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Jeremy Hooker Imagining
Wales:
A view of modern Welsh writing in English Jeremy Hooker is Professor of English Literature at the University of Glamorgan. In addition to publishing literary criticism, including Writers in a Landscape (1996) and monographs on David Jones and John Cowper Powys, he is the author of 10 collections of poems, the most recent of which is Our Lady of Europe (1997). Welsh Literature and English is a particularly popular subject in Wales, but a course where this book can be used in conjunction with is also available in Liverpool.
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Gwyn
Thomas Gwyn Thomas is Emeritus Professor of Welsh Language and Literature at the University of Wales, Bangor and the translator of several acclaimed English-language editions of Welsh legends, including Tales from the Mabinogion; The Quest for Olwen and The Tale of Taliesin. His interests are wide ranging and he is well known for making the Welsh poetic tradition more easily available for the modern reader.
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Richard Evans Richard Evans is a journalist working for Wales on Sunday.
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Rob Watson Rob Watson was born in Newbridge, Gwent. He studied at the London School of Film before teaching in Swansea He is a lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of Leeds, Bretton Hall. He is the author of four acclaimed novels, of which Rumours of Fulfilment and Slipping Away from Milford are still in print.
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Amy Dillwyn Amy Dillwyn was a fascinating eccentric women who inherited her father’s industrial works in South Wales, yet was also a novelist, often satirising the rigid gender roles in a conventional society. The editor, Katie Gramich, is a tutor in literature at the Open University in the South West has published several books on literature and is joint Editor of the Honno Classics Series.
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Nia Williams Nia Williams was born and brought up in South Wales and is now living in Oxford where she works as a freelance editor and writer. She has had several short stories published in magazines and books and also broadcast on Radio 4 and Radio Wales. The Pier Glass is her first novel.
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S. W. Rhydderch Already a veteran of readings in Wales, England and Holland, Samantha Wynne Rhydderch will surely achieve a similar popularity and media profile to another young Seren poet, Owen Sheers. Samantha Wynne Rhydderch read Classics at Cambridge and took an MA in Creative Writing at Cardiff. She divides her time between New Quay and Oxford.
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Jean Gill Jean Gill lives near Llanelli, and has published three collections of poetry. Snake on Saturdays is her first novel. Frequently
Asked Questions When
did you start writing? I
can remember writing stories when I was seven onwards. I even entered a couple
of short stories to gain an A level qualification in English with creative
writing (Northern Exam Board) but I stopped writing at eighteen when I went to
university in York. Something about studying Literature with a capital L was
too intimidating for my own writing and in those days (‘970s) there were no
creative writing courses. I started writing poetry
in my twenties and at thirty, after several rejections from journals,
Outposts Poetry Journal accepted a poem, ’Note from Guinevere to
Lancelot’, for publication. You don’t forget your first acceptance! Over
the next ten years I had two volumes of poetry published. What
made you write a novel? I
was forty and it was a year for challenges; I became a comprehensive school
Headteacher, I gave up sugar and I had an idea for a major work - the novel.
Giving up sugar was the hardest to stick at. What
was the starting point for the novel? I
was on my way back from a camping holiday in south-west France, re-energised
and full of writing plans, and I had the idea for the central tragedy in the
novel. I could clearly envisage where it happened, the impact it had on
Helen’s life and the difficulties it would pose for her relationship with
Dai. As soon as I realized that Helen moved to Llanelli and that Dai was
deeply rooted in his family, his landscape and his language, I could explore
their feelings. It was more like discovering a novel than creating one,
although I kept planning and rethinking the structure. How
long did it take you to write ‘Snake on Saturdays’? I
thought I had finished it in a year but I have revised and polished it over
the three years since then. My Editor has been crucial in making it the best
it can be; I believe that every writer needs an outside view to challenge you
over cuts, changes and what I call continuity. In a film, the Director checks
that the detail, for instance what the actor is wearing, is consistent from
one scene to the next. If scenes were shot at different times, it’s easy to
miss daft mistakes like a sleeve that’s just been ripped off appearing neatly
attached to a jacket. When you’re writing over a year and have moved whole
chapters from chronological sequence to flashback, your work needs careful
checking. How
did you research the background to the novel? I
had a little knowledge of all the worlds in the novel but not enough. Three
keys areas I had to research were cows, men-only funerals and French criminal
law. My vet was the source of all cow knowledge but I think he was a bit
bemused at being asked to provide technical support on a novel! Two teaching
colleagues gave me spellbinding oral accounts of Carmarthenshire funerals
while I took handwritten notes and I am particularly proud of this chapter
(the one you can read on the Summer Reading web-site) because it goes so far
beyond my own experience. My third piece of research involved phoning the
French Embassy in London and, in my best French, saying, ìIf someone had
committed this crime in France( I gave details), what would be the trial
procedures and where would the trial be held?î The receptionist obviously
thought I was a nutty Brit who’d actually committed the crime but she sent
me a really helpful booklet and she told me the likely place of trial. I even
asked her what the local papers there would be that would report the trial. What
does the title mean? It
refers to an old French legend in which a woman makes her husband promise to
give her complete privacy on one day each week. Although they are really happy
together, curiosity gets the better of him, and when he sneaks a look into her
private chamber on the forbidden day, he sees that she has turned into a
snake. She screams at the discovery and leaves forever. For me, the legend is
a metaphor for the secrets everyone holds even within a close relationship and
the impact of revelations. It’s exactly what’s being discussed with regard
to the young men known as ‘the Bulger killers’ and their hopes for
relationships in the future. This theme is central to the novel but I’ll let
you read it to find out why . What
advice would you give young writers? My
advice always comes in paradoxes and is based on what I wish I had been told
when I was a young writer. Have
confidence in your own writing; particularly women, who are on average ten
years behind men in their writing careers, tend to wait for someone else to
tell them they’re good writers. That may never happen even if you’re a
marvelous writer. You need to believe in your own writing and convince others
that it’s good. At the same time, you should learn from others. It took me a
long time to realize that I could learn from rejections, even if I couldn’t
help being upset by them. Publication
is a business - be willing to learn your specific business. The fiction world
is different to poetry, to television drama, to screenplay . If you’re
expected to pitch an idea, that’s a skill you can learn (one I’m just
learning and find hard). At the same time, writing can also be highly
emotional - you need to know what’s private and also what is not for sale.
If that Hollywood ending is not what you want, how desperate are you for
publication? I’ve had suggestions for the ‘improvement’ of a stage play
that I would not consider for a second. Read
widely. Read what ‘s being written now. Talk to people who are writing now.
The INTERNET has opened up the world. At the same time, write your heart out
and don’t think you must know it all before you can write. Who knows what
your personal voice is or what it will become; sing and find out. Never
give up. It helps me cope with all the rejections if I always have something
out in the world seeking an audience; then when I get something rejected, I
can pin my hopes on what is still ‘out there’. Send as much as you can out
into the world rather than pin your hopes on one poem sent to one Editor. Never
give up.
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Jon Gower Writer and journalist Jon Gower now lives and works in Cardiff as an arts and media correspondent for the BBC. Like Bill Bryson, Jon Gower immerses himself in the life and landscape of the places he visits and describes. Like Bryson, he has a robust sense of humour, a very sharp eye and ear, and to the greatest extent possible allows the people he meets to tell their own story in their own words.
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Nigel Jenkins Nigel Jenkins, a freelance writer, poet, journalist and lecturer, was born on a farm on the Gower Peninsula. He has previously published two collections of poetry with Gomer Press, Acts of Union (1990) and Ambush (1998). Also published by Gomer is Gwalia in Khasia, a volume in which he tells the fascinating story of the Welsh missonary project in north-east India from the refreshing perspective of a twentieth-century Welsh traveller and writer. It was awarded the prestigious Welsh Arts Council Book of the Year Prize in 1996.
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john sam jones John Sam Jones comes from Barmouth. After periods of university study at Aberystwyth and Berkeley, he’s worked as a teacher, a chaplain in hospitals and prisons, and a sexual health worker within the NHS on Merseyside and in North Wales. He lives with his partner in a village on the Dee estuary. "I
lived outside of Wales for more than ten years between ‘98’ and ‘992, in
sunny California for more than three years and then in not so sunny Liverpool.
During the time I was away I changed a lot. Perhaps the biggest change
was that I integrated my sexuality in a very positive way and escaped the
burden of doubts and fears I’d had about being gay when I lived in Wales.
So coming back to Wales to work in ‘992 was a bit of a shock - for Wales
hadn’t changed. Attitudes to gay men and lesbians were as negative as
I remembered them to have been. I got the title for this collection from one
of my first encounters with a Public Health physician who, when asked what
work was being done in North Wales with gay men around sexual health issues,
said that there were no people like that in north Wales. What
I set out to do in writing these pieces was hold up a mirror. Gay men’s
lives are largely hidden from view in Welsh society and because of this
hiddenness all sorts of myths and misconceptions are peddled about our lives -
about my life. I wanted to show, through brief glimpses, the very
ordinariness - but also the extraordinariness of the lives gay men lead today.
I wanted to show the homophobia that pervades Welsh society - and I wanted to
suggest some of the ways that individuals overcome such prejudice. I
didn’t want to write about victims, but about men who are strong and who get
on and make the best of their lives in hostile circumstances. Two
of the stories are about young men in their teens. Through a piece of
work that I did in ‘996/’997 with a group of gay and lesbian teenagers at
the West Rhyl Young People’s Project I came to the very painful realisation
that despite many gay characters in soaps (including the soap opera at
Westminster) that seem to have played a role in fostering greater
understanding and tolerance, life as a gay or lesbian teenager in rural north
Wales was as awful as it was when I had been a gay teenager in rural north
Wales at the beginning of the ‘970s. The politics of Section 28 and
the government’s unwillingness to define a sex education curriculum that is
statutory leave gay and lesbian teenagers amongst the most vulnerable to
sexual exploitation and leave teachers (even the most sympathetic)
uncertain of what they can say to the gay or lesbian young person who seeks
their counsel. Little is done to develop the self-esteem of gay and
lesbian teenagers in school settings and little is done to address homophobic
bullying in school settings. I
suppose I wanted this collection of stories to give insight, but also
challenge us in Wales to think about what kind of life we would want for a gay
son or a gay brother, a gay friend or a gay neighbour. I hoped that the
gay men reading these stories would see aspects of their own lives reflected
back to them, and perhaps go some way to helping them articulate their own
experience of being gay in Wales. I hoped that the non-gay readers of
this book would ask themselves how they might be (unwittingly) participating
in the homophobia that is so pervasive, and how they might come out as gay
friendly." John Sam Jones, Summer 2001 |
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George Brinley Evans Profile "The following day Harry Secombe came to Swansea
hospital to visit his mother, and called in on the
men’s ward. I could not see him because both my eyes
were sewn up and heavily bandaged over. But in my mind
I could see him. Later it was the memory of that, that
started me sculpting. I realised that perspective
would be easier for me to handle in that media." During convalescence he wrote a script for a tv play,
his wife sent it to the BBC. He was invited to London.
They liked the drama but it was all set underground
and tv in the ‘sixties was black and white only. His
drama was taken up by Kitty Black, then head of drama
at Redifusion. He sat through a real time episode of
Boyd Q.C. and was offered work in the television
studio to get a feel of what tv needed in terms of
scriptwriting. With two small sons to support and a
wife who was working to keep a family of four afloat
George took a course at the government rehabilitation
unit from which he found clerical work in a foundry
and then in West Glamorgan Hospital service.He
returned to industry through Bewley and John
Engineers. at Neath Abbey. "It was at this time I met George Ewart Evans, the
historian and author. He interviewed me along with
many other miners for his book From the Mouths Of Men
Faber & Faber 1973. I also did the drawings from which
the illustrations in the book by Peter Branfield were
based. In a letter to me at the time George Ewart
Evans wrote that he thought I should return to my
writing even if it gave me less time for my painting." George returned to mining with Wimpey at the
Maes-y-Marchog site in Banwen 1977. His wife Peggy,
died in December 1985. He finally retired from mining in 1988 and began
attending classes on the appreciation of the short
story at the DOVE workshops in Banwen with tutors Alun
Richards and Neal Mason. His fiction, painting and sculptures have been widely
published and exhibited. Seven of his paintings and four of his sculptures are
currently featuring in the major exhibition Miner
Artists The Art of the Welsh Coal Workers which runs
until October 15th at the National Museum. He still lives and works in Banwen.
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