Memoir of a Magazine #8: The Self
Gary Raymond answers the questions from Wales Arts Review writers and readers.
Gary Raymond co-founded Wales Arts Review in 2012. It was born out of a conversation in a pub during half-time of a football match that was on the tele. Twelve years later, Wales Arts Review is read all around the world by hundreds of thousands of people. It has published the finest writers and artists of several generations that Wales has produced, and on a stunning range of topics. Over the next few weeks, this series will aim to explore and celebrate the life of the magazine.
If you missed the full introduction to this series, you can find it here.
Were there any times when you seriously asked yourselves ‘why are we doing this?’
Ha! Well, yes, I’ve no doubt there were times when we asked ourselves that. But it’s important to remember just how much fun it was. Serious fun, albeit. And for all the moaning that we never had the support we needed, that feeling that we were outsiders, begrudgingly awarded scraps by those who couldn’t be seen to give us nothing given WAR’s successes and ever-growing profile, we did in fact benefit a great deal from being treated that way. I think the struggle helped. It helped us strive, and it gave the magazine a bit of bite we may have missed had we been given money for all the bells and whistles. We became very good at improvising, very very good at making a little money go very very far.
There were no doubt a few moments when those who would have preferred to see us closed down got to me, but it would have been fleeting, and I would have reminded myself that those people were intellectual relics, to say nothing of the fact I’d probably provoked animosity in the first place.
How much of yourself did you put into WAR?
For a long time I was focussed on making sure WAR was not perceived as the Gary Raymond project. Too many people worked too hard on it for me to take the credit. But I suppose I have a suspicion I didn’t ever manage to do that in some respects. I always believed that if WAR could be passed on to a new editor and new editorial team, then I would have succeeded on a much grander scale than any of us could have envisaged twelve years ago. It was a partial success in that regard. Emma Schofield was doing a great job, readership was continuing to grow. It was the bottom that fell out, not the middle or the top.
But to answer the question directly: I did build Wales Arts Review in my own image. As did Phil Morris. As did Ben Glover. As did Emma. As did everyone else. There’s really no other way to build something like that. I put everything into WAR. But, then, I learned an enormous amount too. I learned pragmatism, patience, courage… and I learned to be a better writer. I put myself into it, and in turn it built me.
Were any of the hurdles too high to jump?
Hurdles take only a moment, and I think we preferred to kick them over. The great challenges were gargantuan mountains, and I’ll allow others to judge.
But I would say (and I think I’ve said already in this series), that one of our original missions in 2012 was to work toward raising the level of public debate in Wales and it’s quite obvious to me that we failed in that. I think attitudes to art and culture have gone backwards. The institutions that we have depended on are crumbling. The Welsh Labour Government, who have never shows any interest in art and culture, has never felt quite as brazenly Philistine as it does now. So, yes, I guess the ambition to change the world was a bit much.
What was the most important fuel for the magazine?
It was always the generosity of writers. I never took that for granted. The passion and energy of us putting the magazine together was always fuelled by writers, predominantly writing for nothing - 647 of them writing over 5,000 pages over 12 years, and all because they believed in the massive cultural project that was Wales Arts Review. Wales is a remarkable place full of remarkable writers, and editing Wales Arts Review made me extremely proud to have a part in it.
How often did you use the word ‘no’ ?
I could be cheeky and say not often enough.
But in all honesty, we did at times publish work that was not of the highest literary standard, I grant you - but I always felt WAR was a platform, something to be shared more than it was to be curated by me. And I am proud of that outlook that we had.
If you have a question for Gary Raymond about the life of Wales Arts Review email him at gary@walesartsreview.org
Thank you Kathryn Tann for those questions. Kathryn’s debut book, Seaglass, is out now, and I can highly recommend it.
Gary Raymond is a novelist, author, playwright, critic, and broadcaster. In 2012, he co-founded Wales Arts Review, was its editor for ten years, and is currently its executive editor. His latest book, Abandon All Hope: A Personal Journey Through the History of Welsh Literature is available for pre-order and is out in May 2024 with Calon Books