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Ogof Wlysses (CY) - Troedle, nid Chwiw (CY) - Penglog (CY) - cartograffeg (CY, FR, NL) - Where the Vines Will Climb (ENG) - Breuddwydio mewn gerddi (CY, ENG) - Welsh (Plural) (ENG) - merch y llyn (CY) - Comin (ENG) - Gwaddodion (CY, ENG) - Language as Water (ENG) - Hare (ENG) - Cyswllt/Dadgyswllt (CY, ENG) - Llyn Nantlle Uchaf (CY)

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hanan Issa (born 1986/1987) is a Welsh- Iraqi poet, film-maker, scriptwriter and artist. She is the current National Poet of Wales.

Issa grew up in Cardiff, Wales. Her first solo publication was My Body Can House Two Hearts, a pamphlet of poetry published by Burning Eye Books in 2019. The pamphlet was one of three to win Burning Eye's debut pamphlet competition.

During her writing career, Issa has also worked a film-maker and scriptwriter. In 2017, her winning monologue 'With Her Back Straight' was performed at the Bush Theatre as part of the Hijabi Monologues project. In 2020, Issa was the recipient of a Ffilm Cymru/ BBC Wales commission, which resulted in her writing and directing the short film The Golden Apple (2022). She worked on the Channel 4 comedy series We Are Lady Parts, working alongside the show's creator Nida Manzoor.

Alongside Darren Chetty, Grug Muse and Iestyn Tyne, Issa acted as a contributing editor to the essay anthology Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales, published by Repeater Books in 2022. with Issa noted that "connections between one loyalty and another flow as easily for me as one body of water running into another." Issa also co-edited (with Durre Shahwar and Özgür Uyanık) the essay anthology Just So You Know: Essays of Experience, published by Parthian Books in 2020.

In July 2022, Issa was appointed as the National Poet of Wales, succeeding Ifor ap Glyn. The announcement was made on 6 July on BBC Radio 4's , with presenter Samira Ahmed interviewing Issa following the announcement. Following an extensive selection process, Issa was appointed for a period of three years, with her tenure set to run until 2025. She became the first Muslim poet to hold the title.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Hanan Issa (born 1986/1987) is a Welsh- Iraqi poet, film-maker, scriptwriter and artist. She is the current National Poet of Wales. Issa grew up in Cardiff, Wales. Her first solo publication was My Body Can House Two Hearts , a pamphlet of poetry published by Burning Eye Books in 2019.

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Mae athro ysgol gynradd yn Llundain wrth ei fodd gyda thîm pêl-droed Cymru a cherddoriaeth hip-hop, ac wedi troi ei law at sgrifennu llyfrau plant yn ddiweddar.

Wedi ei fagu yn Abertawe, mae Darren Chetty wedi bod yn dysgu mewn ysgolion cynradd yn Llundain ers diwedd y 1990au.

Erbyn hyn, mae ar fin cwblhau doethuriaeth yn edrych ar 'Athroniaeth i Blant', syniad sy'n annog yr ifanc i ystyried syniadau athronyddol.

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Mae athro ysgol gynradd yn Llundain wrth ei fodd gyda thîm pêl-droed Cymru a cherddoriaeth hip-hop, ac wedi troi ei law at sgrifennu llyfrau plant yn ddiweddar. Wedi ei fagu yn Abertawe, mae Darren Chetty wedi bod yn dysgu mewn ysgolion cynradd yn Llundain ers diwedd y 1990au.

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International Journal of Welsh Writing in English  - Marion Loeffler

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International Journal of Welsh Writing in English  - Marion Loeffler

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Welcome to Wales Arts Review 's Best of 2022! Over the past few weeks we have been nominating our top Welsh art and cultural offerings from throughout the year. We're now excited to reveal our favourites from each category - read on for our 2022 number ones.
Welsh Albums
Bato Mato by Adwaith
Welsh Theatre
Operation Julie - Theatr na nOg and Aberystwyth Arts Centre
Welsh Visual Arts
Gwen John (Martin Tinney Gallery, Cardiff)
Welsh Fiction
Fannie by Rebecca F. John (Honno)
Welsh TV
Dal Y Mellt (S4C)
Welsh Non-Fiction
Welsh [Plural]: Essays on the Future of Wales, edited by Darren Chetty, Hanan Issa, Grug Muse and Iestyn Tyne
Welsh Books for Young People
The Mab, edited by Matt Brown and Eloise Williams
Welsh Opera and Classical
Puss In Boots - Mid Wales Opera
Welsh Poetry
Pearl and Bone by Mari Ellis Dunning

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The Best of 2022: Our Number Ones - Wales Arts Review

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Welcome to Wales Arts Review 's Best of 2022! Over the past few weeks we have been nominating our top Welsh art and cultural offerings from throughout the year. We're now excited to reveal our favourites from each category - read on for our 2022 number ones.

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Martin Johnes - The Roar of the Red Dragon

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Martin Johnes - The Roar of the Red Dragon

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Listen to this episode from The Rest Is History on Spotify. What are the origins of Wales? And how do the Welsh define themselves against Englishness?

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Our fan-led cultural festival uniting #YWalGoch 🫶
 
💟 @arts_wales_ x @cymru #GŵylCymru 
 
📲 https://t.co/tSxdlR88MI
 
🎵 @_teddyhunter - Games
 
#ArBenYByd | #TîmCymru

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Gŵyl Cymru Festival is a 10-day* creative event, bringing communities together as the nation supports the Cymru men’s team during their FIFA World Cup 2022 campaign in Qatar.

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Our fan-led cultural festival uniting #YWalGoch 🫶
 
💟 @arts_wales_ x @cymru #GŵylCymru 
 
📲 https://t.co/tSxdlR88MI
 
🎵 @_teddyhunter - Games
 
#ArBenYByd | #TîmCymru https://t.co/PVUi4BAIJv

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Our fan-led cultural festival uniting #YWalGoch 🫶

💟 @arts_wales_ x @cymru #GŵylCymru

📲 https://t.co/tSxdlR88MI

🎵 @_teddyhunter - Games
#ArBenYByd | #TîmCymru pic.twitter.com/PVUi4BAIJv
— FA WALES (@FAWales) November 24, 2022

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Our fan-led cultural festival uniting #YWalGoch 🫶
 
💟 @arts_wales_ x @cymru #GŵylCymru 
 
📲 https://t.co/tSxdlR88MI
 
🎵 @_teddyhunter - Games
 
#ArBenYByd | #TîmCymru https://t.co/PVUi4BAIJv

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.entities.urls[].description
Gŵyl Cymru Festival is a 10-day* creative event, bringing communities together as the nation supports the Cymru men’s team during their FIFA World Cup 2022 campaign in Qatar.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Our fan-led cultural festival uniting #YWalGoch 🫶
 
💟 @arts_wales_ x @cymru #GŵylCymru 
 
📲 https://t.co/tSxdlR88MI
 
🎵 @_teddyhunter - Games
 
#ArBenYByd | #TîmCymru https://t.co/PVUi4BAIJv

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Our fan-led cultural festival uniting #YWalGoch 🫶
 
💟 @arts_wales_ x @cymru #GŵylCymru 
 
📲 https://t.co/tSxdlR88MI
 
🎵 @_teddyhunter - Games
 
#ArBenYByd | #TîmCymru

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Gŵyl Cymru Festival is a 10-day* creative event, bringing communities together as the nation supports the Cymru men’s team during their FIFA World Cup 2022 campaign in Qatar.

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2nd February 2023 - Taliesin, Swansea University

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2nd February 2023 - Taliesin, Swansea University

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‘THE CROWD GATHERS’ FOR FAW’S GŴYL CYMRU FESTIVAL

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‘THE CROWD GATHERS’ FOR FAW’S GŴYL CYMRU FESTIVAL

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The Football Association of Wales and Literature Wales have today announced the official poem for Gŵyl Cymru Festival - a creative celebration of Cymru men's team's World Cup journey in Qatar.

The National Poet of Wales*, Hanan Issa, was commissioned by FAW and Literature Wales to write 'The Crowd Gathers'; the official poem for Gŵyl Cymru Festival. The poem has been translated by Grug Muse into Welsh, under the title 'Mae'r Dorf yn Ymgynnull'. Both Hanan Issa and Grug Muse feature in 'The Crowd Gathers' official poem video, citing lines from the poem in English, Welsh and Arabic, accompanied by music from Welsh artist, Sage Todz.

Hanan Issa, The National Poet of Wales, and writer of 'The Crowd Gathers' said: "Football has the power to transform a crowd of individuals into a cohesive group, united in support of their team. It's exciting to think of Cymru in an international spotlight and I wanted to express that infectious sense of hope the country is experiencing right now."

Literature Wales' Executive Director, Claire Furlong, said:

"Llenyddiaeth Cymru | Literature Wales are proud to work in partnership with FAW on this poem ahead of Cymru's visit to Qatar for the FIFA World Cup 2022. Our National Poet, Hanan Issa, and the football team both have important roles to represent Wales on the global stage and we hope this poem inspires the nation to get behind our team and support them as only the Red Wall can."

Football Association of Wales' PR and Partnerships Manager, Melissa Palmer said:

"The Gŵyl Cymru Festival will see an incredible wealth of artists and creatives join to celebrate Cymru in the World Cup. The recently released Gŵyl Cymru Festival programme illustrates just how much cultural talent we have across Wales and Worldwide.

"This talent is further epitomised through Hanna Issa's, The National Poet of Wales', spinetingling 'The Crowd Gathers'. It has been fantastic to continue our work with Llenyddiaeth Cymru | Literature Wales to share the official poem for Gŵyl Cymru Festival."

With more than 200 events from Wales and the World forming the festival programme, Gŵyl Cymru Festival aims to unify and amplify the wealth of arts, music and events being created for Cymru's historic World Cup journey and introduce new audiences to Welsh arts, culture and language - ensuring a cultural legacy to the FIFA World Cup 2022, brought by the smallest qualifying country to take part.

Find a Gŵyl Cymru Festival event near you on the website, www.gwyl.cymru.

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FAW / 'The Crowd Gathers' for FAW's Gŵyl Cymru Festival.

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The Football Association of Wales and Literature Wales have today announced the official poem for Gŵyl Cymru Festival - a creative celebration of Cymru men's team's World Cup journey in Qatar. The National Poet of Wales*, Hanan Issa, was commissioned by FAW and Literature Wales to write 'The Crowd Gathers'; the official poem for Gŵyl Cymru Festival.

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23rd November 2022 London Welsh Centre - Gŵyl Cymru

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23rd November 2022 London Welsh Centre - Gŵyl Cymru

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23 Nov: Welsh (Plural) - London Welsh Centre

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November 23rd 2022 London Welsh Centre WC1X 8UE Welsh (Plural) - Joe Dunthorne, Kandace Siobhan Walker, Andy Welch, Darren Chetty The World Cup, Wales and The Rainbow Wall - The Rainbow Wall's Tracy Brown in conversation with Darren Chetty * Join us at the London Welsh Centre for an evening of conversation about all things Welsh and football-related!

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A woman in niqab sits on a bus in Wales quietly talking to her son in another language. A man sitting nearby tells her that, 'You're in the UK, you should be speaking English.' An older lady sitting in front of them turns around and replies, 'She's in Wales and she's speaking Welsh.'

- Hanan Issa, 'Have you heard the one about the niqabi on a bus?'

My first ever visit abroad was in 1994, when I had been granted a British Academy scholarship to spend a month in Wales. A week in Swansea, two weeks in Aberystwyth and several days in Bangor-all three towns where the colleges of the University of Wales had been situated. Upon finishing my stay in Aberystwyth, one November morning I took a bus to Bangor. Despite the terribly early hour, I tried not to fall asleep, but the views in the bus window were so sublime and spectacular that although twenty-something days spent on admiring the Pure Beauty of Welsh Mountains should have made me used to them, I struggled not to surrender to vulgar biological needs.

Moreover, I was waiting to catch a glimpse of Machynlleth, the place where Owain Glyndŵr established the first Welsh parliament. Machynlleth, the first big stop on the route. I was alone on the bus. Beautiful mountains and valleys were unhurriedly moving in the window, and the rhythm of the ride finally lulled me. I was awoken by a strange hiss. First I decided that the bored driver had decided to entertain himself by imitating an irritated snake, but then I realised that he was just trying to announce the next stop. MacAntlet, Makhnnnslkhhhh, Mkhnslthssss. He failed better and better till the final surrender: 'Mkhhhhhhhhhhh'. The driver was English; we had a breezy conversation before boarding.

Another bus story which is supposed to be funny, like the one I've used as the epigraph to this review. Both are about language as the marker and the tool of power: political power, cultural power, ethnic and racial power. The English bus driver in 1994 tried to follow the rules and even to be polite to the country he was working in, struggling to pronounce a local place-name in a local language. He failed. Approximately twenty or twenty-five years later an English passenger-in the disgusting manner typical to all xenophobes around the world-failed to recognise the local language (and the country itself). The Welsh language became the line of division between 'Real Wales' and these men. But the problem is that they, the polite bus driver, and the despicable racist passenger, are part of Wales. They are Welsh. In other words, all these people with their different backgrounds, different religions, different habitus, different views on everything-all of them are Real Wales.

That is why this book has the most precise title: Welsh (Plural). It is about many various 'Waleses', about many various people living in them, but 'Welsh' as a language, or actually Welsh as the language, is the point towards which everyone in this country has to construct their attitude. Welsh always presents in your mind, often by the very fact of its absence. I will return to this major subject of the book later, but now I ought to say another couple of words about buses.

Both stories about Welsh-my personal story and the apocryphal story retold in a brilliant personal essay by Hanan Issa-happened on the buses. A cobweb of bus routes and the Welsh language are probably the strongest networks which keep this ever-divided entity together. If you want to travel from Cardiff to Aberystwyth by train, you have to leave Wales and then enter it again. Until the Thatcher era there was a railroad around part of a perimeter of the peninsula's coast. After the local industry had been destroyed by the infamous PM, this railroad shared the same fate. In his essay in Welsh (Plural), Dan Evans quotes Gwyn Alf Williams, who claimed that 'The deindustrialisation and increasing acculturation of the 1980s was ... a far greater and more insidious threat to Welsh working-class life and national distinctiveness than the invasions of the Romans, Saxons or Normans ever were.'

Besides some unexplainable historical anachronism (the 'working class' as we understand it didn't exist in Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Anglo-Norman times), this is just a modest exaggeration. During Thatcher's rule Wales lost its 'second heart' (or one of its two 'truths' in Raymond Williams' terminology); neither Suetonius, Paulinus, nor Henry I had changed the local way of agriculture; they limited their rule mostly to building the top level of their authority and administration above the existing economic, social, and even legal local system. Of course, the very nature of all things Welsh changed after each conquest of its territory, but it happened slowly. So far, just two things have transformed Wales drastically in a pretty short historical term-industrialisation and deindustrialisation. The former introduced railroads to Wales, the latter wiped many of them out. Mutilated public transport survived and became the best possible place to talk about Welsh and Welshness. Buses.

At this point it's time to return to the key topic of the most of the nineteen essays compiled in this highly interesting and illuminating book. Welsh as an identity, whatever this hysterically overrated term could mean. Welsh as a language which seems to be the very heart of Welsh as an identity. Welshness as a fruit of the uneasy union of Welsh (1) and Welsh (2). The occupations of the authors are diverse, from social activist to academic, from folk musician to journalist. Writers prevail among them because of the obvious reason that these 'engineers of human souls', as Soviet writer Yury Olesha put it, professionally deal with a language; and, at the same time, they deal with public opinion. At least that was so before the invention of Instagram and TikTok. But in Wales by the venerable word 'tradition' people still mean 'literary (poetic) tradition' and 'musical (choir) tradition'. And traditionally, tradition is considered as a cornerstone of Welshness.

Despite this diversity of professional, social, and cultural perspectives, most of the texts published in the book can be described in a single way-they bear witness about Welsh identity of their authors, about their involvement in this identity, about their attitude to it and-of course!-about how they struggle to construct it. The emotional/lyrical attitude in some texts is stronger than the rational/conceptualising one, but in any case, these evidences of the experience of belonging to the entity called Wales are priceless. First, they explain a lot about Wales for the wider public. Second, they can be used as a rich material for the future historian, sociologist, or political thinker. It looks like that this was the main aim of the collection-to make modern Wales more visible in all its complicated internal divisions. Moreover, it's not about unique 'local' or 'regional' problems-their localness and regionality are global. Old-fashioned Marxists called this 'a dialectic of the individual, particular and the universal'.

But several essays of this collection are about reflection itself. Martin Jones writes about the background (and till recently, inevitable horizon) to any discussion of Wales and Welsh history. The national revival of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had been fed by a history of oppression and suffering under foreign rule, and the feverish Romanticism of the heyday of industrial and colonial capitalism made History from this history. And instantly, History became Tradition. The Tradition. It excludes everyone besides Britons and Saxons (Anglo-Normans) and their descendants-and this was the starting point of a nationalist Welsh exceptionalism (and mild racism as well). Most of Welsh (Plural) consists of voices from outside this fossilised dual world of late Romantic ideological paraphernalia. Mike Parker and Dan Evans discuss it from different perspectives. For Parker, the future of the Welsh lies on the path traced by the Austrian émigré Leopold Kohr and Jan Morris, a path of 'middleness' in contrast with the 'big world', especially the big English/London world of extremes. Evans concludes his brief description/deconstruction of the existing historical forms of Welshness with a call for a 'new, accessible identity to supplement the increasingly fragile structure of feeling which has somehow outlived the way of life which created it.'

One of the key texts of the book is Morgan Owen's 'Ghost or Reflection? Merthyr, the Welsh Language and Identity'. In the nineteenth century, this small town near Cardiff became an industrial hell on earth, and today stands as the local/global symbol of post-industrial decline, desolation, depression. But still there is life there today, and this is Welsh life. In Merthyr, working-class history became part of a national history, and vice versa. National/ethnic/religious oppression is often a disguised and transformed form of class oppression. Classic-and especially modern-nationalism tries to conceal this truth, which is why most recent discussions of 'identity' and 'identity politics' are so aggressively hollow. 'Identity' is divorced from class consciousness which, however it dolls itself in traditional folk garments, is international, even global in its nature.

In 1831, Merthyr was the place for one of the most important episodes in the history of working-class struggle against capitalist exploitation. Local miners and metalworkers not only fought courageously for their rights, but demonstrated how workers are good at military and civic self-organisation. And of course, Merthyr is the place where the red flag was used as the symbol of a working-class uprising for the first time.

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A woman in niqab sits on a bus in Wales quietly talking to her son in another language. A man sitting nearby tells her that, 'You're in the UK, you should be speaking English.' An older lady sitting in front of them turns around and replies, 'She's in Wales and she's speaking Welsh.'

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Soundtrack to Welsh (Plural) - Ara Deg 22

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Soundtrack to Welsh (Plural) - Ara Deg 22

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A Soundtrack to Welsh (Plural) - From ARA DEG (27/08/2022)

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Darren Chetty explores Welsh music in all it glorious diversity and talks about Welsh (Plural), the critically acclaimed collection of essays published by Repeater books in 2022. https://repeaterbooks.com/product/welsh-plural-essays-on-the-future-of-wales/
https://neuaddogwen.com/en/ara-deg-2022/

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10th November Bangor University and the Coleg Cymraeg

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10th November Bangor University and the Coleg Cymraeg

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https://thegoodlifesociety.co.uk/camp-good-life-autumn-2022-lineup/welsh-plural-writers-on-the-future-of-wales

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Welsh (Plural)sees Welsh writers Darren Chetty, Cerys Hafana, Grug Muse and Andy Welch offer imaginative, radical perspectives to take us beyond the clichés and binaries that so often shape thinking about Wales and Welshness - rugby, sheep, rolling hills and the 3 Cs (castles, coal, and choirs).

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Welsh (Plural): writers on the future of Wales - The Good Life Society

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Welsh (Plural) sees Welsh writers Darren Chetty, Cerys Hafana, Grug Muse and Andy Welch offer imaginative, radical perspectives to take us beyond the clichés and binaries that so often shape thinking about Wales and Welshness - rugby, sheep, rolling hills and the 3 Cs (castles, coal, and choirs).&

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Neuadd gyngerdd a chanolfan celfyddydau cymunedol yw Neuadd Ogwen

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Mae Neuadd Ogwen yn neuadd gyngerdd a chanolfan celfyddydau cymunedol - cerddoriaeth fyw, ffilmiau, theatr, comedi, gweithdai, dosbarthiadau a digwyddiadau cymdeithasol

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Trafodaeth banel gyda Darren Chetty, Grug Muse a Iestyn Tyne am y gyfrol
Welsh (Plural), casgliad o draethodau gan lenorion am ddyfodol Cymru a'u
lle hwythau ynddo.

Panel discussion with Darren Chetty, Grug Muse and Iestyn Tyne about
Welsh (Plural), the fascinating collection of essays by Welsh writers
about the future of Wales and their place in it.

Cyfieuthu ar y pryd ar gael | Translation available

Your events

Take a look at this year's lineup and add the events you'd like to attend.

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Trafodaeth banel gyda Darren Chetty, Grug Muse a Iestyn Tyne am y gyfrol Welsh (Plural), casgliad o draethodau gan lenorion am ddyfodol Cymru a'u lle hwythau ynddo. Panel discussion with Darren Chetty, Grug Muse and Iestyn Tyne about Welsh (Plural), the fascinating collection of essays by Welsh writers about the future of Wales and their place in it.

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https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-evening-with-the-writers-of-welsh-plural-waterstones-cardiff-tickets-350540023647

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Date and time

Wed, 29 Jun 2022, 18:30 BST

Location

Waterstones

2A The Hayes

Saint Davids Centre

CF10 1WB

United Kingdom

View map

Come join us in store for an evening with the contributors to "Welsh (Plural)", exploring the future of Wales and Welshness

About this event

Come join us in store for an evening with the contributors to "Welsh (Plural)", exploring what it means to be Welsh and what the future holds for Welshness.

Joining us on the night will be writers Martin Johnes (Wales Since 1939, Wales: England's Colony?), Rabab Ghazoul (Gentle / Radical Turner Prize Nominee), Durre Shahwar (Where I'm Coming From), Gary Raymond (Golden Orphans, Wales Arts Review, BBC Wales), with chair Hannan Issa (My Body Can House Two Hearts).

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Cardiff County Appearances

Cardiff County Hobbies Appearances

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an evening with the writers of "welsh (plural)" - waterstones cardiff

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an evening with the writers of "welsh (plural)" - waterstones cardiff tickets

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an evening with the writers of "welsh (plural)" - waterstones cardiff saint davids centre

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an evening with the writers of "welsh (plural)" - waterstones cardiff saint davids centre tickets

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An Evening with the Writers of "Welsh (Plural)" - Waterstones Cardiff

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Eventbrite - Waterstones presents An Evening with the Writers of "Welsh (Plural)" - Waterstones Cardiff - Wednesday, 29 June 2022 at Waterstones, Saint Davids Centre, Wales. Find event and ticket information.

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Can Welshness be both distinct and inclusive? How might Wales cherish its past without being imprisoned by it? This discussion, featuring some of our foremost Welsh writers, examines the plural experience of Welshness, and offers radical perspectives on the future of Wales.

Only Friends of Hay Festival may buy tickets prior to public launch. If you are already a Friend please log in here. If you would like to become a Friend, you can do so here.

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Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales - Hay Festival

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Can Welshness be both distinct and inclusive? How might Wales cherish its past without being imprisoned by it? This discussion, featuring some of our foremost Welsh writers, examines the plural experience of Welshness, and offers radical perspectives on the future of Wales. Only Friends of Hay Festival may buy tickets prior to public launch.

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What does it mean to imagine Wales and "The Welsh" as something both distinct and inclusive?

For many people, Wales brings to mind the same old collection of images - if it's not rugby, sheep and rolling hills, it's the 3 Cs: castles, coal, and choirs. Heritage, mining and the church are indeed integral parts of Welsh culture. But what of the other stories that point us toward a Welsh future?

In Welsh (Plural), some of the foremost current Welsh writers offer imaginative, radical perspectives that take us beyond the clichés and binaries that so often shape thinking about Wales and Welshness. Conceived when three of the collection's editors - Darren Chetty, Grug Muse and Hanan Issa - met on the Hay Festival Writers at Work programme in 2019, the collection is timely look at the diverse and modern country around us.

Read it? Loved it? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram using #HBOTM.

Buy the book

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Hay Festival Book of the Month - May 2022

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What does it mean to imagine Wales and "The Welsh" as something both distinct and inclusive? For many people, Wales brings to mind the same old collection of images - if it's not rugby, sheep and rolling hills, it's the 3 Cs: castles, coal, and choirs.

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Don't miss your chance to meet Darren Chetty, Martin Johnes, Durre Shahwar and Hanan Issa, contributors to their excellent new book, ' as they discuss the future of Wales.

What does it mean to imagine Wales and 'The Welsh' as something both distinct and inclusive? In Welsh (Plural), some of the foremost Welsh writers consider the future of Wales and their place in it. For many people, Wales brings to mind the same old collection of images - if it's not rugby, sheep and leeks, it's the 3 Cs: castles, coal, and choirs. Heritage, mining and the church are indeed integral parts of Welsh culture. But what of the other stories that point us toward a Welsh future? In this anthology of essays, authors offer imaginative, radical perspectives on the future of Wales as they take us beyond the cliches and binaries that so often shape thinking about Wales and Welshness. Includes essays from Charlotte Williams (A Tolerant Nation?), Joe Dunthorne (Submarine, The Adulterants), Niall Griffiths (Sheepshagger, Broken Ghost), Rabab Ghazoul (Gentle / Radical Turner Prize Nominee), Mike Parker (On the Red Hill), Martin Johnes (Wales Since 1939, Wales: England's Colony?), Kandace Siobhan Walker (2019 Guardian 4th Estate Prize Winner), Gary Raymond (Golden Orphans, Wales Arts Review, BBC Wales), Darren Chetty (The Good Immigrant), Andy Welch (The Guardian), Marvin Thompson (Winner 2021 UK Poetry Prize), Durre Shahwar (Where I'm Coming From), Hanan Issa (My Body Can House Two Hearts), Dan Evans (Desolation Radio), Shaheen Sutton, Morgan Owen, Iestyn Tyne, Grug Muse and Cerys Hafana.

Reviews:

"A smart and timely exploration of Welshness and the role of identity in shaping our politics and potential for solidarity."
"Nourishing and enlightening."
"Full of insight and perspectives we can all learn from. This is an essential collection in understanding the rich diversity of Welsh identities, plural."
"Fascinating, thought provoking, poignant and powerful. A vital collection of essays exploring Welshness through a diverse and brilliant authorship. An absolute must read."
"A fresh picture of what it means to be Welsh today. These essays ask the hard questions with thoughtfulness, urgency and endless wit. A detailed, entertaining exploration of identity."
"Everyone with a stake in Wales' future should read this collection of essays. Insightful, poetic, angry, informative - such a rich tapestry of voices. A wonderful book."
"From its title onwards, Welsh (Plural) sets out to challenge outdated ideas of Welsh history, culture and identity and succeeds in its aim, its eclectic range of writers illuminating the tapestry of contemporary Wales."
"Taking on the mantle of cultural analysis from Raymond Williams, the book features a wide range of some of the most talented writers from Wales. Diverse and thought-provoking - and at times very funny - this is a book to treasure and share for generations to come."
"A vessel for a generously abundant, gentle-spirited yet often insurrectionist plurality, whose welcome lack of inhibition combines with intellectual rigour from many of Wales' most ground-breaking thinkers."
"Entertaining, erudite, political, these essays will be a joy to anyone with an interest in our nation."

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Meet the editor and authors of Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales | Events at Waterstones Bookshops | Waterstones

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Don't miss your chance to meet Darren Chetty, Martin Johnes, Durre Shahwar and Hanan Issa, contributors to their excellent new book, ' as they discuss the future of Wales. What does it mean to imagine Wales and 'The Welsh' as something both distinct and inclusive?

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May 11th 2022, Housmans, London (online)

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May 11th 2022, Housmans, London (online)

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For many people, Wales brings to mind the same old collection of images - if it's not rugby, sheep and rolling hills, it's the 3 Cs: castles, coal, and choirs. Heritage, mining and the church are indeed integral parts of Welsh culture. But what of the other stories that point us toward a Welsh future?

In Welsh (Plural), some of the foremost current Welsh writers offer imaginative, radical perspectives that take us beyond the clichés and binaries that so often shape thinking about Wales and Welshness.
SPEAKERS
Charlotte Williams is an academic and writer. She is Honorary Professor in the School of History, Philosophy and Social Sciences, Bangor University. In 2020 she was appointed as Chair of the Ministerial Working Group: Communities, Contributions and Cynefin: Black Asian Minority Ethnicities in the New Curriculum.

Morgan Owen is an essayist and poet originally from Merthyr Tydfil. In 2019, he won the Michael Marks Award for Poetry in a Celtic Language. His work often has a particular focus on the weaving of landscape, temporality and identity.

Darren Chetty has worked in education for twenty-five years. He is a co-editor of Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales. He is a contributor to the bestselling book The Good Immigrant, edited by Nikesh Shukla. Darren co-authored What Is Masculinity? Why Does It Matter? And Other Big Questions and How To Disagree: Negotiate Difference in a Divided World.

Cerys Hafana is a musician from Machynlleth. She plays arrangements of Welsh folk tunes and songs, alongside original compositions on the triple harp and piano. Cerys is also a member of Avane, the Welsh youth folk ensemble, and released her debut solo album, Cwmwl, last year.

Originally from Worcestershire, Mike Parker has lived in mid Wales for over twenty years. The country has been his muse for TV and radio programmes, and numerous books including Neighbours From Hell?, Map Addict, The Greasy Poll, Real Powys and On the Red Hill. The latter won the 2020 nonfiction Wales Book of the Year and was runner up for the Wainwright Prize for UK nature writing.
HOW TO ACCESS THIS ONLINE EVENT
An invitation to this online event will be emailed to you on the day of the event. We will use the email address used to register for this event. Confirmation emails and invitation links sometimes end up in spam folders, so please check there before emailing the shop. Thank you.
TICKET INFORMATION
If you'd like a copy of the book then choose the book plus entry ticket. If you'd like to support Housmans then please choose a solidarity ticket. There's also a free access ticket for students, low income and unwaged comrades.

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Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales [online event]

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For many people, Wales brings to mind the same old collection of images - if it's not rugby, sheep and rolling hills, it's the 3 Cs: castles, coal, and choirs. Heritage, mining and the church are indeed integral parts of Welsh culture. But what of the other stories that point us toward a Welsh future?

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What does it meant to be Welsh today? And what of the future of Wales? These are the questions posed in a series of essays, Welsh [Plural]. The poet Hanan Issa is one of the co-editors, and is looking to get beyond the stereotype images of castles, coal and choirs, and understand the full rich diversity of Welsh identities.

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Richard Wyn Jones, Hanan Issa, Marion Loeffler and Richard King discuss the historical, cultural and political forces that have shaped Welshness, with Helen Lewis.

In May Wales will hold local elections to elect members of all twenty-two local authorities. Richard Wyn Jones, professor of Welsh politics, examines the issues facing the country. He tells Helen Lewis how nationalism plays an important role in politics in Wales, but that its national identity is a complex mix of Welsh, English and British.

What does it meant to be Welsh today? And what of the future of Wales? These are the questions posed in a series of essays, Welsh [Plural]. The poet Hanan Issa is one of the co-editors, and is looking to get beyond the stereotype images of castles, coal and choirs, and understand the full rich diversity of Welsh identities.

The historian Dr Marion Loeffler explores how pivotal works of art and literature have helped shape Wales. In a landmark BBC series, Art That Made Us (on BBC2 in April) she looks back to the 7th century poem Y Gododdin and the painter Penry Williams' depiction of Cyfarthfa Ironworks Interior at Night, 1825.

Wales's industrial landscape is at the centre of Richard King's oral history, Brittle With Relics, which focuses on the huge changes that took place during the second half of the 20th century. The story of the effects of deindustrialisation, loss of employment and social cohesion, as well as the fight for a voice, language and identity, is told through the people who lived through it.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Image credit: BBC ClearStory - Artist and Performer Sean Parry with a byddar drum

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BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, Welsh identities

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Richard Wyn Jones, Hanan Issa, Marion Loeffler and Richard King discuss the historical, cultural and political forces that have shaped Welshness, with Helen Lewis. In May Wales will hold local elections to elect members of all twenty-two local authorities. Richard Wyn Jones, professor of Welsh politics, examines the issues facing the country.

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Andy Welch, Cerys Hafana + Martin Johnes - Green Man Radio 2022

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Andy Welch, Cerys Hafana + Martin Johnes share their favourite selection of music, and what it means to be Welsh.

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Darren Chetty
Darren Chetty is a writer from Swansea. He is the author of What Is Masculinity? Why does it Matter? And Other Big Questions and How To Disagree: Negotiate Difference In A Divided World.

Grug Muse is a writer, editor and researcher from Dyffryn Nantlle. Her first poetry collection, Ar Ddisberod, was published by Barddas in 2017.

Hanan Issa is a writer, poet, and artist who lives and was raised in Cardiff. Her debut pamphlet My Body Can House Two Hearts was published by Burning Eye Books in 2019.

Iestyn Tyne
Iestyn Tyne is a writer and musician based in Caernarfon. He has published three volumes of poetry and is the National Eisteddfod's poet in residence.

Paperback with free eBook 9781913462666

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Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales - Repeater Books

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What does it mean to imagine Wales and "The Welsh" as something both distinct and inclusive? For many people, Wales brings to mind the same old collection of images - if it's not rugby, sheep and rolling hills, it's the 3 Cs: castles, coal, and choirs.

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‘Our multi-coloured dragon has many tongues’

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Dylan Moore explores the many tangled identities that make up the land we call Wales/Cymru.

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n Wales, we are doing things differently," explains the Welsh government on its website, 25 years after devolution gave it control over matters such as public health, housing, education and the economy.

Covid-19 has upped the ante. In February, Wales became the first home nation to make vaccines available to five-to-11-year-olds, then launched a trial for a universal basic income. It also promoted the idea of a four-day working week (in line with its Well-being of Future Generations Act, the only legislation of its type in the world).

The government also promotes the Welsh language, sparking criticism. In the February issue of the Jonathan Meades railed against the "totalitarian project" to get a million people speaking Welsh by 2050 ( the current official total stands at 883,000, up by more than 150,000 from 2010). The BBC's Jeremy Bowen also explored the topic in his Radio 4 series Being Welsh, complaining that the drive "to spread the language risks devaluing the identities of Welsh people like me". You wonder why people choose not to celebrate a tongue that has survived centuries of suppression, but to fear it.

It didn't pass me by that both men do not live in Wales, but I do; over the past 20 years, I have watched young people becoming the lifeblood of the language. This is clear from the rising popularity of Welsh-language schools and in cross-party, non-nationalist independence campaigns such as YesCymru, which is dominated by younger voices, speaking in English and Welsh.

Richard King talks about a "renewed sense of purpose" - a confidence the country seems to have gained in its separate identity - in the epilogue of Brittle With Relics: A History of Wales, 1962-1997. But the chapters that precede it reveal how tough to tread the early years were. Beginning with a famous speech in 1962 on the possible extinction of the Welsh language by Saunders Lewis, co-founder of independence party Plaid Cymru, King's book proceeds through the horrors of the Aberfan disaster, the flooding of a village, Capel Celyn, in the Afon Tryweryn valley in 1965 to create a reservoir to provide water for Liverpool, and the South Wales miners' strike, as well as previous failed attempts at devolution.

Many rousing stories shine through this gloom: of the first march to Greenham Common from Cardiff, led by Ann Pettitt and Karmen Thomas, and the tales of Super Furry Animals and Gwenno, artists who have given the Welsh language a fresh edge. Brittle With Relics, however, is not a romantic book. Its construction as an oral history allows the story of Wales to appear less varnished, more nuanced, full of grit. Academics, activists, politicians and disaster survivors stand alongside the actor and now campaigner Michael Sheen, who has moved back to Port Talbot, Swansea's former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Tredegar's Neil Kinnock.

The latter's youthful recollections are particularly fascinating - he grew up around the Welsh valleys town of Tredegar, home to the Workmen's Medical Aid Society, which inspired Aneurin Bevan to found the NHS. Here, locals also contributed a penny a week to fund a huge local library, snooker hall and 2,000-capacity concert hall, where Kinnock watched many famous opera singers perform.

We hear about the 14-year-old James Dean Bradfield buying Neil Kinnock his tobacco on the day of the 1983 general election

He also recounts his time as a young teacher at the Aberfan Workers' Education Association in 1966, and the day he arrived at the village shortly after the slurry slip that killed 116 schoolchildren. "We realised after an hour or so that there was nothing we could do," he says.

We hear, too, about the 14-year-old James Dean Bradfield, later the frontman of Manic Street Preachers, buying Kinnock his tobacco on the day of the 1983 general election on the orders of his dad. Grammy-nominated producer David Wrench (Caribou, Sampha, FKA twigs) remembers raves he attended in caves, while BBC 6 Music DJ Huw Stephens also talks about his late father, Meic, who was responsible for the famous graffiti saying "Cofiwch Dryweryn" (Remember Tryweryn) just before the village was drowned.

Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales offers a collection of younger, more racially diverse voices, alongside establishment figures such as Niall Griffiths and the Wales Arts' Review 's Gary Raymond. The editors include Swansea's Darren Chetty, whose essay Whatever Happened to the Black Boy of Killay?, about a pub near his childhood home (and mine), hit me hard. Written from the perspective of a local with Welsh Indian and South African Dutch ancestry, it examines the removal of the pub sign and the stubbornness of the people who held on to its name, subtly underlining the racism endemic there, then and now.

The stunning writing of Kandace Siobhan Walker (who explores the Brecon Beacons, Blackness and a lack of belonging) and a brutal attack documented by Shaheen Sutton also stress that Wales is no utopia. Reading these voices under the label of Welshness is an energising experience, nevertheless, reminding us of how far the country has come and, also, how far it has to go.

Brittle With Relics: A History of Wales, 1962-1997 by Richard King is published by Faber (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales, edited by Darren Chetty, Grug Muse, Hanan Issa and Iestyn Tyne, is published by Repeater (£12.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

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Brittle With Relics by Richard King; Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales - reviews

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n Wales, we are doing things differently," explains the Welsh government on its website, 25 years after devolution gave it control over matters such as public health, housing, education and the economy. Covid-19 has upped the ante. In February, Wales became the first home nation to make vaccines available to five-to-11-year-olds, then launched a trial for a universal basic income.

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Jon Gower
There's an awful lot to commend about this eminently readable and energetic collection, from the selection of writers to the various ways in which they have each decided to marshal and present their material and stances.

Assembling a representative cross-section of Welsh society is well nigh an impossible task, of course, as a selection is always just that: one is reminded of what the playwright Ed Thomas once said, that Wales is three million stories.

Owing to constrictions of space the four editors have had to stick to just nineteen contributors who were asked to rise to the challenge of imagining a Wales both distinct and inclusive. But it's a fascinating selection, no doubt about it.

Their approaches are various and varied and satifyingly so, from music journalist Andy Welch's account of responses to his Rhyl accent and, indeed to Rhyl itself, through Darren Chetty's musings on the problematic pub sign which used to hang outside the Black Boy pub in Killay to poet and essayist Morgan Owen's meditation on the history and perception of the Welsh language in his hometown of Merthyr.

Owen is just one member of a talented generation of writers who have made their stamp, pardon the pun, courtesy of indie publishing outfit Cyhoeddiadau'r Stamp.

Another is Grug Muse who ponders the meaning of the words "datganoli/devolution" through the filter of her life-travels, as she returns to Dyffryn Nantlle after seven years away as well as Iestyn Tyne who predicts a difficult hardscrabble future for the Welsh hill farmer.

Meanwhile Shaheen Sutton powerfully charts her particular herstory, her otherness and racialised identity from being called 'Taffy, not Toffee' at the age of nine through periods when she had to be constantly defensive because other people were so offensive, including being physically attacked along with her brother who was hospitalised just one month before Stephen Lawrence was killed in London.
Fascinating confluences
Some of the writing elegantly relates to nature and the land such as Durre Shahwar's examination of why fewer people of colour access and enjoy wildlife and landscape in Wales while Kandace Siobhan Walker lists various key loci in her life, from a bungalow on the edge of farmed land in the Brecon Beacons to Greenwich and then back again, expressing the view along the way that 'The Welsh rural, as much as the road, provides a generative space for an articulation of Blackness' while suggesting in her own case she is no longer interested in categorisation or simplification.' Here is a complex, nuanced and textured essay with so much in it to ponder and absorb.

In a complementary manner poet Hanan Issa explores the Muslim respect for nature and links her Iraqi heritage in the marshes of Mesopotamia with the river Taff suggesting that 'connections between one loyalty and another flow as easily for me as one body of water running into another.'

As with so many of the essays herein there are fascinating confluences, such as Cerys Hafana'r mapping of new and traditional folk music as an expression of Welsh identity or Dan Evans' account of duelling narratives in the creation of a sense of "Welshness."

If this collection was a record then you'd be tempted to put one of your strongest tracks at the beginning and Martin Johnes' musings on 'Embracing and Escaping History' is certainly that.

'In Wales,' he encourages,' we need to move beyond a fixation with wrongs endured, both real and imagined. Everyone needs to think about how we can do things better.' Provocatively, he reminds us of ways in which Wales has benefitted from its relationship with England - 'through trade, the welfare state, fiscal transfers or international security' which, Johnes avers might help expunge Brexit-style xenophobia and consequently be to the benefit of any campaign for Welsh independence.

There are some exceedingly powerful pieces of writing herein, not least poet Marvin Thompson's 'On Writing a Modern Welsh Horror' which is arranged as a sort of close reading of some of his own poetry, some of it angered into being by a blue plaque erected in Brecon to local seafarer Captain Thomas Phillips, who amassed a tainted fortune from slavery.
Verbal snakes and ladders
There's much telling writing about race and racism and the double entendre in the title of Charlotte Williams' essay 'Knowing Our Place' sets up a pellucid account of the challenges of representing Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic experiences in the National Curriculum which could be, Williams suggests 'a bold foundation for a more plural Wales.'

Mike Parker, meanwhile, delivers a trenchant plea for the Wales he wants, being a 'deeply ordinary country,' not one jockeying for position or slathering itself in superlatives whilst warning that 'exceptionalism, rampant nostalgia and fake history' are fascism's handmaidens. Along the way he suggests that the Wales he wants is very much akin to and redolent of the one the late Jan Morris wanted, as depicted in her A Machynlleth Triad.

There's a smart, savvy and archly satirical contribution from Wales Arts Review editor Gary Raymond about the pleasures and pitfalls of writing Welsh novels, with wry observations about such matters as the Londoncentricity of publishing and the comparative merits and demerits of the literary scenes in the Big Leagues, Scotland and Ireland.

Arranged as a sort of verbal snakes and ladders game, the reader can "land' on various game instructions such as 'Move to Scotland and see if you can't get some of that crime fiction magic dust' with plenty of one-step-forward two-steps-back manoeuvuring.

Raymond certainly adds perceptive humour to the mix, as does fellow novelist Joe Dunthorne's lively account of the chimerical nature of Welshness as it manifests itself at times when he watched football at the Vetch or rugby in the London Welsh Centre.

And while we're on the subject of novelists Niall Griffiths proves that his raging fire is far from guttering with an impassioned tour of 'a small almost-country reaching for self-determination and release from an arrogant, self-entitled and deeply unrepresentative polity.'

The essay-cum-road trip takes us from Penisarwaun through the slopes of Hyddgen to all night raves as well as a bit of a detour to the West Coast Eisteddfod in Oregon. It's a mixture of Griffiths' personal journey into Wales and a strident megaphone blast of prose, railing against the state of things whilst also underlining the stubborn 'Yma o Hyd' defiance of the Welsh.

The collection concludes with visual artist Rabab Ghazoul's apology for not being able to write an essay because of ADD, a suggestion seemingly countermanded by the rich veins and stories she explores.

Ghazoul places important words such as 'healing' very centrally at the heart of things, rounding off a series of essays that is rich with nuance and provocation, bright ideas and radical plans.

The sloganistic notion that there is something here for everyone very much applies.

Welsh (Plural) Essays on the Future of Wales is published by Repeater Books and can be purchased here or in good bookshops

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Review: Welsh (Plural) - Essays on the Future of Wales

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Jon Gower There's an awful lot to commend about this eminently readable and energetic collection, from the selection of writers to the various ways in which they have each decided to marshal and present their material and stances. Assembling a representative cross-section of Welsh society is well nigh an impossible task, of course, as a [...]

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Welsh [Plural]: Essays on the Future of Wales | Books - Wales Arts Review

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Emma Schofield takes a closer look at Welsh [Plural], a new collection of essays which promises to break down the clichés and binaries which have traditionally shaped our thinking about Wales and Welsh identity. I can't remember the last time I've heard as much about a non-fiction book before I've even received a copy.

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By Darren Chetty, Grug Muse, Hanan Issa and Lestyn Tyne * Penguin Random House

How do you define a national identity? Is it contained within a shared history, language or culture? Is it an attachment to a landscape or place, a feeling of being at home? Who gets to decide?

In this collection of essays by some of Wales' most prominent writers - among them authors, academics, artists, musicians and activists - Welsh Plural explores new ways of thinking about the country and what it means to be Welsh. After all, what exactly is it that unites more than three million people, across nearly 21,000 square kilometres of land?

Wrapped in a vibrant jacket inspired by the Wrexham Tailor's Quilt, itself a patchwork recycled from colourful cloth cut-offs, the book weaves together a variety of narrative forms; historical essays, poetry, letters and even an interactive choose-your-own-adventure story. Each is embellished with details that form a much more complex portrait of the country than the usual cliches that come to mind - rugby, sheep and, as the book calls them, the 3Cs: castles, coal and choirs.

For anyone who knows less about Welsh history and culture than perhaps they rightfully should, there is a wealth of information to find threaded throughout the pages of this book, from Wales' active participation in the British Empire (and its ties to colonialism and slavery) to its devolution and the country's own North-South divide.

For those that know Wales well, prepare to see it from a different perspective. Each essay challenges the often outdated ways of thinking about Welsh identity, or indeed any national identity, in ways that are in turn insightful, angry, funny and sometimes heart-wrenching. Just as Welsh plurals come in a multitude of forms, grammatically speaking, Welsh Plural draws attention to the many kinds of Welsh identities, both past and present, in all their complexities.
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WELSH PLURAL: Essays on the Future of Wales - Geographical Magazine

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By Darren Chetty, Grug Muse, Hanan Issa and Lestyn Tyne * Penguin Random House How do you define a national identity? Is it contained within a shared history, language or culture? Is it an attachment to a landscape or place, a feeling of being at home? Who gets to decide?

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Edited by Darren Chetty, Grug Muse, Hanan Issa and Iestyn Tyne, 'Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales' sees some of the foremost current Welsh writers look beyond the clichés and binaries that shape thinking about Wales and Welshness. Helia Phoenix reviews.
What does it mean to imagine Wales and "The Welsh" as something both distinct and inclusive?
This was the challenge issued to the 19 folks brave enough to explore their many and varying notions of Welsh and Welshness for this anthology. The book was born from discussions amongst the editors about the lack of visibility of Welsh identities and issues in the UK book industry, when compared against the stronger brands of Scottish or Irish writing. (You could probably use this same comparison for anything Welsh when compared to our Celtic neighbours). Ireland and Scotland both have larger populations, a more vocal and present national media. They have a larger, more embedded "cultural voice" that speaks for them before they even need open their mouths. But go somewhere abroad - and ask about the Welsh, or notions of Welshness - and you'll probably get silence. We've been quiet, up until now, it seems.

The essays cover a number of subjects: we get some potted histories at the start, a useful introduction that gives an overview of the complicated relationship with England, and also places Wales in the world from a colonial viewpoint (many of the pieces were written around the time of the BLM protests and movement during the pandemic).

Other pieces cover a variety of additional subjects, some on long-held bones of contention amongst the Welsh: our history, our place in the world, our language, our communities, our farming history, and our landscape.

As you might imagine given the subject matter, the book is a challenging read. It's not so much the academic research (though the book is densely packed with this in parts). It's more the individual stories - nearly every single essay has a personal account of someone experiencing racism, xenophobia, homophobia, or prejudice in some way - often as children or while they were growing up in different places and in different times across the whole of Wales. It's painful to read those pieces and witness those wounds, many of which are taking a lifetime to heal.

Regardless of those kinds of details, having fresh perspectives on "Welshness" is vital to challenge stereotypes and acknowledge and accept the reality of "what Wales is". We need more conversations with people who have multiple cultural identities, people who negotiate the space of Welshness when they're black, or Muslim, or queer, or who challenge the idea of what "typical Welsh" might look like, or "be" like (see Hanan Issa's 'Have You Heard The One About The Niqabi On The Bus').

The essays are also about the experiences of immigrants, of émigrés, of the limitations of regional accents, the experience of the Welsh farming community as it faces an uncertain future, and the constant and seemingly endless infighting amongst different parts of Wales. Just where can you find the most authentic - the most real - version of Wales, nowadays?

The answer, of course, is nowhere. There is no more "real" version of Wales as there is some kind of essential spirit that can only be found in "real" Welsh people. There are only people, and this is the land they live in. Like anything, cultural identity is constantly shifting, changing, and no doubt the publication of this book and releasing these stories into the ether will continue moving the boundaries and progressing "our" narrative.

There are also some moments of levity. I enjoyed playing Gary Raymond's 'Being a Welsh Novelist: Choose your Destiny Adventure Game', and the various discussions of regional accents (like Andy Welch's 'Rhyl Talk'). The book even moves into deconstruction of notions of tradition within Welsh music, specifically looking at the harp (the national instrument of Wales) through Cerys Hafana's 'A Tradition of Change' (which was one of my two favourite pieces in the collection). My other favourite piece was the closing essay, Rabab Gazoul's 'Words That Scatter / How Are We To Heal'.

If the essays have anything in common, it's their dreams for the future. They all separately - but in unison - dream of a Wales that acknowledges and celebrates its past (and apologises for parts of it, where appropriate), but isn't confined or trapped there. They envisage a world where diversity and inclusion aren't just words jammed into the title of some report document, but real ontological states. They want more power in the hands of the people - from more community-run public spaces to a national press and media that truly represents the "Welsh" (whoever and whatever we/they are).

Although obviously the book is freshly minted and hot off the printing press, reading the essays was a curious experience given the time they were written. The immensely uncertain and difficult period in the middle of the pandemic obviously raised big questions for a lot of writers, as they wrote while under the confinement of Covid lockdown regulations, which differed across the UK. These tensions brought back to life the ongoing politics of the historical relationship between Wales and England. I imagine this brought a slightly different flavour to some of the articles than if they'd been written two years before (or if they were being written now).

Regardless of this minor quirk, it's a vital read for anyone interested in notions of cultural identity (Welsh or otherwise), and a potent call to action for those looking to make our world a better place.

*
Published by Repeater Books, 'Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales' is out now and available here (£12.08).Darren Chetty, Cerys Hafana, Grug Muse and Andy Welch will read from and discuss 'Welsh (Plural)' as part of our line up for this year's Camp Good Life.

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Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales

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Edited by Darren Chetty, Grug Muse, Hanan Issa and Iestyn Tyne, 'Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales' sees some of the foremost current Welsh writers look beyond the clichés and binaries that shape thinking about Wales and Welshness. Helia Phoenix reviews.

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Welsh [Plural]: Essays on the Future of Wales
Edited by Darren Chetty, Hanan Issa, Grug Muse and Iestyn Tyne
Repeater Books £12.99

IN 1987 as a young reporter on the Western Mail - the self-proclaimed "national" newspaper of Wales - I was tasked with travelling the length of the A470 trunk road joining Cardiff in the south to Llandudno in the north.

It's an iconic route to the Welsh, arising from the Mail's own campaign in the 1970s for a single road connecting the country.

I suspect the news editor at the time had other motives - this man could not stand the upstart Cockney in his newsroom, a non-indigenous insult to Welsh journalism, and wanted me out of the office.

Yet it was a formative experience: while the road - then still little more than a lane in places - had huge symbolic value, it had no practical utility. Motorists had long been in the habit of leaving Wales in the south, travelling through England, then back into the north.

In short, the A470 typified the gulf that existed in Wales between national aspiration and reality, as well as the prejudice of my news editor - it turns out that my coal-mining grandfather from Wrexham made me more "Welsh" by one definition than he was.

Understandings of Welshness - from the disjointed, prejudicial and backward to progressive alternatives - are explored in myriad forms in Welsh [Plural], a fascinating and timely collection of essays on identity.

The contributions examine "traditional" Welsh authenticity in cultural and historical terms - from folk music, farming and sport to linguistic continuity - and how these have clashed with the country's hybrid faces past and present.

From an historical perspective, writers such as Martin Johnes, Mike Parker, Grug Muse and Niall Griffiths point to the dangers of exceptionalism and nostalgia, how neoliberal forces destroyed vernacular Welshness, and the growing mood for independence.

Huge policy challenges exist in creating an inclusive society, argues Charlotte Williams.

In an excellent analysis of nation-building narratives, Dan Evans notes that Wales's permanent identity crisis resides in statelessness, yet devolution has been unable to shape a civic Welshness to embrace diversity.

Contributors with a mixed ethnic heritage such as Darren Chetty, Kandace Siobhan Walker, Durre Shahwar, Shaheen Sutton, Marvin Thompson, Hanan Issa and Rabab Ghazoul provide thoughtful and informative insights into the position assigned to blackness and immigrants, and hence what "qualifies" a person to be Welsh.

Yet divisions affecting even those with a more recognisable attachment to the "traditional" are also laid bare by Cerys Hafana, Morgan Owen and Andy Welch.

The conclusion is that Welsh identity remains a work in progress-the natural condition of all nations.

Sitting in the London Welsh Centre recalling his English father, Joe Dunthorne makes a candid observation: "And in their imperfect Welshness, I sense that I am among my people. These are the Welsh-ish. The Welsh enough. The wish-we-were-Welsher. I am home."

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IN 1987 as a young reporter on the Western Mail - the self-proclaimed "national" newspaper of Wales - I was tasked with travelling the length of the A470 trunk road joining Cardiff in the south to Llandudno in the north.

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BBC News - Identity: What does it mean to be Welsh?

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BBC News - Identity: What does it mean to be Welsh?

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Rugby, rolling hills, castles, coal and choirs - these are some of the images often associated with Wales and the Welsh.

But what are the experiences of Welsh people who have plural ethnic and cultural identities?

What preconceptions might a black child face in rural Powys or a hijab-wearing Muslim face in Cardiff?

Welshness should be seen as "a spectrum rather than a hierarchy... a patchwork quilt", said writer Hanan Issa.

She is one of a number of contributors to book Welsh Plural, a collection of essays "on the future of Wales" that offers "imaginative, radical perspectives that take us beyond the clichés and binaries that so often shape thinking about Wales and Welshness".

Writer and filmmaker Kandace Siobhan Walker, 27, said when she and her family moved from east London to Brecon Beacons National Park, Powys, in 2003 they were "poster children for multiculturalism, for globalisation".

From the age of nine until she left for university at 18, home was a remote house at the end of a bridleway.

She said it was difficult finding anyone who knew how to work with afro-textured hair so a hairdresser from over the border in Hereford would travel to see the family at home, her mother, who remains in the family home, found a man in Bristol who could order in Jamaican ingredients, and finding somewhere that stocked her favourite Caribbean drink sarsaparilla was a regular mission.

'Why is she here?'

In her essay, Lights in the Dark: Notes towards a personal history of Wales in the 21st Century, Kandace writes about being "tolerated nowhere, questioned everywhere".

Asked about what experiences led her to write those words, she recalled a time when she was 14 and a woman stopped her in a supermarket carpark.

"She asked me what tribe I was, I was like, 'what you're talking about?'," she said.

She said hikers were often surprised to see a young black girl in the rural Welsh hills: "Even if I was just in my own garden, walkers would be thinking I'm another walker - and I'm like, 'I'm in a dressing gown'.

"There's that implicit idea, 'why is she here?'"

'Where are you from?

She also writes about the "everyday dispossession" of white strangers asking 'where are you from?' - "a classic".

"It's a very loaded question and I think people know that," she explained.

"'You come from somewhere else, maybe your family comes from somewhere else, or like your ancestors do' they know that history is fraught and so it feels often quite entitled... 'what trauma do you come from? Like, what's gone on there?'"

She said by the time she got into her 20s she started simply saying, 'I'm from here'.

"I don't want to get into it with strangers usually."

She said when a black person asks the same question "it's almost always a completely different conversation because they're going to tell me where they're from".

"It's more like an excitement, we're going to compare, take out our little family histories and be like 'look how kind of similar bit different they are'."

She said white people who ask her where she is from have usually "decided their history is kind of ubiquitous and uninteresting that they don't need to explain themselves to me".

Kandace, who now lives in south London, said she wrote her contribution to the book at a time when she was thinking more about "purposely identifying as Welsh" and "who decides that".

"What happens if I start telling people I'm Welsh and just letting them argue it out for themselves," she said.

She said for a long time she was "trying to let it not matter too much where I came from, or who I came from in terms of people - but eventually I just realised it was such an integral part of my life - my dad's family are African American and my mum's family are Jamaican Canadian...

"We moved to London but then moved to Wales so we've never fitted into a specific like pattern or group in terms of eras of migration."

She said through her writing she had realised "how much it meant to me to have grown up in Wales and be Welsh".

"I think Wales is just a fundamentally plural place, a place built on pluralities in its history and its culture and its language," she said.

"Despite kind of negative experiences I've had growing up, or even now, I always have hope and quite a lot of pride in Wales and Welsh culture."

Writer Hanan Issa, 35, from Cardiff, said is was a discussion about the "frustrations of how narrow the perception of Welshness is" at the Hay Festival with three other Welsh writers that eventually led them to work on the book.

She said she had always had a "plural perception of identity".

"I'm mixed race, I've got Welsh heritage and Iraqi heritage," she said.

She said people had sometimes assumed she was not Welsh because of her appearance.

"Not so much recently, but you know I have had experiences where people will say things like 'oh your English is very good'.

"It doesn't work, this idea that you have to look Welsh."

In her essay - Have you heard the one about the niqabi on a bus? - she recalls times people have "faced abuse because their outward appearance doesn't align with people's perception of Welshness".

She writes about the time her white mother, who was wearing a niqab, was abused by a man in Cardiff indoor market.

"Looming over her, he shouted in a Cockney accent, 'Why don't you go back to your own country'.

"Without missing a beat my little nan squared up to this bully saying, 'she's my daughter and she's Welsh but you are not. Why don't you do us a favour and go back to your country?'"

She concludes the anecdote: "While it is a story of triumph, Nan's defence relied on my mum's white Welshness to emphasise her right to belong here."

Hanan said there was a "very strange, luminous space between being seen as something foreign but having all these experiences that were very Welsh".

So, what does it mean to be Welsh?

Hanan said an integral part of Islamic faith is "khalifah", meaning caretaker.

She wrote: "Perhaps Wales and Welshness belongs to all those who care for her and the people who call her home."

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Identity: What does it mean to be Welsh?

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Rugby, rolling hills, castles, coal and choirs - these are some of the images often associated with Wales and the Welsh. But what are the experiences of Welsh people who have plural ethnic and cultural identities? What preconceptions might a black child face in rural Powys or a hijab-wearing Muslim face in Cardiff?

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IN CONVERSATION WITH THE EDITORS OF WELSH [PLURAL]

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IN CONVERSATION WITH THE EDITORS OF WELSH [PLURAL]

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Wales Arts Review speaks to the editors of Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales - Darren Chetty, Grug Muse, Hanan Issa and Iestyn Tyne - for an insight into this watershed collection of essays and its ambition to reveal imaginative perspectives on Welshness that are not bound by clichés and binaries. Here, we hear from each of the editors on their vision for this book and the challenges faced in making it a reality.

Grug: Hanan, Darren and I were at the Hay Festival in 2019 as part of the Hay Writers at Work programme, and over the course of the 10 or so days we were there, questions about the place of Welsh writing in the British publishing world kept coming up. Wherever you fall on the question of Britishness, and I'm one that would enjoy watching this union fall apart, I think it's hard to escape the fact that Welsh writing has struggled to get the same attention as Irish (Northern or Republican) and Scottish writing gets. Maybe it's a branding problem, maybe it's numbers, whatever it is, nowhere does it feel more evident than when you are a Welsh writer hanging out in the Hay festival, which might be physically on the Welsh side of the border, but emotionally I think it's fair to say it's not. So, this book in many ways was born out of those conversations: why can't books about Wales, and by Welsh writers, do well in the London publishing scene.

But... hold on. What do we mean by Welsh? Who? When, to quote Gwyn Alf. It's those first conversations that got us started, but it's the questions that came next that made the book interesting. Yes, let's get the world to pay attention to Wales, but let's make sure it's a reflection of the Wales that we all know, the different Waleses that we all know, not the 2D caricatures you get in escapist novels or feel-good films about miners.
Can you tell us a little bit about what you were looking for in the writers?
Hanan: We built a 'dream list' of writers we wanted to approach, keeping in mind how important we felt it was to balance aspects such as gender, location, heritage, proximity to the Welsh language etc. There's so much talent out there it wasn't hard to compile that list but narrowing it down was a challenge. We thought there might be some overlap or duplication of topics but even though there are themes running right through the book, each essayist has a fresh, distinct perspective.

Darren: We wanted people who could write memorable essays - and perhaps play with the form. So Marvin Thompson's essay is a poem followed by his reflection on the process, Charlotte Williams combines personal writing with her account of chairing the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Communities, Contributions and Cynefin in the New Curriculum Working Group , Gary Raymond wrote his essay as a first-person role-playing game and Rabab Ghazoul's is a series of letters to the editors. As we say in the introduction when discussing the cover, the book is our collective tailor's quilt of stories.
There must have been some idea of notions you wanted to work against when discussing the vision for the book? Cliches about Wales, or just concepts of what a book like this could be?
Iestyn: As we've mentioned in the blurb - which is taken almost word for word from the original brief we set our contributors - there is a set of images that the idea of Wales brings to mind for many people - 'if it's not rugby, sheep and rolling hills, it's the 3 Cs: castles, coal and choirs'. In fact, the book contains references to all those things; indeed, they are central themes in many - sheep, in my own essay; rugby in Joe Dunthorne's essay; and there's mention of Wales' 'modest' mountains in the opening paragraph of 'Medium, Rare' by Mike Parker. Several of the contributors refer to the Wales' industrial heritage and life in its wake ... so I don't think the book necessarily works against all those cliches, I suppose an element of truth is often the starting point of a cliche; but we did want fresh reimaginings, and that is what I believe we got.

In terms of what books like this could be, we did steer away from work that was too drily political - the idea driving Welsh (Plural) is that more creative writing can be harnessed to offer a vision for the future, too; that this is not a less valid way of thinking of how things could be; and that you can paint a picture of the future you dream of without necessarily having every answer for every step of the way to hand. I hope Welsh (Plural) gains an audience with people who perhaps feel that conversations on the future of Wales that happen in the political realm fail to engage them for whatever reason.
Do you think it was harder or easier to pull this all together during the pandemic?
Grug: One of the biggest challenges was that we all live a distance from each other, which meant that even pre-pandemic we were already mostly meeting through Skype and Zoom, so in a way the pandemic had very little effect on the project.

Darren: Literature Wales have been very supportive from the off, and they did offer us a weekend at Tŷ Newydd to meet as an an editorial team. But the pandemic prevented that from happening. Skype, Zoom, Google Docs, Email and WhatsApp have all played major supporting roles in the creation of the book.
How did you see the collection taking shape as the contributions began to come in?
Hanan: The hunger for a book like this was what struck me. Almost everyone involved expressed how necessary they felt it was to have a book highlighting Wales as a distinct yet inclusive nation. Also, how the sense of not being Welsh enough was such a common sentiment regardless of where people lived, their ethnicity, or gender. The collection became such a clear demonstration of just how pointless it is to stereotype Welshness.

Darren: Yes, there seemed to be lurking in many contributor's minds a kind of Platonic ideal of Welshness that one can picture but never actually attain. But then there are also fascinating reflections on why that might be and what it might say for Wales.
Were there any disagreements about direction between editors - any example of where some tension resulted in a revelation for all concerned?
Iestyn: I wouldn't say disagreements about direction; however, we assigned a combination of two editors to each individual essay and this was definitely a good call - it meant that we could challenge each others' interpretations of what people had written. In my experience this was particularly valuable when working on an essay by a writer of whom I've been a long time admirer - my co-editor in that case was able to highlight the blindspots I might have had, which ensured a careful and considerate edit.
Tell us about the decision to go with an English publisher for a book of essays about Welshness?
Grug: Almost just to see if we could. Could a book about Welshness succeed outside of Wales? It's going alright so far, we will keep you posted!

Darren: We talked to a lot of publishers. We knew we were going to devote a lot of time to putting the book together and we wanted a publisher that was as enthusiastic about the book as we were, and was confident they could give it the exposure that we think it deserves. Repeater have published some excellent radical non-fiction and understood what we were trying to do with the book.
What impact would you hope for this book to have?
Hanan: I'm hoping this will become a go-to book when discussing Welshness. As well as book-shops, I can see it on syllabuses, in Welsh gift shops etc. quietly spreading the story of a country rich with varied experiences.

Iestyn: I think it's also important to emphasise that while we've been able to bring a collection together that is hugely diverse in perspectives and experiences, a sequence of 19 essays is still never going to present the full picture in all its complexity. I would love to see it spark more writing in the same vein; more story-sharing and more listening, too!

Darren: Yep, I think we've built on Dai Smith's observation that Wales is a 'plural experience' and I very much hope that others will too.
Has there been any talk of future collaborations between you four now you've had this experience?
Welsh [Plural]: Essays on the Future of Wales is available now via Repeater.

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In Conversation with the Editors of Welsh [Plural] - Wales Arts Review

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Wales Arts Review speaks to the editors of Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales - Darren Chetty, Grug Muse, Hanan Issa and Iestyn Tyne - for an insight into this watershed collection of essays and its ambition to reveal imaginative perspectives on Welshness that are not bound by clichés and binaries.

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Q&A: Darren Chetty, Grug Muse, Hanan Issa & Iestyn Tyne, editors of Welsh (Plural)

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The four editors of Welsh (Plural), a new anthology of writing about Wales and Welshness, discuss the collection.

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Ffrae am draddodiad cerddorol ymysg telynorion teires

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Ffrae am draddodiad cerddorol ymysg telynorion teires

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Sara Down-Roberts
BBC Cymru Fyw

Mae cryn ddadlau ymhlith telynorion yn sgil erthygl y mae'r delynores, Cerys Hafana, wedi ei hysgrifennu i bapur newydd The Guardian am ffyrdd gwahanol o ymwneud â cherddoriaeth draddodiadol Gymreig.

Ar y cyfryngau cymdeithasol mae'r cerddor Robin Huw Bowen, sy'n arbenigo ar ganu'r delyn deires, wedi ymosod ar sylwadau Ms Hafana wedi iddi ddweud fod "peryglon glynu'n ormodol at draddodiad".

"Nid 'datblygiad' nac ychwaith 'pobl ifainc' yw craidd traddodiad... dylai fod yn bont rhwng y cenedlaethau, yr ifainc yn dysgu gan yr hen a'r ddau yn rhannu efo'i gilydd, nid jest yn fynegiant arall o yoof cultcha," medd Mr Bowen.

"Mae 'newid' yn gallu lladd traddodiad yn enwedig os yw'r newid hynny yn ormodol," ychwanegodd.

Ond dywedodd y cerddor Cerys Hafana wrth Cymru Fyw fod yr "holl ffraeo 'ma am draddodiad cerddorol, methiant i symud 'mlaen a derbyn dylanwadau newydd yn gwbl niweidiol i'n traddodiad cerddorol gwerinol."

"Dwi'n falch o'r traddodiad," ychwanegodd Ms Hafana, "a dwi'n hynod o falch bo' fi wedi cael gwersi gan Robin ei hun.

"Bwriad fy erthygl yn The Guardian, yn wir, oedd dangos bod yna gymaint o ffyrdd gwahanol o ymwneud â cherddoriaeth draddodiadol Gymreig - mae hynny'n cynnwys y modern iawn a'r traddodiadol.

"Mae'r delyn yn gallu cael ei gweld fel offeryn sy'n perthyn i gyfnod yr Oes Aur yng Nghymru - pan oedd pawb yn siarad Cymraeg ac wedi'u geni yng Nghymru, pan oedd tirfeddianwyr cyfoethog yn gorfodi eu morwynion i weithio yn eu gwisg genedlaethol er mwyn cadw'r traddodiad.

"Dwi am fod yn rhan o rywbeth sy'n newid, sy'n agored i ddylanwadau newydd gan bobl o lefydd eraill. I fi mae cerddoriaeth werin yn gallu newid ac fe fydd hi'n newid."

'Allwn ni ddim byw yn y gorffennol'

Ychwanegodd fod "byw yn y gorffennol yn golygu peidio derbyn yr hyn sydd wedi newid er gwell".

"Mae gan gerddorion y presennol gymaint i'w gynnig ac mae'n rhaid rhoi lle i ni a'r dylanwadau newydd. Allwn ni ddim byw yn y gorffennol ac mae'r holl ffraeo 'ma yn gwneud drwg i'r delyn deires," meddai Cerys Hafana.

"Mae byd y delyn, telyn deires, cerddoriaeth werin Gymraeg mor fach ac mor ranedig, ac mae o'n drist bod pobl yn mynnu cwympo allan yn lle 'neud bach o ymdrech i ddeall ei gilydd.

"Mae'n o'n siomedig i fi bod rhai pobl wedi dewis darllen be 'sgrifennais fel ymosodiad arnyn nhw, pan mewn gwirionedd o'n i'n ceisio dangos a deall y ddwy ochr - achos mae'r ddwy ochr wedi rhoi gymaint i fel cerddor."

I Robin Huw Bowen mae sylwadau o'r fath yn gallu bod yn bersonol.

Roedd e wedi gobeithio y byddai papur newydd The Guardian yn cyhoeddi ei ymateb, ond gan nad ydynt wedi gwneud hynny fe gyhoeddodd ei sylwadau ar ei gyfrif Facebook.

"Mae'r syniad bod modd ailddarganfod yn gyson, a bod yn agored i bob math o ddylanwadau yn rhywbeth sy'n perthyn i ffasiwn a dim arall, ac i nifer mae'n agwedd cool," meddai.

"Ond i'r rhai ohonom sydd wedi bod yn ceisio canfod a gwarchod yr hyn sy'n weddill o'r traddodiad, mae agwedd o'r fath yn lladd yr hyn ry'n yn geisio ei wneud."

'Dishmoli yn gyhoeddus yng Ngwasg y Sais'

Ychwanegodd: "Rwy'n cytuno bod traddodiad yn newid yn raddol dros gyfnod o amser a bod dylanwadau o dramor a chreadigrwydd personol yn gallu bod yn rhan o'r datblygiad ond pan mae newid sydyn, mae'r traddodiad yn marw.

"Yr unig ffordd i barchu traddodiad yw ei ddilyn. Mae troi cefn arno yn ei ladd.

"Does gen i ddim problem gyda phobl yn creu cerddoriaeth newydd ond pan maen nhw'n galw hynny yn ddatblygiad, a hynny gyda'r awgrym ei fod er gwell, mae hynny yn gamddealltwriaeth ac yn ddiffyg parch.

"Mae gan Cerys Hafana lawer i'w ddysgu am y delyn draddodiadol Gymreig cyn chwilio dramor."

Mewn sylw pellach ar y cyfryngau dywedodd Mr Bowen: "Dwi'n lecio meddwl y byddai i bob amser yn croesawu unrhyw un i'r traddodiad ond peidied neb â disgwyl i mi aros yn dawel os mai ei ddishmoli yn gyhoeddus yng Ngwasg y Sais y gwnân nhw."

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Ffrae am draddodiad cerddorol ymysg telynorion teires

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Sara Down-Roberts BBC Cymru Fyw Mae cryn ddadlau ymhlith telynorion yn sgil erthygl y mae'r delynores, Cerys Hafana, wedi ei hysgrifennu i bapur newydd The Guardian am ffyrdd gwahanol o ymwneud â cherddoriaeth draddodiadol Gymreig. Ar y cyfryngau cymdeithasol mae'r cerddor Robin Huw Bowen, sy'n arbenigo ar ganu'r delyn deires, wedi ymosod ar sylwadau Ms Hafana wedi iddi ddweud fod "peryglon glynu'n ormodol at draddodiad".

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A JOURNALIST hailing from Rhyl has contributed to a new book which tells of how various writers deal with numerous aspects of their "Welshness".

Andy Welch, who now lives in London but spent the first 20 years of his life in Rhyl, has written a chapter called "Rhyl Talk: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love My Accent".

It will be featured in the book "Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales", which will be released on Tuesday, March 8 via Repeater Books.

Andy's chapter focuses on his lack of a "stereotypical Welsh accent" and how he is perceived by those not familiar with the pocket of Wales he spent his childhood in.

He said: "I'm probably a bit less chippy about it now, but for a long time, I thought it was my problem; that I didn't sound Welsh, but I sound the same as all my friends and family.

"It's just what that particular corner of Wales sounds like, and people aren't really very familiar with it. Again, it's not their fault that they don't know that.

"I think it's just a lack of understanding of what being Welsh is; and that if you don't sound like you're from the Valleys, which is such a small pocket of the country, people don't believe you're Welsh.

"It's like thinking if you've not got a Scouse accent, you're not English. There's probably about 20 miles between Liverpool and Manchester, yet everybody is very familiar with the difference between the two places.

"Whereas you could live in Rhyl or Aberystwyth, and people just think you're Welsh and that's it; there's no other element or aspect to anyone's identity.

"That's what the book is about; clearing up any of those misconceptions."

Having spent time at the Journal on work experience in the 1990s, Andy has since been music editor for the Press Association, worked for NME, and is now an editor at The Guardian.

His chapter is one of 20 which makes up the book, with other contributors including author Joe Dunthorne ('Submarine', 'The Adulterants') and Charlotte Williams ('A Tolerant Nation?').

The striking cover of the book, meanwhile, is based on the design of the Wrexham Tailor's Quilt.

Andy added: "There are all sorts of stories about different facets of Welshness; there's an essay by a Welsh sheep farmer on the problems they face, and the people who have written about being migrants from all over the world to Wales, and how they perceive themselves as Welsh.

"I was born in Rhyl, my family all still live there, I go back there all the time. I'll be back there next week, in fact.

"It goes back quite a few generations on either side of the family: Welsh parents, Welsh grandparents, probably Welsh great-grandparents.

"I've got strong ties with Rhyl, still. Loads of my friends and family are back there. My great-great-grandad was one of the town's founding councillors. I'm very much fully Welsh!"

For more information on the book, go to: www.repeaterbooks.com/product/welsh-plural-essays-on-the-future-of-wales.

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Journalist originally from Rhyl writes chapter of new book discussing Welsh identity

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A JOURNALIST hailing from Rhyl has contributed to a new book which tells of how various writers deal with numerous aspects of their "Welshness". Andy Welch, who now lives in London but spent the first 20 years of his life in Rhyl, has written a chapter called "Rhyl Talk: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love My Accent".

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Black Boy pubs: Who was the boy in the Swansea sign?

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Black Boy pubs: Who was the boy in the Swansea sign?

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The image of a boy on a pub sign left such an impression on a young writer that decades later he is still trying to uncover his identity.

Darren Chetty, who grew up in Swansea, said the portrait of a boy in a brightly coloured turban outside the Black Boy pub was "only the third dark-skinned boy I'd ever seen in Killay" in the late 1970s.

"The first time I saw this sign... I was sitting in my dad's blue Mini in the [pub] car park," Darren writes in his essay, "Whatever happened to the black boy of Killay?

"I remember wondering: Who is that boy? Did he used to live here? Was he black in the sense of being African, as the name and his face suggested? Or Indian, as his clothes suggested? What was his connection to the area?".

Darren, whose mother was Dutch and father Indian-South African, was the first member of his family to be born in Wales.

Growing up in a white suburb, he said his heritage "wasn't something that was continually on my mind... but there were certainly moments where that would become something that I would think about".

In his essay, which appears in Welsh Plural: Essays on the Future of Wales, he recalls first considering whether he was black aged seven after a neighbour used racist language when chastising him.

He recalls another story handed down from his parents, where a nurse used a racial slur when remarking on his appearance after his birth.

Apart from his older brother, a classmate of his brother and the occasional footballer from opposing teams while watching Swansea City - where he witnessed a banana being thrown on the pitch - the boy depicted in the pub sign was the only other dark-skinned person from his childhood.

"I became very interested in [the pub sign] as a child and it sort of stayed with me as I got older," he said.

"It wasn't one of a number of images of black people and people of colour that I was seeing in Swansea, it was kind of the only one."

Today the pub's name remains but the sign has gone - replaced with an image of a white boy in Victorian clothing - but it is an image firmly imprinted on the writer's mind.

There are tens of other Black Boy pubs around the UK, the origins of which are often attributed to a local enslaved African or King Charles II, who was often referred to as having a dark complexion.

But who was the particular black boy portrayed on the pub in Killay?

A book discovered in Swansea library offered Darren food for thought.

"In Wales during the 18th Century, it was the height of fashion to employ a black servant," writes David Morris in Black Presence in Eighteenth Century Wales.

"In the popular mindset Africa and the West Indies conjured up images of ivory, Guinea gold, sugar, coffee... a black domestic servant enables the owner to associate him - or herself - with all that was fashionable about the New World. It also brought a touch of African exoticism to the parlours of rural Wales."

Darren also discovered that Swansea's copper industry, which by 1823 supported 10,000 of the city's 15,000 residents, saw copper and brass articles imported as trade goods on the Guinea coast of Africa and eventually acted as African currency.

"Black boys were bought with copper smelted at White Rock [copper works in Swansea]," said Darren.

Historian Prof Chris Evans, from the University of South Wales, also told him Welsh industrialists put hundreds of slaves to work in horrific conditions in the copper mines of El Cobre in Cuba, decades after the abolition of the slave trade in Britain.

For Darren, the research brings "black history and Swansea into closer contact than I ever imagined", but still does not reveal the identity of the black boy from his childhood.

"Why was this boy dressed so, so regally?," he asked.

"He didn't look oppressed and downtrodden, he looked potentially wealthy, but then to discover that that wealth would have probably been the wealth of his masters and that he would have been some kind of servant, if not in a position of actual enslavement, changes again the story."

The mystery remains unsolved.

"I wasn't able to get to the bottom of why the pub was ever named that, nobody seems to have uncovered that," said Darren, who is not the only person fascinated by the old Killay sign.

Artist Daniel Trivedy has exhibited an artwork called Sign of the Times, which features a replica of the original Killay pub sign alongside the image currently hanging outside the pub.

Writing about the change of sign, he said: "Occasionally people find it necessary to alter the accounts of history to provide a more palatable version of events - perhaps this is the case with the Black Boy pub sign."

He said he originally thought to depict a white boy on the pub sign was to "deprive Wales some of its history and was an advocate for returning to a sign that better reflected its historical relevance", but has since had a change of heart.

"Along with the statues of Colston, Picton and other imperialists, I currently feel that there can be no other option than to remove the sign and rename the pub," he said.

Another artist, Ingrid Pollard, wrote Hidden in a Public Place after 20 years of research into Black Boy pubs.

She writes: "It is my contention that pub signs can be used to tease out hidden histories and heritage stories."

In a BBC Radio 4 documentary, The Mystery of the Black Boy, poet Lemn Sissay visits a number of Black Boy pubs in England.

He concludes the programme by saying: "Personally, I wouldn't walk into a pub called The Black Boy again. I'm a black man and I find the title a little derogatory and belittling."

Marstons, which now operates Killay's Black Boy, has been asked to comment.

There are tens of Black Boy pubs around the UK.

Some other Black Boy pubs have chosen to change the name, such as the one in Shinfield that was renamed The Shinfield Arms in September.

Wales has at least two other Black Boy pubs.

There are currently no plans to change the name of The Black Boy in Newtown, Powys, which owners JD Wetherspoon said takes its name from "the historic name for a chimney sweep".

A spokesman said: "To date, we haven't received any complaints regarding the name, and therefore at the present time we have no intention to change it, but we will keep matters under review."

There is also the Black Boy Inn in Caernarfon, Gwynedd.

The pub's owner, John Evans, said he believed the pub was named after John Ystumllyn, an 18th Century gardener who was abducted as an eight-year-old from west Africa and taken to Gwynedd where he became a servant in the household of the Wynn family of Ystumllyn.

He was the first black person in the region whose life was well documented and married a local white woman, Margaret Gruffydd.

He also happens to be the first black person in the UK to have a rose named after them - the John Ystumllyn rose.

Other theories include the pub being named after Charles II or a black buoy from the nearby harbour.

John said: "We're custodians of a 500-year-old pub and I wouldn't like to change anything unless the consensus of the town as a whole said that's what they want."

He said he had received "very few" complaints, adding: "In fact, the amount of black people that stay here and do stay here regularly think it's great."

"I remember one guy coming up the street and saying 'I've got a pub named after me'. They don't see anything racist in it."

He acknowledged some of the many images of a black boy around the inn "do need to be looked at".

"We are looking at that at the moment but the name is important because it's part of history," he said.

For Darren, the issue is not whether the pub signs should be changed or the pubs should be renamed, although he said he believed Black Boy pubs were probably "an anachronism that needs to move on".

He said: "I'm intrigued by the arguments for justifying keeping the names, which is sort of 'it's our heritage', and yet people don't really know what that heritage is - nobody knows why the sign is there."

He said it would "give a very different connotation to an image of a black boy if people of Swansea were aware of the city's history".

"I think there's just a sort of confusion now of what the pub name means," he said.

"To me, when I leave east London, where I live - which is a very multicultural place - and I go to Swansea and I hear people talking about the black boy it jars, it feels odd."

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Black Boy pubs: Who was the boy in the Swansea sign?

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The image of a boy on a pub sign left such an impression on a young writer that decades later he is still trying to uncover his identity. Darren Chetty, who grew up in Swansea, said the portrait of a boy in a brightly coloured turban outside the Black Boy pub was "only the third dark-skinned boy I'd ever seen in Killay" in the late 1970s.

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Roughly the size of Wales: four reflections on Welsh identity in the 21st century

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The long read: From addressing the grievances of history to making ancient music modern, four writers consider what it means to be Welsh today

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WELSH [PLURAL] | DARNAU CYMRAEG BY NIALL GRIFFITHS

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WELSH [PLURAL] | DARNAU CYMRAEG BY NIALL GRIFFITHS

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Following the publication of Welsh [Plural] - a collection of essays offering radical and nuanced perspectives on Welshness and Wales - Wales Arts Review is delighted to share one of the 19 included essays from author, poet, memoirist and two-time Welsh Book of the Year winner Niall Griffiths. Here, he considers national and geographical divides as well as the things which unite amidst the growing popularity of Welsh independence.

The magistrate - quite a nice-looking lady, really, with bright eyes and a bird brooch on her lapel, but sat between two old codgers with faces like disgruntled cottage cheese - uttered the words "short, sharp shock", and I went heavy and cold; wasn't that something to do with Borstal? Aw Jeez, I'd seen Scum, I was no Carling/Ray Winstone, I could never be someone's "daddy" and batter them with a pool ball in a sock - but then she said the words "discipline" and "resources" and "alternative outlets for certain energies". She said the words "outward bound course". My solicitor patted my shoulder and wiped imaginary sweat from his brow.

And two dawns later I awoke in a tent at first light. I crawled out, quietly so as not to awaken the other miscreants and instructors in the other tents roundabout and just stood breathing. Oh Mother of the Dark Waters. The peak of Yr Wyddfafrom where, later, I'd be able to see, far in the distance, the big coastal city in which I was born and lived, sheered straight upwards above the black lake and me all of a sudden big, so full and fecund, with a head full of ghosts and a heart full of blood. From here is where parts of me sprouted. From this great tumble of stone and from the Dark Water Mother. There can be no doubt. I could have a proper conversation there. I did. "'Britain has always fudged its national settlement. A political and emotional story which began with England's conquest of Wales in 1284 has never been completed or resolved," wrote Jonathan Lis in Prospect magazine. So when Theresa May spoke about "our island story", shortly after she deemed a vast number of people comfortable in their identities as "citizens of nowhere", to which particular story did she refer? Which fucking story? Because if there is one overarching narrative to the history of these islands, it's one that belongs to, and has been written by, the bully. It's a tale that wilfully underwrites and neglects certain arcs of itself. That seeks to stuff some gasping mouths with stone. I'd always known this, in some deep place beyond words; the Dark Water Ma gave it utterance.

Alastair Moffat in The Sea Kingdoms: "because Welsh is such an old language and because it described Britain first, it carries a version of the history of the whole island inside it".

True. And those words "Britain first" - an unfortunate pairing, these days. Capitalise the "first" and, yes, there are many descriptors in the Cymraeg, but you won't find them in the dictionary. No Britain First for the first Britons.

My first time amongst a largely Anglo-Saxon populace was in Cambridge, and who were these people? Tall and fair and rangy, seemingly emotionally and spiritually constipated, generally pleasant and affable but alien in their ways: accidentally tread on their toes and they either apologise to you or threaten to glass your face, when an "oi! Can you get off me toe, pal?" would've resolved the matter without a) social awkwardness, and/or b) hideous facial scarring. And the songs that come out of them, when disinhibited by drink, were all about conquest and subjugation and being better than someone else - bereft of joy and celebration unless stuffed with gloat. It did not feel like home; it was as far removed from the shores of that high slatey lake as it was possible to be.

Marcus Tanner was born and brought up in southern England and never felt entirely comfortable. When searching for the graves of his Welsh ancestors in preparation for his book The Last of the Celts, he discovered why: "everything about me - my personality, my face, my height, my shape - suddenly made sense". Stockiness, dark hair and blue eyes, a quickness to be moved to tears of joy and rage - "in England, I had developed a sense of watchfulness about my own personality, aware that it needed keeping in check, and that at any moment I might sound unsuitably loud, excitable and over the top. In Wales, that feeling of difference from my surroundings fell away."

Join us, say the ghosts, and you say I thought you'd never ask. And you make the return and the ghosts come back tocorporeality. You re-inhabit them; imagine a butterfly crawling back into the chrysalis. An infant scrabbling back into the mother.

I'm at the plaque on the slope that commemorates the battle of Hyddgen in 1401, when Glyndŵr, numerically outnumbered by (but ultimately triumphant against) English troops and Flemish mercenaries, consolidated his reputation as a genuine threat to English hegemony. Kites and buzzards squeal and mewl in the fog. The reservoir is a great grey slab; more of the dark waters. Digs at sites in nearby Bryn y Beddau and Mynydd Bychan and Nant y Moch uncover masses of bones, still. This is a massive war grave. The dead seethe and speak. In 2011 there were plans to cover this area with wind turbines.

The divisions endure: north/south, west/east, urban/ rural, Cymraeg/Saesneg. The language - it has always been central, crucial to the fight for cultural separateness. When the iron went, and the steel, and the coal, the tongue endured and became emblematic of a small country unique within Europe (and the EU was widely regarded as a less oppressive supra-state than a UK dominated by England). What is it now, though? How does it express its not-England-ness? The nationalist movement has long been characterised as a cultural/emotional one rather than a political/economic one; indeed, the country, in effect, started building its institutions of statehood (such as they are) in 1999. And yes, there's a different native language two hours west from London. As a child, bread was bara. Break these teeth with a rock, Theresa, and scatter the fragments, (Alexander) Boris (de Pfeffel) Johnson; they will find their way back to the shores of the Llyn Du.

At the time of writing, Wales is coming out of a lockdown, a "circuit-breaker" designed to arrest the movement of Covid-19. During this time, the border with England has been closed; police officers have manned it and conducted spot checks and turned people around. Wales has been, in effect, a closed country; there have been substantiated tales of English second-home-owners arriving in Gwynedd by boat, but primarily Wales has, like Scotland and the Six Counties, temporarily isolated itself from England. Covid-19 has exposed the limitations of the British state, exploded its exceptionalist myths and concretised the separation of Welsh devolved legalities. In the speeches of Vaughan Gething and Mark Drakeford there have been no "world-beating" claims, no preposterous populist posturing that has characterised the noises from Westminster. There has been a foretaste of the fracturing of the UK. Wales voted to leave the EU, yes, on the whole (excepting the capital and Monmouthshire and the Cymraeg heartlands of Ceredigion and Gwynedd), but, as Matt Withers has pointed out in the New European, "as the effects on the country's manufacturing and agricultural sectors become clear in the coming years, it is inconceivable the anger won't be directed at the Westminster government which imposed its hardest form, not Cardiff Bay".

Well, we'll see about that (with fingers crossed). As I write, the Senedd, the Scottish Parliament and Stormont have all rejected the Withdrawal Agreement Bill; that is, the directly elected legislatures of the UK that are not England have rejected this vast constitutional change, but it is being imposed by the House of Commons, a body which is ethnically 82% English, and which rises to an anthem that, uniquely, is not about land but about a person - the sound of a subject people begging to be dominated.

Caernarfon, 2019. The march for Annibyniaeth (independence). Almost as many EU stars are on display as there are y Ddraig Goch and the people keep coming, entering the square, singing and calling out to each other and I see my pals in the crowd and there is uplift here; even, dare it be said, a speck of hope. A glimpse of something that could be. A vacationing family - Spanish or Portuguese, by the looks - are eyeing askance these flags and banners, as well theymight; such shibboleths will not carry positive associations for them. A couple of pals and I explain to them what's going on (and, as I guessed, they're from Porto), outline for them what this means. At the next rendition of "Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau" they sing along lustily; well, not sing, as such, not having the Welsh, but nevertheless they do a better job of it than John Redwood ever managed. This is not a nationalism that seeks to suppress and exclude. This is a small almost-country reaching for self-determination and release from an arrogant, self-entitled and deeply unrepresentative polity that is bereft of anything meritocratic and stuffed full of unearned and uncontested privilege.

And the 2019 election gave the Tories some of their first seats in Wales - Bridgend, Wrexham - since 1983. Labour polled country-wide at 41% and the Tories at 36%, but Labour has had almost hegemonic power in Wales, channelling money from the EU into deprived areas under the Shared Prosperity Fund, etc. And yet, the notion of independence is gaining traction; Emily Trahair, in an interview with Ned Thomas in Planet 240, noted that a YouGov poll amongst Welsh Labour voters - not Plaid or Yes Cymru - puts support for independence at 51%. Ned's response to this is to:

See Wales through the prism of other European minorities where regional autonomy has created a civic identity wider than a much-eroded ethnic or linguistic identity. Support for independence usually correlates strongly with place of birth and language, and when that support has crucially spread to the wider group, the shift of allegiance derives largely from the perceived incompetence or corruption of central government and its coercive denial of self-determination, support for which usually runs far ahead of support for independence.

Do you hear that grinding sound, beneath Westminster's demand for compliance from the Celtic upstarts? It's the sound of seismic shift; of political plates beginning to shift and crack. It's a nice tune. It's the fanfare for the return of souls set to roaming and "welcome back", it says.

I'm in Penisarwaun with a pal called Bill; he's from California. I met him first in Oregon. His grandfather fled this small village for Ohio at the age of seventeen, with no money and no English, just burning hopes. This little lane is where Bill began. Bill is Wales. Sheep and rugby and coal and choirs, etc. ad nauseam and the many dispersed diasporic Bills. He looks around with a child's wonder and a child's joy of discovery. Yr Wyddfa's loftiest point can be seen, blue through mist and distance, and I think of the lake up there. Fancy I can feel its cold wash on my skin. Us two fellers here, re-capturing flecks of origin.

The country's green and mountainous heart. Part of it is my back garden. How strange it is, how Other, to the Anglocentric mindset; it suited the Enlightenment to see this place as a serene escape and harmony between nature and man, of purer pre-industrial Britannic stuff, and not of mud and bone and blood and rot and dirt. I lean against the smaller of the Bwlch y Llo stones and see, amongst the patches of lichen, black splats of scabbing blood where some smaller bird has been devoured by some bigger bird. This is a kind of truth. These signs do not, cannot, lie.

As part of the West Coast Eisteddfod, I'm doing a reading at a bar in Oregon. I enter just as the more-than-three-ditchwater-dull hours of the 1970s Mabinogion animated film is ending and the rising lights reveal faces toad-belly white, emptied and exhausted, eyes reddened and pleading. I laugh. You poor buggers, they made you sit through that? Later, these same people will ask me if I know Llanddewi Brefi, Pontarddulais, Penisarwaun (there's my Bill). One will ask me whether the top of Pumlumon really is "the windiest place on Earth". Come and see; come and converse with the Mam beneath the water. Come and see the splotches of blood on the ancient stones. Come back for a bit.

Hiraeth, saudade, duende. These words; these concepts. They embody an idea that is all about calmness but has no place for comfort, and if I could explain what they mean to a person who's never felt their pulse then I would.

The Sewel Convention of 1999 embodies a constitutional rule which suggests that the UK parliament will "not normally" legislate on a devolved issue unless the devolved legislature has given its consent. This, like the UK's unwritten constitution, is a relic of an era when gentleman's agreements and the sense of good old British fair play were deemed as binding as any law, and it is obsolete in the age of the political liar utterly unburdened by shame, the conman and the charlatan, the incompetent propelled by entitlement and privilege which goes uncontested in a land of entrenched and masochistic deference. The elected representatives of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have voted to veto a huge transformation to their economic and political status, but because they have no real power to do so, the hollow men in London do not care. They simply do not care. This contempt is entirely lawful, but it will exact a colossal cost. Suffer it.

I danced and gurned all night in an old stone hut in the hills. During the hours of darkness, people arrived from all corners of these islands and from the European mainland too and now, at dawn, they emerge blinking and pale and stand there breathing. Look where we are. Oh Mother of the Dark Lake. The crests of the mountains on quiet fire and the ridges sawing sheets of light. Photographs are taken and emailed and WhatsApped across the globe. Look at this. This is where I am. We are as far beyond doubt as that new-born hill and this we know because the watery whispers tell usso.

Paul Davies, Welsh Tory leader: "Wales is sleepwalking towards independence". Oh no, pal; it is wide a-fucking-wake. Go back to bed.

Ry'n ni yma o hyd

Er gwaetha pawb a phopeth Ry'n ni yma o hyd.

Oh yes we are. For a while we weren't but now we are, again. We've returned, like.

Niall Griffiths was born in Liverpool nd has been living in west Wales for a quarter of a century. Author of many works of fiction, memoir, travelogue, poetry etc, his words are translated into twenty languages and he has won the Wales Book of the Year twice, most recently in 2020, for Broken Ghost.

Welsh [Plural]: Essays on the Future of Wales is available now via Repeater.

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Welsh [Plural] | Darnau Cymraeg by Niall Griffiths - Wales Arts Review

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Following the publication of Welsh [Plural] - a collection of essays offering radical and nuanced perspectives on Welshness and Wales - Wales Arts Review is delighted to share one of the 19 included essays from author, poet, memoirist and two-time Welsh Book of the Year winner Niall Griffiths.

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Eventbrite - The Wynnstay Hotel, Pen'rallt Books, Literary Cat presents Welsh (Plural) - writers in conversation - English - Sunday, 3 April 2022 at Owain Glyndwr's Parliament House, Senedd-dŷ Owain Glyndwr Machynlleth, Machynlleth, Powys. Find event and ticket information.

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Magwyd Iestyn Tyne ar fferm ym Moduan, ac yn dilyn ei addysg ysgol, astudiodd am radd yn y Gymraeg ym Mhrifysgol Aberystwyth, gan raddio yn 2018. Mae bellach wedi ymgartrefu yng Nghaernarfon gyda'i deulu.

Mae'n gyd-sefydlydd a chyd-olygydd cylchgrawn a chyhoeddiadau'r Stamp, ac mae wedi cyhoeddi tair casgliad o farddoniaeth hyd yma. Mae'n aelod o nifer o grwpiau cerddorol ac wedi perfformio ei waith ledled Cymru a thu hwnt, gan gynnwys teithiau yn Ewrop, De America ac Affrica. Enillodd Goron Eisteddfod yr Urdd yn 2016 a'i Chadair yn 2019, ac ef yw'r cyntaf erioed i fod wedi ennill y ddwy brif wobr lenyddol yn eisteddfodau'r Urdd. Yn 2019, fe'i penodwyd yn fardd preswyl cyntaf erioed yr Eisteddfod Genedlaethol, gan dderbyn y gwaith o ymateb i ymgyrch gymunedol Prifwyl Llŷn ac Eifionydd 2023. Mae'n gyd-olygydd y casgliad o ysgrifau am ddyfodol Cymru, Welsh (Plural), a gyhoeddir ym mis Mawrth 2022. Enillodd cyfres Y Pump, y bu'n rhan ohono gyda naw o awduron a chyd-awduron eraill, gategori uwchradd gwobr Tir Na N-Og 2022. Cyrhaeddodd ei drydydd casgliad o gerddi, Stafelloedd Amhenodol, restr fer Llyfr y Flwyddyn Cymru yn 2022.

Iestyn Tyne was brought up on a farm in Boduan, Pen Llŷn and following his school education, he studied for a degree in Welsh at Aberystwyth University, graduating in 2018. He has now settled in Caernarfon with his family.

He is the co-founder and co-editor of Y Stamp magazine and publications, and has published three volumes of poetry to date. He is a member of a number of musical groups and has performed his work across Wales and beyond, including tours in Europe, South America and Africa, He won the Crown at the Urdd National Eisteddfod yn 2016, and the Chair in 2019, becoming the first person in the history of the event to have won both main literary prizes. In 2019, he was appointed the National Eisteddfod's first ever poet in residence, undertaking the work of responding to the community campaign leading up to the Llŷn ac Eifionydd Eisteddfod of 2023. He is co-editor of Welsh (Plural), a collection of essays on the future of Wales, forthcoming in March 2022. Y Pump, the series of YA novels he worked on alongside nine other authors and co-authors, won the secondary age category of the Tir Na N-Og awards 2022. His third collection of poems, Stafelloedd Amhenodol, reached the Wales Book of the Year shortlist in 2022.

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Iestyn Tyne | Awdur a Cherddor - Writer and Musician

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Ar ôl chwalfa'r Deyrnas Gyfunol, mi fydd yn rhaid i bobl fel fi - pobl o aelwydydd Cymraeg Lloegr - benderfynu a ydym am weld y Gymraeg yn goroesi yn ninasoedd Lloegr, lle bu'n iaith gymunedol ers cannoedd o flynyddoedd. Nid fel iaith expats, ond fel iaith sy'n perthyn i dir Lloegr ac i wead amlethnig y gymdeithas yno, am fod ei siaradwyr o Loegr ac yn falch o hynny. O ganlyniad, rwyf wedi gorfod ymdopi â'm hunaniaeth fel 'Sais'. Rwy'n rhoi'r gair mewn dyfynodau am nad ydw i, na neb yn fy nheulu, erioed wedi fy ystyried yn Sais. Ond os yw'r Gymraeg am oroesi yn Lloegr, mi fydd yn rhaid i mi 'ddod yn Sais'. Dim ond fel Sais y gallaf ddadlau fod yr iaith Gymraeg yn llawn berthyn i Loegr. Y neges i Gymro fydd, 'Ewch adra.' Fynnwn i ddim 'mynd adra'. Hogyn o Hounslow ydw i, a'r Gymraeg yw un o ieithoedd Middlesex.

Hyfrydwch oedd darllen y gyfrol hon, felly. Mae'n llawn hanesion pobl sy'n mynd i'r cyfeiriad arall i mi: pobl yn hawlio Cymreictod am ei fod wedi perthyn iddyn nhw erioed ond bod hynny wedi cael ei wadu; pobl yn ymdopi â chymhlethdodau man eu geni, magwraeth, mudo, rhieni, crefydd, ethnigrwydd, hil ac iaith. Neu, a bod yn gywir, cymhlethdodau mae cymdeithas wedi eu gorfodi arnynt.

Mae'n wir mai cyfrol y Gymru Saesneg ydyw'n bennaf. Does dim lle fel y cyfryw i draddodiad deallusol y gymuned Gymraeg ynddi. Gan fod y Gymraeg yn rymus yn haniaethol fel symbol o Gymreictod, tueddir i dybio bod ei siaradwyr yn freintiedig, er nad oes tystiolaeth o hynny. Ond rhan o fod yn genedl yw trafodaeth onest, ac mae'r Gymru Saesneg yn haeddu ei llais. A dyw'r gyfrol ddim yn gyfan gwbl Saesneg ei bydolwg ychwaith gan fod dau o'r golygyddion yn Gymry Cymraeg o Wynedd, sef Grug Muse ac Iestyn Tyne, ac yn eu herthyglau am ddatblygu cymunedol ac amaeth mae rhai o safbwyntiau ein broydd Cymraeg i'w clywed. Ceir hefyd erthygl ragorol gan y bardd Morgan Owen am Ferthyr Tudful ac archaeoleg fyw ei bywyd Cymraeg. Dywed i'w gwareiddiad gael ei anwybyddu am fod y byd Cymraeg swyddogol yn adlewyrchu'r dosbarth canol Cymraeg 'so clearly that they never saw the mirror's glass'.

O ran y cyfranwyr eraill, mae oddeutu eu hanner yn Gymry o gefndiroedd lleiafrifol ethnig nad ydynt yn wyn. Ceir hefyd Saeson sydd wedi mynd yn Gymry, Cymry di-Gymraeg gwyn yn byw yng Nghymru, a hefyd Cymry di-Gymraeg gwyn ac o liw o Gymru sy'n byw erbyn hyn yn Llundain. Mae'r sylw a roddir i'r diaspora yn ddiddorol oherwydd un o broblemau diweddar cenedlaetholdeb yw tuedd i drin pobl sydd wedi gadael Cymru fel baw isa'r domen.

Un arall o uchelfannau'r gyfrol yw ysgrif Mike Parker, 'Medium, Rare', sydd yn fendigedig. Mae'n trafod tipyn ar Jan Morris, a gyda'i ddull meddwl rhyddfrydol, goddefgar ac agored, mae Mike Parker yn olynydd teilwng iddi. Difyr fod Jan Morris tua diwedd ei hoes wedi dechrau cyfeirio ati'i hun fel 'Welsh culturalist' yn hytrach nag fel cenedlaetholwraig: hynny yw, un sydd o blaid iaith leiafrifol yn bennaf oll, ac yn poeni llawer llai am sefydlu gwladwriaeth Gymreig. Roedd hyn, meddai Mike Parker, 'a clear and deliberate shift'.

I mi hefyd, mae ysgrif Durre Shahwar yn odidog o ran ei myfyrdod ar ei hunaniaeth fel Cymraes o gefndir Pacistanaidd, a hefyd bwysigrwydd byd natur yn ystod cyfnod Covid. Mae'n gofyn i ba raddau y dychmygir cefn gwlad ym Mhrydain fel rhywle ar gyfer pobl wyn yn unig. Clywn hefyd hanes Shaheen Sutton o Gasnewydd yn cael ei chyfarch yn Birmingham yn 9 oed fel 'Taffy', a hithau'n clywed y gair fel 'toffee' am nad yw erioed wedi cael ei hannerch fel Cymraes o'r blaen ac am fod ymosodiadau geiriol hiliol yn gyffredin.

Mae rhai o'r myfyrdodau ynghylch hil yn cynnwys cyfeiriadau at y Gymraeg. Yn ei hysgrif, 'Have You Heard the One about the Niqabi on a Bus?', mae Hanan Issa'n dehongli stori a gafodd dipyn o sylw yn y wasg ychydig flynyddoedd yn ôl, am ddynes mewn niqab yn siarad iaith ddieithr ar fws yng Nghasnewydd. Wedi iddi gael ei herio y dylai siarad Saesneg ym Mhrydain, daw i'r amlwg ei bod yn siarad Cymraeg. Cafodd y stori ei hailadrodd droeon gan Gymry gwyn fel prawf o oddefgarwch Cymru a chulni cenedlaetholdeb Prydeinig. Ond dengys Hanan Issa fod grym y trope yn dibynnu ar ddieithrwch dwbl y ddynes (fel un y tybir nad yw o dras Cymreig, a hefyd fel Mwslim) o safbwynt canfyddiad poblogaidd o siaradwyr tebygol y Gymraeg.

Llongyfarchiadau i'r golygyddion a'r cyfranwyr oll. Gallwn anghytuno, mae'n siŵr, efo manion theoretig ar adegau, ond at ba ddiben? Bu gormod o ffraeo ymhlith pobl sydd, yn y bôn, yn cytuno. Rwy'n hyderu y bydd y gyfrol hon yn gam arall ymlaen yn yr ymdaith tuag at y Cymreictod cynhwysol mae'r cyfranwyr yn ei ddeisfyu ac yn ei haeddu. Ac i mi? Ymlaen hefyd, ond i le gwahanol. Ymlaen i'r Lloegr Gymraeg.

Cyfrol ddiweddaraf Simon Brooks yw Hanes Cymry: Lleiafrifoedd Ethnig a'r Gwareiddiad Cymraeg (Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 2021).

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Ar ôl chwalfa'r Deyrnas Gyfunol, mi fydd yn rhaid i bobl fel fi - pobl o aelwydydd Cymraeg Lloegr - benderfynu a ydym am weld y Gymraeg yn goroesi yn ninasoedd Lloegr, lle bu'n iaith gymunedol ers cannoedd o flynyddoedd.

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Episode 7 - Darren Chetty And Hanan Issa, Welsh [Plural]

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Paperback, Repeater Books, £12.99, out now

The editors of Welsh Plural have gathered some of the most interesting and relevant writers from Wales to consider what Welsh identity means today.  This is anything but niche: for anyone thinking about what identity, belonging and borders mean or could come to mean, this is helpful.  It is no surprise that this anthology has won praise from Nikesh Shukla and Gary Younge.

The book’s cover illustrates a willingness to engage in critical thinking that characterises this collection.  It shows a beautiful section of the Wrexham Quilt, made by a military tailor in the mid-nineteenth century.  “Like this book, it conveys a patchwork of experiences, from religious scenes to tributes to the industrial heritage of Wales.  Other motifs show giraffes, elephants and palm trees – souvenirs of Wales’ part in the conquests of the British Empire, made possible by armies clothed by tailors such as James Williams”.

The range of topics covered and approaches make this a compelling read.  There is a Choose Your Own Adventure style guide to being a Welsh novelist by Gary Raymond.  Charlotte Williams, who is examining outcomes for children of colour in Welsh education for the Welsh Government, discusses this alongside her own experience of being the only child of colour in her Welsh classroom in the 1960s.  Darren Chetty explores Welsh pubs called The Black Boy, both their history and how they handle their name now.  And there is much more.

I felt I had been given a gift of original and challenging thoughts.  Some themes came out strongly for me, particularly the intersection of racialised people and Welshness.  Several writers give valuable and vital accounts related this.  There are also conflicts and disagreements between the pieces, which suggests that the editors intended to allow space for complexity, nuance and difference.  I found this approach invigorating, and helpful.  I was grateful that the book was in English, allowing me as a non-Welsh speaker access.  Diolch yn fawr iawn, pawb.

Reading this on holiday in Wales at the time of the local elections felt important.  I am most envious of anyone who got to attend the related event in Machynlleth (which I heard about from colleagues at the smashing Pen’rallt Gallery Bookshop – it sounded like an excellent evening).  Reading Welsh Plural also brought the small publisher Repeater Books to my attention, whose range looks well worth digging into.

By coincidence, I followed this up by reading Nick Hayes’ The Book of Trespass (paperback, Bloomsbury, £9.99).  Hayes’ investigation into what the idea and law of trespass means in the UK now also engages with the issues of land, walls and identities.  As in Welsh Plural, there are moments of joy and celebration among the sometimes difficult content.  Hayes and his dog see a row of deer appear by magic as they walk through a wood: “This kind of moment is only available off the path.  It is prosaic, but it feels like a miracle, it feels meaningful, and it leaves me with my heart thumping in my throat…  I would swap a hundred nice walks along a pretty Right of Way for this one moment of magic”.

Review by Bethan

Posted on May 24, 2022 at 09:06 in News, Non fiction, Reviews   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL

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Welsh Plural: Essays on the Future of Wales – editors Darren Chetty, Grug Muse, Hanan Issa, Iestyn Tyne

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Paperback, Repeater Books, £12.99, out now The editors of Welsh Plural have gathered some of the most interesting and relevant writers from Wales to consider what Welsh identity means today. …

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I approached this book with some trepidation. I tend to avoid navel gazing when it comes to my own Welsh identity, having always been fairly comfortable in my own skin in that regard.

Perhaps that is because my identity has always been based too much on a single story, resistance to which is the purpose of the essays in this volume. The editors asked the authors if they could imagine Wales as both distinct and inclusive, and the result challenges the comfort zone too many of us inhabit.

The first essay by historian Martin Johnes establishes the context in a delightfully provocative way. 'The past', he says, 'is something that we sometimes need to escape and move on from.' He goes on to explain how Wales has often benefited from its relationship with England. 'Recognizing this might move any campaign for Welsh independence away from the xenophobia that too often marked Brexit.'

Mike Parker follows up with a tribute to the transition by Jan Morris from nationalist to culturalist, recognising that 'exceptionalism, rampant nostalgia and fake history' are the 'handmaidens' of fascism.

Musician Cerys Harper then dares to ask, 'How many voices have we lost in the name of defending "The Tradition", and was it worth it?' Challenging, remixing, reimagining our identity is a constant theme in this book, as is the prevalence of racism in Wales, evidenced by the personal stories of many of the authors, shocking, but sometimes laced with a poignant wit: 'It is a universal truth that black people do not go camping', and the often repeated question at school, '"Where do you come from?" when it was patently obvious that I lived just around the corner.'

Dan Evans laments that devolution has not produced a new 'Welsh citizenship', based on 'new and accessible forms of welshness'. 'Modern Wales,' he says, 'is a country constantly consuming its own tat and commodified cliches, beng force-fed cwtch pillow kitsh images of the past as a way to divert our attention from the brutality of the present.'

Morgan Owen demolishes the stereotypical image too many people have of his home town, Merthyr, as 'a backdrop to leave behind in the demolition-threatened theatre once the show is over'.

I could go on. The depth and variety of people's stories in this book make it a thoroughly enjoyable read – these authors are brilliant writers. Whilst it may not have fundamentally changed my perception of my own identity, it has certainly exposed its shortcomings, but in a positive, refreshing, and uplifting way. Another volume, please.

Tweli Griffiths

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Books Council of Wales.

Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.

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www.gwales.com - 9781913462666, Welsh (Plural) - Essays on the Future of Wales

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I approached this book with some trepidation. I tend to avoid navel gazing when it comes to my own Welsh identity, having always been fairly comfortable in my own skin in that regard. Perhaps that is because my identity has always been based too much on a single story, resistance to which is the purpose of the essays in this volume.

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This snazzy-looking book is subtitled Essays on the Future of Wales, but many of the nineteen short pieces collected therein are bits of memoir, diary entries and freeform reflections - and where the authors linger on the recent past, the ancient one seeps through. This is inevitable but also a potential trap. As the editors' [...]

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Welsh [Plural]:Essays on the Future of Wales - New Welsh Review

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This snazzy-looking book is subtitled Essays on the Future of Wales, but many of the nineteen short pieces collected therein are bits of memoir, diary entries and freeform reflections - and where the authors linger on the recent past, the ancient one seeps through. This is inevitable but also a potential trap.

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01.08.2022

On the beach and ever after wear the incredible memories of an unforgettable July 2022. Philosophy Football's unique T-shirt with match details of England's victories versus Austria, Norwaty, Northern Ireland, Spain and Sweden. Then after 120 minutes England 2 Germany 1, 'Lionesses' swapped for CHAMPIONS. From here

Mark Perryman is the co-founder of the sporting outfitters of intellectual distinction aka Philosophy Football

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01.08.2022 On the beach and ever after wear the incredible memories of an unforgettable July 2022. Philosophy Football's unique T-shirt with match details of England's victories versus Austria, Norwaty, Northern Ireland, Spain and Sweden. Then after 120 minutes England 2 Germany 1, 'Lionesses' swapped for CHAMPIONS.

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Darren Chetty, Hanan Issa, and Grug Muse In Conversation - Welsh (Plural) at ARA DEG 22

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Darren Chetty, Hanan Issa, and Grug Muse In Conversation - Welsh (Plural) at ARA DEG 22

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Welsh (Plural): Darren Chetty, Hanan Issa, and Grug Muse In Conversation - From ARA DEG (26/08/2022)

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Darren Chetty, Hanan Issa and Grug Muse discuss essays and themes from Welsh (Plural). Recorded live at Ara Deg Festival 2022 https://repeaterbooks.com/product/welsh-plural-essays-on-the-future-of-wales/
https://neuaddogwen.com/en/ara-deg-2022/