fflur Dafydd hefyd yn darllen rhan o’i nofel fuddugol ac fe fu ’r Athro John Rowlands, un o feirniaid Gwobr Daniel Owen 2009, yn trafod y nofel a’i chyfraniad i lenyddiaeth Gymraeg.

Soniodd yr Athro Rowlands mai dyma oedd un o’r nofelau gorau erioed i ennill Gwobr Daniel Owen a bod Fflur gyda’r awduron mwyaf cyffrous a dawnus yng Nghymru heddiw.
Wrth dalu teyrnged i lwyddiant Fflur fe bwysleisiodd yr Is-ganghellor, yr Athro Richard B. Davies bwysigrwydd rôl y Gymraeg ym Mhrifysgol Abertawe, gan ddweud ei bod yn nodwedd neilltuol o’i delwedd ryngwladol.

Cadeiriwyd y noson gan gyfarwyddwr CREW, Daniel Williams, a cafodd y noson ei chloi gan Dr Tudur Hallam o Adran y Gymraeg a gyfansoddodd gywydd i gyfarch Fflur.


Dr.Fflur Dafydd’s recent success at the National Eisteddfod has been marked in an official celebration at Swansea University.

Fflur Dafydd is a lecturer in the English department and won the Daniel Owen prize 2009, for her novel Y Llyfrgell (The Library). As well as being a writer and academic, Fflur Dafydd is also a well-known in Wales as a singer and song-writer.

The tributes were led by Vice-chancellor, Professor Richard B. Davies, Deputy Vice-chancellor, Professor Iwan Davies and Professor Stevie Davies, director of the creative writing programme in the department of English. At the event Fflur Dafydd read extracts from the winning novel and Prof. John Rowlands, one of the judges of the Daniel Owen prize 2009, discussed the novel and Fflur’s contribution to Welsh literature.

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.
Paying tribute to Fflur’s success the Vice-chancellor, Professor Richard B. Davies, emphasized the importance of the Welsh language’s role at Swansea University, stressing that the language is a vital and remarkable feature of the University’s international image.

The evening was chaired by Daniel Williams of CREW, and Dr Tudur Hallam from the Welsh department brought proceedings to a fitting end by performing a a “cywydd”(Welsh strict metre poem) especially composed for Fflur.

CREW Seminar: Ian Gregson

Professor Ian Gregson (Prifysgol Bangor University):

‘Writing the Poetic Sequence

Ystafell / Room 216, Adeilad Keir Hardie Building

Dydd Mercher / Wednesday 17th February, 4.00 pm

Ian will be speaking as a practitioner as well as an academic. Ian is a poet and a lecturer in English at the University of Wales, Bangor. He lectures on 19th and 20th Century Poetry, American Literature, Contemporary Literature, The Short Story and Creative Writing. In 1981 he received a Gregory Award for his poetry, which has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, and the London Review of Books amongst others. He has also reviewed poetry for a wide range of journals.

Croeso i bawb! / All welcome!

AWWE Annual Conference 2010

CREW's Dai Smith is among the keynote speakers at this year's annual AWWE conference.

Canons and Canon-Building: Framing the Literatures of Wales

26th-28th March 2010, Gregynog Hall

Do we need a canon of Welsh writing in English? What might be at stake in the choices made during the establishment of such a canon? The business, meanings and politics of post-devolution canon-formation will be the focus of the 22nd annual conference of the Association for Welsh Writing in English at Gregynog Hall in Powys, Wales, UK from March 26–28, 2010.

This conference will examine the question of canonicity and its complex connections with issues of nationality, gender, class, race and sexuality in a Welsh context. The establishment of Welsh writing in English as an area of serious literary critical study, itself barely a generation old, has coincided with the recovery of other bodies of neglected writing by marginalised writers. Such recovery work, however, has involved the radical questioning of literary value judgements and the recognition of the social, economic, political and cultural influences which make any canon a fabricated construct.

Now just over a decade after Welsh devolution, the republication of out-of-print texts can still be seen as a political necessity in making available a literary heritage which has been neglected and forgotten and which contributes to a sense of national identity. Such republication offers exciting possibilities to literary criticism. But who should be included and on what grounds? What are the risks and tensions involved in the enterprise of canon-building and how might we negotiate them?

Click here for further details.

Research Seminar with CREW PhD students

The first of this term’s CREW research seminars takes place on Wednesday, January 27th at 4pm in Kier Hardie Room 216.

Gareth Evans
'Always observant and slightly obscure': Lynette Roberts and ethnographic practise

Sarah Morse
"But Aberfan Was Different": Reading Ron Berry's Flame and Slag as a a reaction to the Aberfan disaster'.