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This is KZSU, Stanford.
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Welcome to entitled opinions.
My name is Robert Harrison.
We're coming to you from the Stanford campus.
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Over the danger is, they're the saving power also grows.
You longtime listeners have heard me quote that line from the German poet,
"Hoded" more than once on this show.
And more than once, I have stressed that the fearsome danger in our time is technology.
No, not technology per se, but rather,
the matter is rather, "technicity" or the inframing of all things within a network of unlimited availability
and unlimited disposability.
The danger is not your computer, your iPhone, or your iPod.
It's what gadgets, such as these, are doing to redefine our relations to things,
to restructure our relations to one another, and to reconfigure knowledge
by reducing it to a jumble of shattered fragments.
It is a technology that gives us technology that gives us the iPod and the Internet.
But where the danger is, they're entitled opinions grows.
The saving power at the heart of all that militates against the integrity of thought.
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I would like to tell all our listeners out there that whether you're tuning in to entitled opinions live on KZSU
or accessing the show through our website or through our iTunes podcast,
there is nothing virtual about entitled opinions.
You are hearing animate, full bodied conversation in the place where the reality of ideas and the meaning of texts properly belong,
namely in the silent recesses of your minds.
Thinking is a form of listening, and that's what you're doing when you bring your full attention to bear on the voices that come to you through your ear pods
or your computer terminal, or whatever means you're using to access this show.
Nor are you merely passive listeners.
I can assure you that you are interlocutors in these conversations, not virtual interlocutors, but real ones.
Certainly your voices are heard when you write to me or the Christie Wampol or production manager,
heard and responded to. To my knowledge, I have never received a communication from a listener that I have not responded to.
Some may have never been, some may have been sent but never reached me for one reason or another,
but those that do reach me receive personal and not merely formulaic responses.
In other words, you are all part of the conversation.
A few weeks ago I received an email from someone named Daffod, who wrote quite elegantly at that.
"Before I go on to the purpose of this email, I would like to sing electronic praise of the entitled opinions show.
It is a pleasure to dig around in iTunes, fertile soil, and come across some gems as your show."
Thank you, Daffod.
I can think of no better way to intertwine the world I live in than to indulge in such insightful and intelligent conversations.
In a world where information and media is fused together to create a confusing, and sometimes blinding, white light, it is a credit to the timeless culture of casting conversation broadly that the show exists."
I wanted to reference this communication because I owe the topic of today's show to Daffod Green, who went on to write, and I quote again, a long quote.
"In the tradition of requests, I thought I might provide my own, a conversation about Celtic literature.
In my opinion, Celtic literature is one of the most underrated areas of the Western imagination.
Few people realize that Welsh culture contains the oldest literature in the British Isles, yet because literary history here reveals itself, mainly through English, this is the key driver of our collective consciousness."
There are moments in this series when I itch with a desire to hear reference to the Celtic world.
For example, mentions of Dylan Thomas, or even Joyce's repulsion of this world.
Let me open a parentheses here and say that I actually have reference Dylan Thomas.
In fact, I read one of his poems, The Sea at Zero, at the end of a show I did on Proofrock and Dante.
Anyway, Daffod goes on.
Dylan even wrote a fair few poems as did our "S" Thomas using the traditional strict Welsh meter pioneered by Daffod App Gwillam.
In the 14th century, a meter which still holds high reverence in cultural events in this day and age.
The Welsh language features like a ghost in the English tradition.
For example, Spencer was indirectly moved by it when writing the Fairy Queen, because Elizabeth spoke Welsh, Henry VII, was from the Isle of Anglacy.
And Tolkien based an alphish dialect upon Welsh.
With Celtic languages fighting for survival, it would be wonderful if, in the spirit of worldly cooperation, Stanford could help enthuse interests in its listeners.
I don't receive many requests for shows which I don't think are good ones.
Had we but world enough in time, I would follow up on just about all of them.
Yet, as I've said a number of times before, various factors have to align properly before a good show on a given topic becomes feasible.
I generally feel that I need to have some competency myself in the topic or author at hand in order to be an informed interlocutor,
but that's not the case today.
David's communication made me realize how a "businessable is my ignorance about Welsh literature" and that, despite my ignorance, I really should do a show on it.
Add to that the fact that the first poet laureate of Wales, Gwyneth Lewis, is in residence at Stanford this year and there you have it.
Gwyneth Lewis is here with me in the studio today for a two-part show.
In the first hour, we're going to discuss the Welsh language and the history of Welsh literature.
In the second hour, I will speak with Gwyneth about her own work, but first, let me welcome her to the program.
Gwyneth, thanks so much for joining us on entitled opinions today.
It's a great pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Gwyneth, most of your biographical information is going to be posted on our web page for our listeners to access, so I don't want to go through the whole bio here.
Let me just briefly mention that you were appointed Wales inaugural national poet in 2005 and that you were the first poet ever to receive the Laureate ship.
Welsh is your mother tongue and while you do write in Welsh, you also write in English and for our non-Welsh listeners, I highly recommend this 2005 selection of your poems in English called Chaotic Angels.
Among other volumes, you also wrote a fascinating non-fiction book in English called Sunbathing in the Rain, a cheerful book on depression that came out in 2002, and I have in my possession the manuscript of a book that you finished very recently called A Hospital Odyssey.
And on the way to the studio, you tell me that this book has just come out in Europe.
So we'll have a occasion to discuss your own work in the second part of the show, but first please bear with me as I ask you a few very basic questions about Wales, Welsh and Welsh literature.
My first question, and again I beg the indulgence from you and all the Welsh listeners out there, but what do we mean when we say that Welsh is a Celtic language, what other languages is it most closely related to?
Well, Welsh is primarily related to the berythonic Celtic languages, that is Cornish and Breton, and they in turn that berythonic family are in a relationship of first cousins if you like, to the Goidellic, Celtic languages, namely Irish and Scottish
Galic. And even though the traditional way of describing it is that we are peak Celts and the Goidellic languages are Q Celts, that is for example when I say the word pen, which means head, I say a P, the Q Celts say Q when with a Q, and so that's the linguistic difference.
We're not, we're fairly mutually understandable between the Breton's and the Cornish and the Welsh, but it's by no means mutually comprehensible between, let's say if I heard an Irish speaker speaking, I might get some individual words, but it is quite a different language.
And then of course then we are totally unrelated linguistically except to English, which is a Saxon language, except through the later influence of Latin.
So I gather that these languages are not Germanic languages of the family that English belongs to, or if so they have a very distant sort of ancestry in common.
Germanic at all, they are Indo-European languages, as are all the languages, well nearly all the languages in Europe, but my understanding is from trying to piece it together is that we came from one of the migrations from Austria and Switzerland, and that that particular migration was the, the, the, the,
on the supersonic Catholic migration.
Although there is some uncertainty about this,
and of course we came originally from the Middle East,
and maybe from the Baltic Sea.
But basically from Middle East and farmers.
- I've read things that you've said in interviews
about the difference poetically between Welsh and English,
and that in Welsh the consonants are rounder,
or they have softer edges, and as a result it's a much more,
I don't know if you use the word musical or sonorous,
but that there's something in the difference
between the hardness and softness of consonant endings
that make a big difference when it actually comes
to the poetry of the two traditions.
- That is true.
Welsh has a highly relational element to it,
which is that if you have two sounds,
let's say the end of one word and the beginning of another,
if they don't marry well,
we have a whole system of mutations,
so that the two words rub against each other,
and they soften each other,
so that for example, rather than saying
uncardees in Cardiff, which is my hometown,
that sounds rather hard to make uncardees,
I would say, "Unhayat-dee" is,
so I would take that in the back of my throat,
and there are several ways of saying "cardee",
if I was saying "and kardee", if I'd say,
"Achayat-dee" is totally different sound,
and I could come from Cardiff or "gayat-dee"
another totally different sound.
So one of the payoffs of this is that it makes
well, extremely flexible language poetically,
because the city of Cardiff doesn't exist as one abstract city,
there are four versions of Cardiff,
depending on the word that comes before it,
which means that we have a whole theology of relatedness,
if you like, and that's even before we start talking
about the poetry properly.
- Sure, and how many people do,
it's less than a million people who actually speak well,
present, they know.
- It's 20% of the population, so we're a small nation,
and many of us know each other,
but the best that can be said about the languages
that the rate of decline is declining.
There is a general population shift,
which is this, that the older speakers
who were natural well-speakers
from being brought up speaking well,
and let's say primarily in the rural areas,
they're getting older and tending to die off,
whereas the younger speakers who are in the increase
because of the advances in well-shaducation,
they represent a big hope for the revival of the language,
but it is actually a huge change,
because these are urban,
urban conobations of South and North Wales,
and so the relationship of the language
with the rural, hinterland is changing rapidly.
- I read some quotes from this listener,
David Green, and he mentions there,
I repeat that the Celtic literature
is one of the most underrated areas in Western imagine,
and a few people realize that Welsh culture
contains the oldest literature in the British Isles,
and I was looking, trying to give myself a crash course
for our conversation about the history of Welsh literature,
and I found something, again, online,
I don't even know who the author is,
but he has like 16, 17 chapters of,
kind of condensed history,
but he begins his introduction by saying
much Welsh literature is unknown outside the borders
of the principality.
Anglo-Welchpoe is on the other hand,
such as Dylan Thomas or famous
throughout the literary world, they wrote in English,
the very nature of the Welsh language,
so vastly different from every other in Europe
with the exception of Bertrand,
with which it shares a common heritage,
as you were just mentioning with.
Restrix is understanding to perhaps no more
than a half a million people,
one of these people is certainly not A. N. Wilson,
quote, "A writer of great reputation,
the literary editor of the evening standard,
an English newspaper,
as a literary critic, Wilson falls on his face,
for he completely fails to recognize
the two essential features of the Welsh poetic tradition,
its antiquity and its continuity."
Wilson's statement to the Western male is thus outrageous,
quote, "I love Wales and the Welsh," she said,
but Wales did not develop the way Scott's did
with an independent literary tradition.
That is a historical fact,
and then he goes on to give a whole history of Welsh literature.
Outrageous, I mean, this is a afraid just showing Mr. Wilson's
ignorance of Welsh literature,
and it's not uncommon actually,
it's as if the Welsh being the closest neighbours
to the English are oddly invisible.
It's because, perhaps because it is perhaps
because the language is so different,
but also there's this wonderful English parochialism
where if something looks like England
or on the surface appears to be English,
there's a reluctance to investigate even further.
In fact, in the sixth century, Welsh was spoken
all the way through the British Isles
right the way up to Edinburgh.
It was the language of the courts
and the warlords.
It wasn't a symbol by the end of the sixth century,
not a simple picture,
because the Saxon invaders were starting to come in
and making alliances with local warlords
and intermarrying and so on and so forth.
So the interrelationship between the populations
was extremely complex, but it was only in the late sixth century
that the Welsh began to retreat down from Scotland,
Northern England and back then into the shape of Wales
as we know it today.
- So this history that is one of the oldest literary histories
in the British Isles and perhaps in the post-Roman Europe
as a result, we want to go through it
in a very kind of schematic way and you mentioned
that it begins in the sixth century.
What formed did it take in the sixth century?
- Well, these are poems.
The poems that we have from the sixth century,
the oldest poem, although we do have an ongoing argument
with the Scots about this,
they try to claim the oldest poem, but we do too.
It's the poem called The Good Dothin,
which is the name of a tribe up in the north.
And it's about basically the Welsh Troy.
It was a battle where 300 soldiers went into fight
and three survived, one of whom allegedly was the poet,
although you never know whether that's a poetic thing
they're saying as poets tend to do.
Now, this would have been poetry
that was part of an oral tradition.
It wasn't written down, I believe,
and I hope that people who are scholars
of these areas will forgive my mistakes.
This is just my understanding of it,
but that poem was probably written down
in the eleventh century or later.
And that we find it in medieval manuscripts.
So what we have is the remnants of an oral tradition,
although it's astonishing to think
that children as late as my generation
were still being taught this poem in school.
I'm an icon beside you a bit of it.
Guirreis, katri, sothri, cicli,
a glass where they hankwin,
a gwen-win-vi, chichant, mampirient, and katai,
a guedi-el-or, tawell-or-vi.
And that's about the defeat of the 300.
After a loud cry, there was silence.
- How different is that from present-day Welsh?
- Well, some of the words are difficult,
but not so difficult, not so different
from the poetic meters, because I'll be explaining in a minute
about the Welsh strict meters,
partly because of this way in which Welsh rubs up against
itself, I mean, that sounds rather disreputable, doesn't it?
But it has its own form of metamorphoses built into it.
It makes it a very flexible poetic language.
And one of the unique things
that the Welsh tradition has is this system of consonantal
correspondences.
Not only consonantal, also in terms of rhyme and accent
and syllable, it's called kanghaneth.
Now, I mean, for example, I could recite you
a modern kanghaneth, which wouldn't sound so different
from the gudardin, which is sixth century, maybe earlier.
Irelegaru, hueil, gueri-be, de gueri-be, de gueri-dis-drosti,
As these words in order to do – now, the description of a bridge in north Wales – nothing to do with – nothing to do with –
it's a - it's a - it's a - a - a - a – a - a - a – a – a technology if you like.
But the sound is very much the same, I believe.
So the this poem then that you're referring to, it's a, it's a war epic, a sort of – it's an - it's an - it's an - it's an - a really - an energy for the 300 or the 297 young men who are killed there and - how long is it? It's a long poem or just - it's about a thousand lines, something like that. And - um, it's a very brilliant poem. It's a full of, um, flashes of closure.
It's a close-up, like a film, um, and talking about, you know, blood and the crows on the ramparts, because feeding well and - um,
and this is - this is a poem that is still worth reading today. Um, at the same time, there's a different type of - that - that poem was written by the poet Anayer in.
At the same time, you have a traditional poetry, which is far more mystical, um, written by the poet Taliesin or at least
transcribed to Taliesin, um, which has more to do with, um, ideas of metempsychosis, of - of - of shape shifting, of more of the Celtic magical stuff.
Uh, you know, I think one of the lines goes, "I was born in the region of Morning Stars, you know, it's a wonderful poetry."
Um, but very much more - you can associate that, yes, the Celtic magical stuff and this supernaturalism.
That's right, that's right. In the presence of things, you know.
Yes, and that is a - in a way that's - um, the - the two strands actually show the two - two different aspects of the wealth.
Uh, which is, um, elegy and, um, mysticism. And I think that - that is, those are two lines that go through the whole of the culture.
Um, were the Welsh in this period, this early period between the six and 10th centuries, were they a fierce warrior people or were they softer?
Um, you know, the - the angles or the - you know, the Vikings and - and the others sort of fiercely.
I think everybody was, uh, tussling with each other in that period. I mean, I would like to say that the Welsh were - but, uh, which were tougher than everybody else.
Um, and I think that the - the story that, um, the Welsh were pushed westwards into the highlands area areas of the UK, rather than into the, um, more - you know, rather than being able to retain the more -
um, the richer, lowland areas, tells its own story. And I don't know why that - that was. Um, but gradually, you know, the whole culture got pushed into a place which became more easy to defend.
That is the uplands of Wales and, uh, you know, that's - I mean, I think we became known then for being raiders on the border areas of Wales.
Um, but I'm not enough of a military expert to know why that was.
Well, they obviously did something right because they're still around after, uh, a very, very long time when you - you would have imagined that with the - this extraordinary dominance of the English in - in the British Isles, that they could have easily been gobbled up and - and just, you know, assimilated a long, long time ago.
It's very strange to me that we haven't been assimilated.
So as we move forward, uh, in, um, through the centuries, you say that there is an important moment in the 14th century in - for Welsh literature.
Yes, I mean, what happened, um, the, uh, we had a system, um, or of a collection of princes, um, and the culture was a courtly culture up until 1282 when the last Prince of Wales, uh, Shawellin.
It was, uh, killed.
And, um, after that in the medieval period, um, there's this, uh, great flowering in prose.
Um, and you have, um, this series of tales called the Mabinogian, Tales of Youth, um, which are in various branches.
There are four branches and more tales than that.
And these are fantastical, um, tales. Again, originally from, um, oral sources, and as they get written down, they get changed.
Um, but they were very much to be exactly as, uh, Homer's works were, um, written to be, or, or composed to be performed and to be claimed and they had their own nomenic devices in them.
Um, and as they got written down, these conventions became solidified and then more literary devices came in.
Um, but these are, are amazing stories, uh, which, which I was brought up with and children, I believe are still now.
Um, and much of the, uh, Arthurian material comes from, uh, these Mabinogian tales.
I do recommend them, um, to anybody who's interested in mythology because they are quite different from any other fairy tales.
Um, there is, they're characterized by, um, a complete ease with the other world.
Um, the Celtic other world or the Welsh other world, uh, it would be wrong to call it an underworld.
It's just a place to one side, um, where there's an awful lot of feasting and talking and enjoying yourself going on.
So death isn't, um, if it is death, it's a form of suspended animation where people have a really nice time.
Um, sounds like entitled opinions to me.
Well, that's, I, when if I'm here to learn like most of our listeners, so I just, um, happy to have you just go on describing the, you know, these poems and say anything that,
you think will, um, entice people to go and read them.
It, so let me ask for example, if, um, I wanted to read it, there, there are English translations that there are.
There are.
There's a great translation, a new translation by Professor Seanad Davis. Um, it's out in, uh, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Um, and that is the most recent, uh, translation.
I recommend that one. There is an older, um, there are several translations, um, going back from the 19th century onwards. Um, but this one has a kind of punchiness and an orality to it.
Do you feel that people are enjoying, um, the talk? And, uh, we're like the Irish in that, you know, and I take a point about, uh, entitled opinions, you know, really, the Welsh enjoy talking very much.
It's a very verbal culture and there's nothing nicer than having a good, all long chat, you know, and you can hear that in these translations. You can hear the delight in, um, hearing about these outrageous feats of the heroes.
Is it a temptation for most Welsh poets who are writing in Welsh and in English to do the translation of a work like that and, and try their hand at it as, to establish a kind of
credentials as it were? Well, I think you have to, um, use the material in some way or another. I mean, I think that most poets, for example, contemporary poets have done a marbinogion poem. Um, but, um, at the moment, I'm going through that particular rite of passage because I'm writing a new version of the fourth branch, which is, um, I'm doing a re a contemporary retelling of it. In fact, I'm telling it as science fiction.
Um, and, uh, that's for a press in, in Wales called Serend press. I mean, this one would give you a good idea of the kind of tales they are. It's the story starts off with a rape. It, um, then the two brothers who arranged the rape, the one who's the rapist, one his is, um, a compass, they're then condemned to going into the forest. This will interest you, um, as, as a, a stag and a hind.
and a hind, and they have to have children with each other, then the 3rd, the second year,
they have to go in as a bore and a sow, and they have to bear young, and then they're
going as a wolf and a she-wolf, and they have to bear young, and that's the end of their
punishment.
By that, you know, they're considered to have made the imaginative journey necessary to
know about the suffering they'd imposed on the woman.
Then there's a, it's quite complicated, but there's a son, a nephew born to the Guidion
who's the magician, and his mother curses him and says he should not have a name, he
should not have the right to bear arms, and he should not have a wife of a woman born, and
the rest of the tale is about the whole story about how his mother is tricked into giving
him a name, says, "O Guffess" into giving him arms, and then they create, the magicians
create a woman made out of flowers to be his wife.
Now of course, this, as you might expect, goes rather wrong, and the flower wife, Blood
Dayworth, is unfaithful with a hunter.
And--
Thank God you didn't wither.
Well, she didn't wither, she was a very, she blossomed.
Oh should we say?
But, so this is very rich material, and quite different from the Saxon myths, I think.
And you've done a translation of it.
Not a translation, I'm doing a completely new version of it.
And completely new version of your own, so it's a yeah.
Yeah, so I'm picking and choosing the bits and the parts of it that appeal to me, and
you're doing it in verse form.
No, no, this is a novella.
So it's my first attempt at a novella.
Well congratulations and good luck with that, I want very anxious to have a look at that
one for sure.
If you don't mind me pushing you forward, there's the 15th century court poets, which
I suppose represents a new chapter in this history.
Well, I think it would be more accurate to say that they're courtly, because, strictly speaking,
the Welsh court had been dissolved in the 1282.
But then you have the development of the Kankaneth in its most sophisticated forms.
This is when it starts.
And David Apquillim, who is the giant of this period, is the poet who developed, how
shall I say, he expanded in the same way as Shakespeare expanded the possibilities of the
English language.
David Apquillim did the same for the Welsh poetic tradition.
He's a great love poet and very mischievous as well.
And of course the one thing I haven't mentioned here is the traditions of the Bardic apprenticeships
and when you say in Wales that you're a poet, there's an element of qualification involved
in the sense of that in the early Bardic times, which this would have been in the time
of the court poets, it took nine years of apprenticeship to be a poet.
And you had to master 24 different poetic measures.
Now these measures are still being written in and any poet with his or her salt today would
have a go at every one of those 24 metres.
And you've done that yourself?
I haven't because I don't work in the strict metres.
I've had a go to few of them though you have to have a go, but I'm not particularly good
at it.
There are people though who are enormously fluent in these metres.
And in fact it's difficult to appreciate that in England if you say that you're a poet,
people look at you rather as if you've got a skin disease or something.
They don't quite know what to do with you whereas if you're in Wales, people know what
a poet is, people are not phased or put off because everybody has a go, everybody feels
they have a right to have a go at a poem.
If you're uncle who's having his birthday you might write him a little poem and you might
declare him it at dinner or one of the most popular shows on Raja Kamli which is Radio
Wales in Wales, the BBC service is a poetic competition where teams, there's a whole league
of poetic competition in these strict metres that can hand it and some of the free metres
as well.
And they're tremendous crowd pleases and this is in conceive of behind England.
I just can't see it because there isn't this emphasis on the craft of poetry as separate
from the high inspiration that we've become associated with poetry after the romantics.
Exactly.
A knife question for you Gwyneth, when you send it to the bards, let's speak about
the bards here in the context of the court, Lee Poetz.
What is a barred as opposed to the poets that would have been writing or singing in the oral
tradition in much earlier centuries?
That's a very good question.
I mean there were several different type of poets.
There were poets called the Clare who went around and then there were poets who were
the court poets who were paid or given board and lodging by their princes and who were
politically patty pre.
And then there were storytellers who went around.
So there were about three different statuses of poet.
And the bards would have been the third category?
Or another one?
I think there would have been a fourth.
I'm not too clear about that.
I think there would have been probably the ones competing for court favour.
I would have thought.
But I'm not clear about that.
So when we call Homer a barred, we're using the word very loosely from the Welsh point
of view.
I think bad.
It's a strange term, isn't it?
It's a term we use when we want to make fun somewhat of a poet.
And I think really strictly speaking what it should mean is it's a poet at a basic level.
When that poetry still had some kind of social, socially cohesive function.
And that's what you mean by Homer as a barred perhaps, rather than the post-traumatic idea
of a poet as a spokesman simply of himself.
The inner self, yes.
Exactly.
Yes.
And in the 18th century, I'm referring here to your own helpful scheme that you provided
me with.
There is the antiquarian and nationalist revival.
Would you like to say something about that?
That's right.
This is a very colourful part of Welsh history.
I did my doctoral thesis on a wonderful poet again, and Stone Mason called Edward Williams,
who was known as Yolomorganoque because you always have a badic name in Wales.
And I even have my own badic name.
I'll tell you about that in a moment maybe.
As part of the attempt to revive the glories of wealth culture, Edward Williams went
rather further than the glories that he found in manuscript.
And in fact invented quite a lot of the, for example, David Apquilimpo, his classic poems.
He didn't feel that the canon was quite complete enough as it stood, so he elaborated
on it, and he did this with a lot of badic documents.
And in fact, if you read these documents about the bars as contemporary commentary, political
commentary, they're very, very interesting.
Basically, so far left, this was during the time of the French Revolution when you could
be jailed for being Republican in London.
These make a very fascinating contemporary commentary as well as a sort of variation on the
badic theme.
But this system has been adopted by the Welsh, and is still in play in the National
Death Court of Wales, even though by now of course it's 200 years old, and it's now become
the National Honor System, so that to be invited to be a member of the Garza of the
base, the Convocation of the Bards, or the Sitting of the Bards, is a great honor.
And in fact, I was thrilled to be invited to be one when I was made National Poet, and
I think I can share this story anyway.
The Arch Druid phoned me up and wanted to know what I wanted to pick as my badic name.
And I thought for a moment I'd never ever thought this through.
And you can have all kinds of poetic names like, well you can imagine, they can be quite
frilly, and I thought for a moment, could I be Guineas Paltrow?
Because sometimes you use your first name, and he didn't get the joke, which is the same,
but in the end I went for Guineas, which was a play on the factor that my name means white,
white girl, and Guineas' white voice.
So that was the name I picked.
And you mentioned that you did a dissertation on this period, and can you say a little
bit more about your dissertation?
I think you also deal with the phenomenon of forgery, or my...
I do, that's right, that's right.
What does forgery have to do with this?
Well, because strictly speaking, these documents which are anachronistic are forgeries.
I looked at the works of Asha and the Asha and forgeries, James McPherson's allegedly
third century Gaelic poems.
Was it possibly six century anyway, but very early, he was proving that definitively that
the Scots had the best early poetry since the Hebrews.
And Thomas Chatterton, who committed suicide after being revealed as the forger of the
Rowley poems, and Samuel Island, William Island, who forged the Shakespeare poems,
Shakespeare plays very badly.
But the conclusion I came to was that forgery in this period was very much a political
principle. If you agreed with the early work that was being discovered, you called it a scholarly
addition of something, and if you were not too keen to see the Celtic fringes being raising
their own reputation by finding whole new bodies of work, you called them forgeries, especially
if those forgeries had politics written into them and become very contentious indeed.
I'm going to think that in the 20th century we have, from what I was able to glean from
my crash course, a number of poets that not just still in Thomas.
Of course, still in Thomas is the one who lords over the second half of, let's say,
the couple of decades, the 50s and 60s, he was the man as such, but it's a very rich period
in Welsh literature in the 20th century.
It is. One of the jokes is that there were the three Thomas's in the 20th century,
not a Dylan Thomas who had global fame, obviously, and then his contemporary R.S. Thomas
was mentioned in that communication I read from, yes.
Now he was a remarkable poet, a vicar poet, very different from Dylan Thomas, very austere,
and a bit of great poet nonetheless.
Then the other one which we try to claim, who is Edward Thomas, the friend of Robert Frost,
who claims that he had made Edward Thomas turned him from being a pro-s writer to being
a poet.
But to hit these high points, and I know that you want to talk about Dylan Thomas at
more length, but just to notice these high points is to underestimate the way in which
the Welsh tradition has been feeding into the English mainstream all along through the centuries,
I mean, to go back to the metaphysical poets, how many of those were influenced by the Welsh.
I mean, to give you an example, we believe that Dunsmother was Welsh.
George Herbert was from a Welsh family. Thomas Trehern definitely spoke Welsh because I've
seen some Welsh entries in his diaries.
And Henry Vaughan was living on the borders of Wales, so it's no coincidence perhaps that
the metaphysical sensibility is a Welsh one.
That's very persuasive, yes.
Because there's a directness about matters of spirit as they relate to the world around
or particularly the natural world that goes right back to what I was telling you about
the Taliesin tradition.
It's right there from the beginning in the Welsh tradition.
And then you have, I mean, that carries on.
Ben Johnson, he has a bits of Welsh in his...
I mean, he's earlier.
Well, I'm not too...
Anyway, round about the same period, he also had some Welsh because I've seen some
Welsh dialogue in his mask, one of his masks.
So I think, you know, you have to assume that Welsh was being spoken in London along with
English and that there isn't this kind of segregation of the two languages.
And this you have to assume right the way through to a declining degree now, maybe, but
it's the same as true of where Donald Thomas was brought up.
I mean, his metres are profoundly influenced by the Welsh strict metres, also the
case with Jared Manley Hopkins, who spent time in a retreat house in Wales and wrote about
Wales a good deal.
So there's this constant interfertilisation, I don't believe it is, but...
Cross-fertilising.
Yes, that might be a better word, between the two traditions that, you know, they're
not monolithic.
Yeah.
Well, do you want to draw our attention to any of the names that might not be immediately
familiar to people like me from the 20th century canon?
I mentioned that there's three Thomas's, I mean, there's Dylan Thomas and RS Thomas, Edward
Thomas, and are there some big figures there that...
Well, there are many great poets in the Welsh language tradition and also in the Anglo-
Welsh tradition, although we don't tend to call it that anymore.
And some of the giants in the Welsh tradition would be T.H. Paddy Williams, a T.H.
Paddy Williams, Gwen Aft, who was an industrial poet from the South Wales valleys and
very strong Christian poetry.
And I haven't mentioned the non-conformist influence on the Welsh tradition either.
One of the great poets, we should have talked in the 18th century about the non-conformist
poets, the hymn writers, such as Andrifices and William Williams, Panta Kelin.
To go back to the 20th century, there are, well, we have many contemporary poets who are
really making their mark in British poetry these days.
Writing in English.
And in Welsh and translating their own work.
There's a kind of...
How should I say, a groundswell of new writing from Wales that is doing really, really
well and attracting a lot of attention.
I don't want to mention individual names in case I left somebody out.
I agree with that.
Yes, that's a thankless task, but I do urge people to pay attention to the new writers
from Wales.
I think there's some very fine writing coming out of the country.
Can I ask about Dylan Thomas, what sort of status he has in Wales?
Is he as dominant and a figure in Wales as he would be for those of us who think of him
immediately when we think of Welsh poet or we think of Dylan Thomas and actually Richard
Burton, I guess.
Yes, yes.
It was not quite a poet, but in his own way he was a poet.
Well, he was a some kind of artist, but he...
I mean, no, he was a great actor of course.
And I think there's two separate things that you have to distinguish with Dylan Thomas.
There's Dylan Thomas the icon and Dylan Thomas the poet.
And it's very frustrating for people who are poets themselves that the icon is revered
worldwide, but that the poetry isn't necessarily read as carefully as that reverence might
merit.
So I think he became a compelling figure for the poet, the heavy drinking, the rhombunctuous,
character.
And that has a kind of self destructiveness, which is not helpful if you are actually a poet.
And then there's the literary reputation and the achievement, which is towering.
And he is the big daddy that you have to break in Edible terms, if you're a Welsh poet
or any poet. I mean, I believe that American poets have struggled with him because of his influence.
I mean, he is a very dangerous influence to have.
And you have to be careful that you don't try and sound like Dylan Thomas or...
Well, I would have mentioned that it's very...
He's inimitable in many ways, because to try to sound like him would be almost ridiculous.
Well, you're right.
But I mean, look how much bad poetry is written under the influence of Dylan Thomas.
I've seen a fair...
Oh, no, I've written some of it myself and put it in the bin.
When you say that his poetry would bear a more careful reading than is often the case,
is there something in his corpus that you would want to draw attention to particularly?
Is there complexities in the meter or...
A lot of people in the professional academic world who deal with poetry find that Dylan
Thomas is a great poet of sonority.
But when you go there to get the substance of what's being communicated,
that there's not a whole lot there that can be, let's say, retranslated into either a message,
a theme or a...
That it's exhausted self in his music palette, which I don't agree with that assessment.
But a number of people who are...
I know well, believe that.
I think he's an extremely difficult poet and not because there's nothing there, but it's
difficult because there is something there and it's a question of figuring it out.
I mean, I think there's no question but that there are half a dozen poems there which
are at the peak of poetic achievement.
He's also very underrated as a prose writer in my view.
He's an extraordinary prose writer and very less less tortured in the poetry.
There's more of...
He's much more relaxed in the poetry.
But I was fascinated to hear if Anne Bolandarg, a recently that one of the things about
Dylan Thomas was that he had the sounds of modernism.
But without actually having reconstituted the self which created the poetic self, that
that was still a very old poetic persona.
Completely pre-modern, which is what I like about him in a certain sense, there is no
self.
The self is not the story of his poems.
No, but there is a selfishness.
I mean, I kind of self regard that is very much the kind of the very badic, if you like,
to use that uncomplementary in that sense.
It's almost a parody of what a poet is and it's to him that we turn as a figure when
we're talking about the figure of the poet.
Exactly.
We've been speaking with Guetth Lewis from the Humanity Center where she's spending
a year here from her native homeland in Wales and this is the first part of our two-part
conversation on entitled opinions and we are going to leave you listeners for the end
of the first hour with a poem.
We cited by Dylan Thomas himself and then we will rejoin you for a conversation with my
guest, Guetth Lewis, about her own work as a poet and as a prose writer.
So stay tuned.
If I were tickled by the rub of love, a rookie girl who stole me for her side, broke through
her straws, breaking my bandaged string, if the red tickle as the cattle carve, still set
to scratch a luster from my lung, I would not fear the apple nor the flood nor the bad
blood of spring.
If I were tickled by the hatching hair, the winging bone that sprouted in the heels, the
itch of man upon the babies, I would not fear the gallows nor the aches nor the crust sticks
of war.
If I were tickled by the urchin hunger's rehearsing heat upon a raw edge nerve, I would
not fear the devil in the line nor the outspoken grave.
If I were tickled by the lovers rub that wipes away not crowsfoot nor the lock of sickle
manhood on the fallen jaws, tying on the crabs and the sweet-hearting crib would leave
me cold as butter for the flies, the sea of scums could drown me as it broke dead
on the sweet-heart's toes.
This world is half the devil's in my own, duffed with a drug that's smoking in a girl
and curling round the bud that fucks her eye.
An old man's shank one merrowed with my bone and all the herring smelling in the sea,
I sit and watch the worm beneath my nail, wearing the quick away.
That's the rub they only rub the tickles, the nobly ape that swings along his sex from
damp love darkness and the nurse's twist can never raise the midnight of a chuttle.
Nor when he finds a beauty in the breast of lover, mother's lover or his six feet in
the rubbing dust.
And what's the rub?
Death's feather on the nerve.
Your mouth, my love, the thistle in the kiss, my jack of Christ born thorny on the tree.
The words of death are drier than his diff, my wordy wounds are printed with your hair.
I would be tickled by the rub that is.
Man, be my metaphor.
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