Welsh is the oldest surviving Celtic language, and the most flourishing.
For around fifteen centuries Welsh poets have expressed an intense
awareness of what it is like to be human in this part of the world in
poems of extraordinary range and depth. And despite the global tendency
towards homogenisation, Welsh poets have fought back, drawing
inspiration from both the traditional and the contemporary to forge a
new and rainbow-like modernism. This wide-ranging anthology of
20th-century Welsh-language poetry in English translation - by far the
most comprehensive of its kind - will be a revelation for most readers.
It will dispel the romantic images of Welsh poets as bards or druids and
blow away any preconceived mists of Celtic twilight. This poetry is full
of vitality, combining old craftsmanship and daring innovation, humour
and angst, the oral and the literary. The selection brings together
poets of every hue: from magisterial figures like T Gwynn Jones, R
Williams Parry and Saunders Lewis to folk poets such as Alun Cilie and
Dic Jones; from cerebral poets Pennar Davies and Bobi Jones to popular
entertainers Geraint Løvgreen and Ifor ap Glyn. There are Chaplinesque
poets, rebellious and subversive ones, lyrical voices and storytellers.
The variety is enormous: from Welsh performance poetry to song lyrics;
from the wry social comment of Grahame Davies to the contemporary
parables of Gwyneth Lewis, who writes different kinds of poems in Welsh
and English. This exuberant chorus of voices from the margins of Europe
proves that poetry in this minority language is far from stagnant.
Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation.
