Kirjahaku

Welsh Environments in Contemporary Poetry' examines the question of how recent English-language poetry from Wales has responded to the diverse physical environments of Wales. The first volume to offer a sustained assessment of Welsh poetry in English within the context of recent developments in environmental literary criticism, this book also draws on aspects of human geography to explore the rich contemporary poetics of Welsh space and place. Opening with an examination of poets from the 1960s as well as the early work of R.S. Thomas, 'Welsh Environments in Contemporary Poetry' subsequently concentrates on the poetry of writers who have come to prominence since the 1970s: Gillian Clarke, Ruth Bidgood, Robert Minhinnick, Mike Jenkins, Christine Evans, and Ian Davidson.Close reading of key texts reveals the way in which these writers variously create Welsh places, landscapes, and environments - fashioning rural and urban spaces into poetic geographies that are both abundantly physical and inescapably cultural. Far from reducing Wales to mere scenery, the poetry that emerges from this book engages with the environments of Wales, not just for their own sake, but as a crucial way of exploring key issues in Welsh culture - from the negotiation of female identity in a land of masculine myths to the exploration of Welsh space in a global context.

This is the first full-length scholarly study of the prize-winning poet Ruth Bidgood, a writer who is best known for her long-term literary engagement with the landscape and communities of the mid-Wales region she has made her home.

“The Mallarmé Poems introduces a vibrant and exciting new voice in Welsh poetry. More than anything, I am struck by the way in which these poems are alive: through these black marks on the page, a skilful management of form and a riotous music which is very much his own. The author conjures, in poem after poem, a person who’s suddenly standing there next to you, breathing down your neck, talking insistently in your ear. Whether the poems’ subjects are world-weariness or games of cards, the stink of cities or the sound of footsteps, they are always wonderfully engaged with the dance and the party that language can be. The work of writers like Alan Gillis and Glyn Maxwell comes to mind and, if it is true that the best poems often give us an irrepressible personality, The Mallarmé Poems gives us an unforgettable person, talking to us, now, leaping from these pages into our lives.” – Jonathan Edwards

The September 1997 vote approving devolution, albeit by a tiny margin, was a watershed moment in recent Welsh history. This volume of essays considers the English-language poetic life of Wales since that point. Addressing a range of poets who are associated with Wales by either birth or residence and have been significantly active in the post-1997 period, it seeks to understand the various ways in which Wales’s Anglophone poetic life has been intertwined both with devolutionary matters specifically and the life of contemporary Wales more generally, as well as providing detailed scrutiny of work by key figures. The purpose of the book is thus to offer insights into how English-language poetry and contemporary Wales intersect, exploring the contours of a diverse and vibrant poetic life that is being produced at a time of important cultural and political developments within Wales as a whole.