Gelynion – Enemies Cymru – is a groundbreaking exploration of contemporary poetry in Wales through the potential of collaboration. It takes the international Enemies project into the multilingual context of Wales, aiming to create original collaborative work in both of Wales’s languages as well as integrating and cross-fertilising differing poetic communities….
Find the full article here: http://poetrywales.co.uk/wp/lang/en/2396/gelynion-enemies-cymru/
In this IWA blog post Jasmine Donahaye argues that we in Wales urgently have to work on our sense of self-confidence in the nation and its culture. The question of why Wales should be studied at Welsh institutions should simply not come up – it should be self-evident. Ask the same question in other nations and the result would be puzzled head-scratching: ‘Who else is supposed to work on Lithuania/Poland/Scotland/Germany/etc., except institutions in those nations? Aren’t they best placed to do so?’ Welsh universities should be proud to pursue studies in Welsh literature, culture, history, science etc. but in the race to position themselves near the top of whatever ranking is seen as most influential today, they often perceive this activity as small-scale, unimportant and, most damning of all, only of ‘local’ significance and therefore not worth the pretty trifling amount of money it would cost to support this work. If those of use who are interested in the study of Wales simply give up on holding Welsh universities and other institutions to account, we’ll acquiesce in that view and thus may end up help to consign Welsh studies to the academic cabinet of curiosities that Matthew Arnold once wanted it to belong to.
Ok, so this wasn’t a summary, more of an outburst. Find the full, much better argued article here: http://www.clickonwales.org/2015/04/taking-ourselves-seriously/
On Thursday, April 30, Professor Daniel G. Williams of Swansea University will deliver the lecture ‘One Nation! Which Nation? Assimilating Wales from Shakespeare to Miliband’. The evening will also see the launch of Professor Williams’s new collection of essays, Wales Unchained: Literature, Politics and Identity in the American Century.
Date: Thursday, 30 April
Time: 6.30pm, book launch and reception from 6.00 pm
Venue: Wallace Lecture Theatre, Wallace Building, Swansea University, SA2 8PP
The lecture will be delivered in Welsh, simultaneous translation will be provided.
For more details, please see: http://www.swansea.ac.uk/media-centre/whats-happening/professordanielgwilliams-publiclectureandbooklaunch.php
The dates for the next annual conference of the Association for Welsh Writing in English are 1-3 April 2016. Emma Schofield from Cardiff University is organising. Watch this space – a cfp is going to appear here in due course.
The winner of the New Scholars category of the M Wynn Thomas Prize for outstanding work in the field of Welsh Writing in English 2015 is Jamie Harris. Jamie is currently engaged in completing a PhD at Aberystwyth University, which is funded by the University’s Rendel Scholarship. His thesis focuses on writers of place and psychogeography in Welsh Writing in English since devolution. Jamie also teaches part-time in Aberystwyth’s Department of English and Creative Writing.
Jamie’s essay engages in a fundamental and at the same time hugely difficult and potentially divisive question: what makes a Welsh writer a Welsh writer? Is it genes? A writer’s place of residence? Her/his subject matter? Place of publication? Geraint Evans had already asked this question in his essay ‘Edward Thomas and the Canon of Welsh Writing in English’ (see IJWWE, Vol. 1, 2013), and it is unsurprising that this question should be most frequently addressed when writing about an author, whose Welsh inheritance or allegiance is somehow in doubt or who usually gets bracketed in a different category. Edward Thomas is usually a ‘war poet’, who articulates the British war experience. Jamie Harris skilfully anatomises and analyses Iain Sinclair’s allegiances and connections, arguing for his unquestioned inclusion in the ‘Welsh canon’.
You can read the essay in IJWWE, Vol. 2, 2014 or watch an interview conducted with Jamie at the AWWE conference 2015. Our thanks go to Dr Aidan Byrne (Wolverhampton University) for conducting the interview.
This year’s winner of the Open category of the M. Wynn Thomas Prize for outstanding work in the field of Welsh writing in English is Dr Heather Williams with her essay entitled ‘Iolo Morganwg, Edward Williams and the Radically Bilingual Text: Poems Lyric and Pastoral (1794)’. The essay was published in IJWWE, Vol. 2, 2014.
In her essay, Dr Williams critiques a theoretical position in Translation Studies, which have almost come to assume the status of universally acknowledged truth, namely Lawrence Venuti’s position that it is always better to use a foreignising translation strategy, which explicitly draws attention to the source text’s otherness and attempts to ‘translate’ it into the target culture, rather than a domesticating strategy, which attempts to smooth over the edges of the source text to make it blend into the target culture. In fact, as Michael Cronin has pointed out, the stakes are different when one translates a text from a majority culture into the context of a minority culture: paradoxically then a domesticating approach may actually serve to help ensure the survival of the target culture. Heather Williams ably demonstrates this by examining Iolo Morganwg’s Poems Lyric and Pastoral. It is an essay which works towards an understanding of the bilingual culture of Wales in the 18th century as much as a much-needed corrective to Lawrence Venuti’s original approach.
Heather herself says:
It’s a great privilege to receive this award for my work on Iolo Morganwg. I can’t think of another writer who has suffered so much from the mythology surrounding his name obscuring the texts that he wrote. I hope my essay will persuade people that Iolo is an important figure in both the literatures of Wales. The work was undertaken as part of the AHRC-funded project on ‘Wales and the French Revolution’ at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, and draws on my longstanding interest in translation studies and study of cultural interfaces.
Mae’n anrhydedd fawr derbyn y wobr hon am fy ngwaith ar Iolo Morganwg. Anodd meddwl am lenor arall sydd wedi cwympo rhwng dwy stol i’r fath raddau. Gobeitho bydd fy ysgrif yn darbwyllo pobl bod i Iolo le pwysig yn nwy lenyddiaeth Cymru. Gwnes i’r gwaith fel rhan o’r prosiect AHRC ‘Cymru a’r Chwyldro Ffrengig’ yng Nghanolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd Prifysgol Cymru, ac mae’n deillio o’m diddordeb mewn astudiaethau cyfieithu a ‘r ffiniau rhwng diwyllianau gwahanol.
If you would like to find out more about the essay and about its author, you can watch an interview with Heather Williams here. Our thanks go to Dr Aidan Byrne (Wolverhampton University) for conducting the interview.
Please also see the University of Wales’s statement.
Swansea, March 2015
Dr Heather Williams (Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, Aberystwyth) and Jamie Harris (Aberystwyth University) are this year’s winners of the prestigious M. Wynn Thomas Prize for outstanding academic work in the field of Welsh Writing in English. Once again, submissions were of a very high quality, and the judging panel (Dr Matthew Jarvis, Aberystwyth University/University of Wales Trinity St David, Dr Aidan Byrne, Wolverhampton University and Dr Alyce von Rothkirch, Swansea University) were hard-pushed to arrive at a decision. The panel felt that the winners’ work showed exceptional scholarship as well as the willingness to explore new territory.
We gratefully acknowledge the generous sponsorship of University of Wales Press. Winners receive £150 each and a full set of the Library of Wales titles published by Parthian Books, whom we would also like to thank for their generous gift.
The prize will be awarded at the annual conference of the Association for Welsh Writing in English, ‘The Country and the City: Rural and Urban Wales’, to be held at Gregynog Hall, Powys, 27-29 March 2015.
DEADLINE EXTENDED UNTIL 31 JANUARY 2015
The M. Wynn Thomas Prize is offered to celebrate outstanding scholarly work in the field of Welsh writing in English. There are two prize categories: the ‘Open’ category and the ‘New Scholars’ category. Essays submitted may be unpublished or published, in English or in Welsh. Published essays should be from 2013/14. Topics may include all aspects of Welsh writing in English as well as the inter-relationship of Welsh writing in English with cognate areas (Welsh Studies, history, cultural studies, film/media studies, translation studies, performance/theatre studies, digital humanities, comparative literature etc.). The judging panel for the 2015 Prize will be Dr Matthew Jarvis (Aberystwyth University/University of Wales Trinity Saint David), Dr Aidan Byrne (University of Wolverhampton) and Dr Alyce von Rothkirch (Swansea University).
The prize is awarded for a piece of substantial scholarship that is engagingly written. We encourage submissions that are ground-breaking in terms of subject-matter and/or methodology/disciplinarity. Essays that grapple with new ideas in an intelligent and conceptualised way are preferred. It is awarded at the annual conference of the Association of Welsh writing in English, which takes place around Easter every year in Gregynog Hall (near Newtown).
Prize categories:
‘Open’ Category
Essays in this category will be ca. 6,000-8,000 words long, of the highest scholarly quality and either already published in, or of a standard appropriate to an international, peer-reviewed journal. Authors may be academics or scholars, who are not affiliated with an HE institution.
Prize: £150 and a full set of the Library of Wales series of books published by Parthian.
‘New Scholars’ Category
Essays in this category will be ca. 4,000-7,000 words long and of highly developed scholarly quality appropriate to the author’s level of (postgraduate) study. Authors may be postgraduate students or students who have recently graduated.
Prize: £150 and a full set of the Library of Wales series of books published by Parthian.
Deadline:
Essays must be submitted by email or by post by 31 JANUARY 2015.
Contact Alyce von Rothkirch for more information and to submit your essays:
Dr Alyce von Rothkirch
DACE, Swansea University
Singleton Park
Swansea SA2 8PP
This blog entry highlights a recent event organised by the Learned Society of Wales, with support from HEFCW, to discuss the future of Welsh Studies. It’s a discussion that needs to be had outside the Learned Society, too…
http://www.uwp.co.uk/en/news/2014/12/welsh-studies-the-way-forward-gregynog-26-november-2014
International Journal of Welsh Writing in English 