CREW at the AWWE Conference: Report

The intrepid foursome set out from Swansea University on the awfully big adventure of their first taste of the annual Association of Welsh Writing in English conference at Gregynog. MA students Kieron Smith and Ed Spence, together with first year PhD researchers Charlotte Jackson and Liza Penn-Thomas, were heavily reliant upon satnav and a copious supply of Haribo to keep them on course. Braving the winding lanes and suicidal pheasants was well worth it as we drove up the lane to the impressive facade that our venue provided. Yet all of us took very little time to settle in to what could have been an intimidating experience. As Kieron says of the whole atmosphere at the conference, it was “friendly, welcoming and not too forbidding.”
Commencing the official itinerary with the long awaited launch of Slanderous Tongues in many ways set the tone for the days that would follow. Editor Daniel Williams explained that part of the projects initial objectives had been to include the work of the fresh young academics that were coming through into the field of Welsh Writing in English, at the time that the collection of essays was commissioned. As Daniel did point out, most of the contributors (and the editor himself) were by now slowly creeping into middle-age! The encouragement that established academics have so freely given to the newer and younger academics over the years could be seen in the thriving research community present in that room. And all of us CREW first timers were struck by how easy it was to find ourselves in conversation with the leaders in the field.

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.
Both Charlotte and I found that one of the most useful aspects of the weekend were the discussions that followed our first papers at an AWWE conference. Both in terms of the skills we were given opportunity to exercise and the exchange of ideas and suggestions that help to inform our further research, our session was an uplifting end to an inspiring weekend. We look forward to continuing in Welsh Writing in English with excitement, as there are still so many excellent texts to study and new ways of looking at them to be explored. Most of all, there is a sense of community and co-operation within this field that was fully evident to us at this year’s annual conference. It is not a community in which we all necessarily agree with one another but rather where ideas can be expressed, debated and developed.

By Liza Penn-Thomas
Ably supported by Ed Spence, Kieron Smith and Charlotte Jackson.

Wales Book of the Year 2010 / Llyfr y Flwyddyn 2010

Academi has announced its Longlist for this year’s Welsh Book of the Year and CREW (The Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales) is delighted to see its members and associates represented.

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 CREW presence on this year’s longlist builds on past successes. Profesor Dai Smith’s Raymond Williams: A Warrior’s Tale (Parthian) was Longlisted in 2009, and Daniel Williams’s Ethnicity and Cultural Authority (Edinburgh University Press) was Longlisted in 2007.

Mae sawl cyfrol gan aelodau CREW (Y Ganolfan Ymchwil i Lên ac Iaith Saesneg Cymru) wedi eu cynnwys ar restr hir llyfr y flwyddyn (iaith Saesneg) eleni. Mae cyfrol Peter Lord, The Meaning of Pictures (Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru) ar y rhestr, yn ogystol a chyfrol a farddoniaeth Jasmine Donahaye, Self-Portrait as Ruth (Salt). Mae Peter yn Gymrawd Ymchwil yn CREW, ac fe gwblhaodd Jasmine ei doethuraieth ar berthynas y Cymry a’r Iddewon gyda ni. Hefyd ar y rhestr mae cyfrol o storiau byrion gan Emyr Humphreys, The Woman at the Window (Seren). Casglwyd y straeon yma at ei gilydd ar gais Emyr Humphreys gan yr Athro M. Wynn Thomas, deiliad Cadair Emyr Humphreys yn CREW.

http://www.academi.org/the-long-list/

Gay Pride and Prejudice Since Devolution

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.

‘A Welcome in the Hillside? Gay Pride and Prejudice Since Devolution’.

Monday 26 April 4pm
Arts and Humanities Conference Room, James Callaghan Building.

John Sam Jones writes about the lives of gay men in Wales - how they interact with their families, their culture and religious institutions, and how they explore sexuality in situations where prejudice is often all pervasive. He has been politically active with Stonewall for more than a decade and is currently a board member of Stonewall Cymru. He has worked as a hospital and prison chaplain, a public health specialist in sexual health and is currently the Schools Adviser for Personal and Social Education in Denbighshire. He lives with his Civil Partner, two dogs and a cat in a magnificent Victorian villa overlooking the Mawddach estuary.

Parthian Books have published two collections of John’s short stories: Welsh Boys Too (2000), which won an Honour Book Award from the American Library Association in 2002, and Fishboys of Vernazza (2003), which was long listed for Welsh book of the year. The Gay Men’s Press published John’s first novel, With Angels and Furies, in 2005. His semi-autobiographical Crawling Through Thorns was published by Parthian in 2008.

Yr awdur ac ymgyrchydd dros hawliau hoyw, John Sam Jones, fydd yn cyflwyno’r semiar nesaf yng nghyfres ‘Cyflwr y Genedl’. Traddodir y ddarlith yn Saesneg.
Dydd Llun, 26 Ebrill, 4pm
Ystafell Gynadledda, Adeilad James Callagahan
Croeso i bawb!

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.