Wales Arts Review Weekly Update (08/04/2023)
"Kinnock was one of us – he spoke like us, and had our passions and opinions. But he was also a statesman of global importance. "
An Authentic Voice: Pulling Poetry from the Speeches of Neil Kinnock
In the first installment of our new subscription-only Wales Arts Review Plus series, Jonathan Edwards explores the impact of Welshness and language on Neil Kinnock's political career and the unlikely influence it had on Edwards' own award-winning poetry, all stemming from a childhood encounter.
In 1992, Glenys Kinnock sat in my father’s car.
1992 was the year Neil Kinnock would become Prime Minister. Everyone knew it. The polls predicted a Labour win. The Conservatives were reeling from the uproar around the Poll Tax and the replacement of Thatcher with Major. The Sun was so worried that, on election day, it printed on its front page a picture of Kinnock’s face in a light bulb, together with the headline, If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights. Election day was the 9th of April. In a couple of days, a Welshman would be in Downing Street.
Big Reads
In Memory of Nicola Heywood Thomas
The BBC have announced the death of the Welsh broadcaster, and arts and culture presenter, Nicola Heywood Thomas, who has passed away aged 67. Emma Schofield reflects on her lengthy contribution to broadcasting and the arts in Wales.
Read the full piece, here.
Dai Smith and the Fiction of Autobiography
In an in-depth interview which delves into his lengthy career, Dai Smith talks to Daryl Leeworthy about politics, fiction and the privilege of writing.
Read the full interview, here.
Top Picks
Republic by Nerys Williams | Review
Emma Schofield delves into the story of a young woman growing up in west Wales in the 1980s and 90s, told through a series of prose poems in Republic, by Nerys Williams.
Read the full review here.
Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Woman
Sarah Featherstone reflects on her creative journey, from arriving in Cardiff in the nineties as a student nurse, to becoming an art facilitator with all the highs and lows of freelance life.
Read the full piece here.
In case you missed it…
Mike Parker in Conversation with Gary Raymond
Mike Parker’s new book, All the Wide Border, is both a travelogue of a walk along the borderlands of England and Wales and a deep cultural history of this unique and fascinating place and its people. Gary Raymond caught up with him to discuss the writing process, the books that formed the foundations for it, and the politics it unearthed.
“The sense that the old Wales is a community of communities, which is a soft, like a Methodistic socialism almost – it’s absolutely in the water. We have to fight for that a bit right now, because it’s under attack, yet again.”