Publication Day Blog- Listening to REPUBLIC (listen to the music)

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  • by Nerys Williams

Listening to Republic Writing Republic I found that post punk music of the 80s and 90s became key in an attempt to articulate a relationship between community, language and culture. Given the current preponderance of School Disco compilations, initially it might seem that retreating to the music of the 80s and 90s is another variant in communal nostalgia. This is not the intention of Republic. I believe that music carries an energy for future action and desire for change. What you learn over the years changes how you listen to those important early albums. Context shifts meaning. Republic is an anti-memoir, it came from a need to transcribe the voices of a community… Read More →

BBC at 100: Plath’s Maternity Verse Drama

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I’ve been writing on Syliva Plath’s engagement witn BBC Radio as a writer and poet – August 19th 2022 marked the 60th anniversary of  the broadcast of Plath’s  Three Women on the Third Programme . Produced by Douglas Cleverdon this was Plath’s only commisioned work for the BBC. Set on a materinty ward it follows the late pregnancies and birthing experiences of three unnamed patients. It is a remarkable work for its time addressing issues about consent, medical intervention, gynaecological rights, miscarriage and abortion. The research has been inclluded  as an essay “Sylvia Plath’s Three Women: Producing a Poetics of Listening at the BBC” in  this  insghtful book of essays.    The… Read More →

“Does dim rhyfel nawr – ma’r drws ar agor tan y wawr” Er Cof am David R. Edwards

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  Yn ddiochgar ofnadwy  i Sioned Rowlands  ac O’r Pedwar Gwynt wnath roi sbardun i sgwennu yn y man cynta; Thanks to Sioned Rowlands and O’r Pedwar Gwynt  who asked  (original in Welsh https://pedwargwynt.cymru – subscription) It is no secret that Datblygu first found their followers outside of Wales. As a teenager I attended gigs in remote country hotels where many of the Welsh speaking audience did not “get” Datblygu. The adulation of Dave in Wales has been very much a belated affair. I am certain David R . Edwards would curl his lips with bemusement at any overt hagiography. Unlike many writing eulogies for David R. Edwards, I never met… Read More →

Evacuation Route

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  This article- prose document has been published in Welsh in O’r Pedwar Gwynt  https://pedwargwynt.cymru  (Diolch mawr i Sioned Rowlands)   In the Californian sky you notice a web of lines between  the telegraph poles. A cat cradle of connections. The loops of electricity create heavy black threads in air. Your eye catches the odd yellow plastic ribbon tied around a pole’s waist. It is 1991 and these are markers of the first Iraq war. Berkeley has not always been so hospitable to its returning veterans. The following spring there will be a curfew in this city. Rodney King’s  savage beating by the LAPD, and the acquittal of the police… Read More →

Isabelle Galleymore’s Significant Other THE POLLARD PRIZE 2020

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      REVIEW  FOR POLLARD FIRST VOLUME PRIZE 2020 – JUDGING PANEL Pollard Prize Announcement 21st April, 2020 Isabelle Galleymore’s stunning first volume Significant Other, describes encounters between the natural world and human consciousness. The volume’s spare, if not condensed lyrics, represent minute acts of perception. Galleymore’s tightly-wrought poems document our world during a time of ecological crisis; these poems represent the Anthropocene. Using the lyric form as a recording of precise detail and as an anatomy of emotion, Galleymore creates a compendium of our creature world while narrating stories of human love lost. The intertwining of personal narratives with a documenting of natural world, complicates the relationship between… Read More →

Brexit’s Hard Hit Neighbours

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Originally published in Welsh in O’r Pedwar Gwynt (Dec 2018)   Arriving at my final destination, I am slightly disoriented. I am travelling from Dublin to a work meeting in Northern Ireland. I have changed my train at Belfast and have caught another train to Coleraine. This is the furthest north I have travelled since living in the Irish Republic. Initially, I am greeted by friendly signs advertising the Bushmills whiskey distillery. There is also a North Coast Guided Tour for Game of Thrones departing from Coleraine’s Railway Place. During this short visit, I am reminded, by the loud conversations of a film unit during my motel breakfast, how important the success… Read More →

UTERUS/ Walking in Her Shoes: The Eighth Amendment Repealed

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  • Categories: Essays   •   
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  • by Nerys Williams

First Published in Welsh in O’r Pedwar Gwynt 30th May 2018 https://pedwargwynt.cymru/dadansoddi/gol/diddymur-wythfed-diwygiad With thanks to editor Sioned Puw Reynolds  and Angharad Penrhyn-Jones     We are walking behind a giant uterus. The uterus is made out of pink fluffy material. There are two feet visible underneath. Two wooden poles prop the most magnificent fallopian tubes and ovaries I have ever seen. As we speed up, one ovary keeps on bouncing off my daughter’s head. ‘What is that?’ she asks pointing above  ‘Those are called fallopian tubes’  I  answer, giving her a very elementary lesson in biology. People around us smile, they can hear the biological terminology in the midst of our… Read More →

Memoir of a virtual community in the 1980s (or, being a young woman into Welsh language music)

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN WELSH  IN  O’R PEDWAR GWYNT FOR WELSH MUSIC DAY (FEB 9TH 2018) WITH MANY  THANKS TO EDITOR (s)  SIONED PUW ROWLANDS AND ANGHARAD PENRHYN JONES (and all bands concerned).   Writing in the sixties, American poet Frank O’Hara playfully encouraged the ‘Mothers of America’ to send their kids to the movies. He reasoned that doing so meant they would not get stuck in their room ‘hating you prematurely since you won’t have done anything horribly mean yet’ (Ave Maria) . If O’Hara had lived to see the 1980s, and been Welsh speaking, these lines might have been updated to: ‘Mamau Cymru plis gadewch i’ch merched fynd i gigs Cymdeithas… Read More →