On Sam Adams collected "Letters from Wales"
Sam Young explores Letters from Wales: Memories and Encounters in Literature and Life, a weighty collection which draws together the cultural and political commentaries of poet and editor Sam Adams.
Back in 1996, the poet Sam Adams began penning a regular column in the poetry journal PN Review, entitled ‘Letters from Wales’. Drawing on decades of experience as a writer at the heart of Welsh literary life, Adams has treated readers of PN Review to short, intimate commentaries on the cultural sector in Wales as it has evolved around him.
Now, for the first time, Adams’s letters have been brought together in a single volume. The letters (there are around 130 of them) are corralled into three categories – writers, Wales and the Welsh ‘literary scene’. Wielding an astonishing breadth of knowledge, Adams discusses each chosen topic with a glowing enthusiasm, a genuine desire to guide his readers through the intricacies of the nation’s small yet complex literary landscape.
By far the largest portion of this hefty, nearly 800-page book is devoted to Adams’s writing on Welsh writers themselves. He picks out names from across genres and forms, including poets, novelists, diarists, philosophers and playwrights. Most write, or wrote, in English (Adams acknowledges that Welsh-language writing has always maintained a slightly separate cultural sphere), but many cross over into Cymraeg as well, bridging the gap carved out by linguistic difference and government policy.
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