Culture in a vacuum: Welsh arts coverage in the English language media
Roll up or roll over: English language Welsh culture is in rude health, but is being deprived of its audience
WALES is an exciting place to be a writer. It is also a generous one, with a large number of grants, residencies and bursaries for writers and artists. Organisations such as Academi, the Books Council, the Arts council of Wales, Wales Arts International and Wales Literature Exchange fund enterprises from individual artists’ projects to subsidising publishers and magazines, via exchanges, residencies, ‘Writing Squads’ and ‘Poetry Slams’. Wales has thriving creative writing departments which are filling their universities’ coffers and giving good writers a living wage for teaching.
Every year, the Wales Book of the Year competition presents the winner with a £10,000 cheque, while the Cardiff International Poetry Competition rewards a single poem with £5,000. We have the Dylan Thomas Prize (£60,000), the Artes Mundi prize (£40,000), the Roland Mathias prize (for poetry, short fiction or criticism relating to the English-language literature of Wales), the Rhys Davies short story prize, and more. No-one can say the money isn’t going in.
In literature, New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales and Planet may still be a long way behind the Welsh language poetry magazine Barddas, but they cater to a committed and interested audience. One of the Welsh Government’s earliest commitments was a grant to set up the Library of Wales, the brainchild of Wynn Thomas at Swansea and now edited by Dai Smith, which produces beautiful editions of English language titles by Welsh writers. The Library of Wales performs the important task of bringing back into print classic literature from Wales in English: Gwyn Thomas, Jack Jones, Brenda Chamberlain, Margiad Evans, Raymond Williams and others. Honno, a press dedicated to Welsh women’s writing, has been doing a similar job for longer and with less, and it is to them we owe, among others, the republication of crucial novels by writers such as Menna Gallie and Lily Tobias, and important anthologies of Welsh women’s writing in various genres.
Yet despite the existence of this exciting and vibrant ‘scene’, it is now becoming dangerously cut off from the wider culture, and so a wider audience. And there are three main reasons.
The first is the badly inadequate coverage of the arts by the English language Welsh media, in print, television and radio. ‘High culture’ in the media still dines out on Dylan Thomas and Kyffin Williams, while an arts scene that relied on The Western Mail for its arts coverage really would be staring into the abyss. The second reason, deeper-seated but more intractable, is the inferiority complex which dictates that English-speaking Welsh schoolchildren do not learn about their own literature or history on school syllabuses, in GCSE or A level. This feeds in turn into universities, where the hostility or indifference to Welsh writing in English is well-documented. The third reason, which arises from the first two (plus a great deal else), is that it is always easier to produce the eye-catching ‘event’, the ‘glittering’ prize, than to think about how to engage audiences in a sustainable and organic way. It’s the old Welsh malady of boosterism, apathy, and grant-induced stupefaction.
I recently edited the poetry and prose of the poet Lynette Roberts, a friend of Dylan Thomas, who had her work published – a great achievement for a woman, let alone a Welsh-Argentine immigrant to Britain in 1944 – by TS Eliot at Faber and Faber. Robert Graves admired her poetry: “Her best is the best”, he said. Roberts lived in Carmarthenshire for 10 years during the Second World War, where she wrote the bulk of her poetry, and came back to West Wales in the late 1950s where she died in 1995. Was Roberts a ‘Welsh’ poet? Who knows? Her family was of Welsh origin (via Argentina and Australia), her husband was Welsh and her poems were all about Wales. But It also doesn’t matter: she was certainly a Welsh poet, and a producer of ‘Anglo-Welsh poetry’. Roberts is studied in England and the US, students are doing PhDs on her, she is in major anthologies of English-language poetry. After the editions of her work appeared (from an English publisher), BBC 4 devoted a whole programme to her, while Woman’s Hour on Radio 4 did an item on her life and poetry. The Guardian and The Independent carried articles on her, and she was on the front page of the Times Literary Supplement. Of course, the Anglo-Welsh magazines devoted important reviews to her: Planet, New Welsh Review, Cambria, Poetry Wales all saw the republication of her work as a major recovery for Welsh literature in English.
But Roberts found herself in a typical Anglo-Welsh writer’s situation (it applies to artists, too): outside Wales, her stock was high, and inside Wales she was well-regarded among the specialists and dedicated readers, but totally ignored by the mainstream press and media. Copies of her poems (in 2005) and prose (in 2008) were sent to The Western Mail and BBC and ITV Wales, and went unacknowledged, let alone reviewed. People who may have found her work interesting thus simply never heard about her, and what’s true of Roberts goes for the likes of Leslie Norris, Jack Jones, Caradoc Evans, Emyr Humphreys, Gwyn Thomas, and countless others: a thin, localised ‘buzz’ in small magazine, the odd review in the mainstream UK press, but nothing from the mainstream English language media of their own country.
Writers and academics, students and cultural specialists are OK – they have their magazines, their short-run, small circulation journals. But the ordinary reader who relies on mainstream Welsh media is being short-changed. It’s not a question of just sticking a few arts events in a ‘listings’ section, it’s about developing a reviewing culture that doesn’t assume – patronisingly – that ‘ordinary people’ can’t or don’t want to discuss arts or books or music, or discover the literary and artistic heritage of the place they live in. The arts coverage in most English regional papers or TV and radio stations is superior – more literate, more open-minded and more perceptive – than what we have in English in Wales.
There’s another irony which was brought home to me with the Lynette Roberts book: that while Wales’s English-medium mainstream media does almost nothing to sustain its cultural heritage, Welsh-speaking culture often shows genuine solidarity with it. Welsh speakers make up a large number of the subscribers to English language magazines, while in universities and schools the small amount of Anglo-Welsh literature that is taught is often taught by Welsh-speakers. Often the promotion and dissemination of English literature of Wales is overly reliant on support of this kind from Welsh language culture: Golwg for example, covered the launch in Llansteffan and wrote a well-informed article on Rpberts. Interest after that was ongoing. When the second book appeared I was interviewed by S4C’s Wedi Saith, as part of a substantial feature. They also mentioned a centenary conference on her in Swansea sponsored by CREW, the Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales, which took place in the Dylan Thomas Centre. The 60-odd people who came to that conference were far from being specialists (though some of course were), but not a single one those I spoke to had received their information about either Roberts or the event itself from the English language Welsh media.
One lady who came told me she often watched Wedi Saith with subtitles (“to find out what’s going on around here”) and came to see what Lynette Roberts was all about. It’s ironic that a woman from Swansea needs to watch a TV programme in Welsh to learn about the existence of a writer who lived in her area and wrote in English about her city. Just as well she did, though, because she’d never have found out about it from any of the avenues which allegedly cater for her.
The high quality of work in Wales is not matched by a media that cares about communicating it, or an education system that deigns to value it. There is of course a political dimension to this, typified by a recent letter from a Labour AM warning against teaching “too much” focus on Welsh history and culture in schools, on the grounds that Wales must “look outwards”. Maybe so, but in what way are Henry VIII and Jane Austen’s Emma more international than Welsh industrial history or Gwyn Thomas’s The Dark Philosophers?
English language literature and arts in Wales are just as subsidised as their Welsh language equivalents; in some cases more so. It all looks healthy – excellent writers and academics, good magazines, high-quality publishers, festivals and events. But we’re not developing the audience. All the prizes, grants, translations and tours count for nothing if we can’t sustain our own audiences in our own country, and if our media continues to treat the English-speaking public as unworthy of proper arts coverage, and treats its culture as unworthy of decent arts reporting.
It is traditional to complain about the feebleness of the English language political media in Wales, but compared with the arts media, it’s a model of pluralism, ambition and fearless curiosity. In the end, a culture that doesn’t take itself seriously will never be taken seriously, and probably never deserves to be. It is all very well saying one needs to look outwards, but there has to be something to look outwards from. At the moment it is a row of empty seats.
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“But we’re not developing the audience. All the prizes, grants, translations and tours count for nothing if we can’t sustain our own audiences in our own country, and if our media continues to treat the English-speaking public as unworthy of proper arts coverage, and treats its culture as unworthy of decent arts reporting.”
Quite. This is yet another example of Wales failing to sell itself to the Welsh, something we see in other fields as well (such as tourism).
This is, of course, a well argued thesis with which few would disagree. Yes, arts coverage in Wales is, apart from specialist magazines, poor. It’s also remarkably middle class and narrow, this in a country which has created some of the finest contemporary dance, theatre, music and writing in Europe. As a board member of the now defunct (Arts Council Wales cut all its funding) Brith Gof theatre company, I know it was always easier to get tour dates and intelligent commentary outside of Wales, rather than in it. Too much of what is covered in the English-language media (I can’t sadly, comment about the Welsh media) is pseudo-celebrity centred, tacky personality interview, non-event focussed, totally lacking in enquiry, debate or commentary.
I am not certain however that this is just an arts issue. Where is intelligent political debate conducted outside of the chattering blogsphere? Or the news about Wales’ business sector (and no, I don’t mean the recycled press releases that are featured in our so-called, national newspaper)? Most people in Wales still rely on UK produced newspapers with the Western Mail in self-inflicted terminal decline. The Assembly completely dropped the view – IMHO – over Welsh language newspapers; they show no inclination to take the radical, effective action that Wales needs if it is to have any media for public discourse in English.
So, one of Wales’ most distinctive, and potential economically useful differentiators – its languages, is given no voice, and civic society in Wales suffers as a result, in every sector not just the arts.
Good article.
I agree that the arts journalism in the western mail and Beeb is exceptionally poor. The knowledge is not with the journalists and nothing can be done on that front. A daily poem printed would be a great and show Welsh poetic talent. Much more positive than reading about who got arrested or miss c celebs diet going down the drain or the Assembly’s lack of this or that.
Arts funding is reasonable for writers but for other arts it can be difficult .
I have advocated till I am blue in the face that Arts funding should be contingent upon the Artists funding situation. The present situation with the ACW is that there is no other criteria but match funding .
This is why the well off arts community take the bulk of public arts funds. A millionaire artist received a £3000 grant for a catalogue a few years back. While deprived communities are overlooked and so are disabled people hoping to be arts funded. I know of a disabled young woman who is a fine painter was turned away without even an application form. She has to fund her own exhibitions which have public value.
While a well off artist who is ‘pally’ and a member of the private members club which is the Arts council of Wales can receive a large grant year after year.
The Welsh Assembly government who are supposedly custodians of public finances should play a more significant role in the allocation of arts funding in Wales. Arts minster Alun Pugh was on the right track .
Patrick, I couldn’t let the occasion pass without making some comment on your article. It could seem so churlish not too. The article and the subject are complicated and it took some thought to compose the comment. Apologises for the delay.
It’s all down to numbers. For every person in Wales who writes a ‘better than’ English language piece, there are at least 145 other worldwide writers whose first language is English. There are some depressing marketing statistics. Most people don’t buy books. Most books purchased remain unread, most people only read the first chapter and the last two pages, most people read bits throughout a book and most people read a synopsis and put the book on a highly visible shelf to impress visitors. Most books are purchased in the departure lounge to be read (as above) on a flight or during a holiday and then they buy the ‘Best Book of the Month’. The chances of a Welsh writer’s work being read are slim. So slim that the authors of “The One Minute Manager” wrote a slim book with only one chapter and sold it almost exclusively in departure lounges. The series was a worldwide best seller.
The best English is written for adverts. The copy requires considerable thought, clarity of expression and readability. For the advertiser it is all down to numbers. If it were to cost 1p to reach a reader in the ‘Western Mail’ and 1p to reach a reader through a London based paper, the advertiser would use the London paper. The London publisher receives more pennies, employs ‘better’ column writers and more of them and therefore produce a better value paper. The ‘SUN’ is a perfect example. They have wonderful adverts!
May be the solution is to get your friends down at the Bay to impose a stamp duty levy on every London paper (exemption for the Liverpool Post?) to subsidise publications based in Wales. Why not? S4C is funded in that way.
This is an excellent and thoughtful article with the right tone of despair running through it.
Thank you for the mention of Cambria magazine. For nearly fifteen years, we have been covering the cultural scene in Wales with top quality English language articles on and contributions from most of the significant figures in the Arts. And yet looking at our subscriber base it is composed almost entirely of expat Welsh! Our reach and distribution is international diaspora but our Welsh readership is frustratingly low. Truly prophets are never recognised in their own land.
Preservation or promotion of our culture or cultural heritage has always been a thankless (and financially unrewarding) task but we will continue to persevere. We shall also try to avoid going down the subsidy path because that way leads to erosion of independance and editorial freedom and over reliance on the cliques in the Arts Council. As to the Western Mail, words fail me … or rather they would be edited out by the moderators.
Thought provoking and troubling. What a dilemma for Anglo-Welsh culture. No comments that I may offer would do the issues you raise in your article justice.
From my perspective, I believe the heart of the issue is a lack of robust commercial media outlets based in Wales catering to the Welsh audience. Welsh based media would provide the primary forum for Welsh artists and the professional critics of their art. I believe that if Wales based media were robust, that its influence would permeate to the amateur and recreational criticism in the manner for which Patrick laments. As it is, pop culture broadcast into Wales robs Anglo-Welsh artists of a valuable forum, and attracts them outside of Wales for their due exposure.
Additionally, I firmly believe that Anglo-Welsh literature should be the primary literature taught in schools. Exposing children to their heritage would lead to a greater appreciation of that heritage, and as they grow, they may add their own perspective to the mix. However, what forum would showcase their contributions if Wales based media is not robust enough to provide that forum? Anglo-Welsh literature has not risen to the same level that Scottish literature has, and until school curriculum introduces Welsh children to their heritage, how would they ever know that they do have significant literary contributions worth of study and praise?
Thank you all for your comments.
Cambria is unusual among the magazines I mention in that it doesn’t receive subsidies, and that its arts coverage caters not just for those who like elliptical poetry or doorstop classics of industrial Welsh fiction, but mixes reviews on those things with pieces on, say, nature or landscape books, or cookery books, or music reviews, or pop, etc. Whatever. Unlike the specialist literary magazines, therefore, and much like what a ‘national’ paper should do, it places high, middle and low culture (if one’s going to use those terms, and I’m not especially keen on them myself) in an organic relationship, together, knowing that most readers will pick and mix from each so-called category. This isn’t a puff for Cambria, it’s a comment on how the different strata of a single culture can be made to interact in a single forum.
I wonder if that’s because they don’t get public subsidy, and thus need to make sure of a balance and an inter-relationship between the various elements simply in order to ensure readers. But these are good decisions to have to make. It’s what proper national newspapers and magazines have to do all the time. The question of reaching its public is of course different, and I’m sorry but unsurprised to hear that Cambria is expat-heavy.
I agree with David completely about the issue of schooling and teaching, of course. I might also add to that my experience of Anglo-Welsh writers and artists themselves, who often say they were not actually taught or brought into contact with their own ‘tradition’, which of course means that many of them have neither a tradition to take up nor one – equally important – to rebel against. For many of them , and I won’t name names – their own tradition is something they have to discover after school or uni, and often in opposition to it. Often it’s a teacher putting them onto something outside school hours, or a librarian. Either it happens outside the system.
The problem goes very deep, I think.
As a Belgian myself (half-Belgian , like all proper Belgians), and being of Irish origin, I am conscious that the best thing about having a ‘national tradition’ is that one can walk away from it, reject it, complain about it, etc. Jacques Brel, James Joyce, etc. But they knew what they were walking away *from*, and thus they could use it as fuel, inspiration, resentment-fodder, etc. They came back too, in their own ways, and when they became too big their own traditions had to stretch out and acommodate *them*.
A properly organic process we’re a long way form even beginning in the English-language culture of Wales.
Can’t help feeling that all this rather misses the point. The Western Mail has never been a go to paper for literary criticism. And English-speaking Welsh writers (i.e. the vast majority of us) have always taken our place among the pantheon of British writers. God help us if our primary identification was with the ‘national tradition’ of Welsh writers.
The current generation of Welsh writers, perhaps the most interesting and successful ever, are hardly united in their love of Emyr Humphries or Alexander Cordell. It’s anyway impossible to separate ‘Anglo-Welsh’ writers from ‘English’ – is Sarah Waters a Welsh writer, Martin Amis? Niall Griffiths. Patrick McGuiness? What are the criteria and who cares anyway. In the world I live in The Western Mail is an irrelevance, yet it’s possible to promote a literary event in Cardiff on Facebook and have eighty people show up to it, as I did last week.
It’s possible to put on a literary festival in Laugharne West Wales and sell it out. Life for writers who live in Wales is not much more or less difficult than for writers in who live in Yorkshire, say. We all depend on the British national media for serious review coverage and divine providence for sales. And to make the literary culture of Wales more interesting all we need is to make common cause with other writers on the basis of their writing, not on their adherence to a non-existent national tradition .
John – great response, and just what’s needed.
Your points one by one:
1 – “And English-speaking Welsh writers (i.e. the vast majority of us) have always taken our place among the pantheon of British writers.”
you imply I think it’s either/or, one or the other, British or Welsh. I don’t say that, as you know.
2 – “God help us if our primary identification was with the ‘national tradition’ of Welsh writers.” You’re putting words into my mouth here – you imply I use the phrase, and that you quote me. I don’t . I use the phrase in inverted commas, as you do, in the context of something one can walk away from. I’m therefore not calling for or advocating a ‘national tradition’, except as an option to reject. You know this too, of course. I’m saying that there is a body of Welsh literature in English which is undervalued, yet which is part of the heritage of people in Wales who speak English and come from the places and cultures about which that literature is written. I’m baffled that you think that view should be controversial or proto-nationlaist, or closed -minded. Does it not exist?
3 – Sarah Waters et al. You ask who cares if they’re Welsh. It’s a rhetorical question, and is your way of saying you don’t care. As it happens, nor do I. My article doesn’t raise the issue of tenuous Welshness. But someone cares, which is why the Western Mail did a big piece on Sarah Waters and her alleged Welshness and New Welsh review (on whose board you were) also did an interview with her (where she said she wasn’t actually Welsh, just born here). So, to the question ‘Who cares’, the answer is clearly not, as we’d both like it to be, no-one.
4 – “Western Mail is an irrelevance.” That’s the same world I live in. My point is that it’s a pity. You don’t think that? OK.
5 – “Life for writers who live in Wales is not much more or less difficult than for writers in who live in Yorkshire, say.” Life for most writers is the same (my piece was not about writers’ lives , but about audiences), but in terms of institutions and identity (even identity as something marketable) it isn’t. There’s the Welsh Academi, the Welsh Books Council, magazines with Welsh in their names, Prizes with Welsh in their names, grants with Welsh in their names and so on. The idea of a national project and a national identity is inherent in that. For instance, Parole di Galles, who translate Welsh books into Italian, are called Voices from Wales. They don’t have a Voices from Yorkshire series, etc. There’s some kind of specificity attached to the marketing and dissemination of Welsh writing. Disingeneuous to pretend there isn’t.
6 – “We all depend on the British national media for serious review coverage and divine providence for sales. ” Yes, of course. I don’t see why a decent Welsh version of the same is too much to ask, do you? You’re also wrong about the Western Mail having always been rubbish for arts and literature reviews. It hasn’t always been .
7- “And to make the literary culture of Wales more interesting all we need is to make common cause with other writers on the basis of their writing, not on their adherence to a non-existent national tradition .”
Yes, common cause, great. But I don’t think a tradition doesn’t exist. In what way does it not exist? My question is not who’s in it (I don’t care – asking who’s in it is an admission that there is a tradition), but why should there not be? You say there’s a literary culture but not that there’s a tradition. That’s odd. Surely a tradition is mostly a culture that has been remembered, and in parts passed on? To have one implies the possibility of the other.
8 – “It’s anyway impossible to separate ‘Anglo-Welsh’ writers from ‘English’ ”
Ok, well go ahead and justify that statement. I just don’t think it’s supportable, and has the hallmarks of something so mind-bogglingly wrong that one simply can’t approach it without being blinded by its wrongness. I’ll just admire its audacity the way I’d admire a piece of rock from another planet…
But my last question is this: Are you saying you don’t think Welsh writing in English should be taught in schools to English-speaking Welsh people? I don’t see the point here. I can’t see how it can possibly harm anyone – writers,publishers, printers, booksellers, readers – to think about how to give English-language writing from Wales a status in its own country.
But I think this is a really important contribution and I’m glad you wrote it.
patrick
Thanks Patrick. Response responses, one by one.
1. Sure, I understand you didn’t mean either/or but I just don’t see the Welsh pantheon as having a freestanding existence really.
2. Well I’m just not convinced that there is any undervalued body of writing from Cardiff that I was somehow excluded from learning about (though obviously today’s school kids should all be force fed my stuff!). Sure there’s some good industrial Wales stuff, but, coming from Cardiff, I’d just as soon dig up the undervalued Gerald Kersh as the undervalued Ron Berry. Which is to say that coming from Cardiff I’ve always been more interested in visiting London than Aberdare.
3. Yes, but I don’t care about people who care about whether Sarah Waters wants to wave the flag. So the answer to my rhetorical ‘who cares?’ is – ‘no one I care about’.
4. Yes it’s a pity but, to put it in perspective, if I lived in Bristol – twice the size of Cardiff – my local paper still wouldn’t be much cop when it comes to taking culture seriously.
5. No fair point, Welsh writers are actually significantly better off than writers from Yorkshire, or indeed writers from London, when it comes to state funding, translation opportunities etc. Dunno if we deserve to be, mind.
6. Well, see 4, really – again it’s true of regional newspapers generally. On the upside the nationals have extended their literary coverage significantly in recent years. We want mo better literary coverage of books by and about people from this part of the world, let’s do it ourselves, forget the doomed Western Mail.
7. I just don’t see this distinct Welsh tradition in British literature. We’re not Scotland in this respect, we’re probably not even Yorkshire. It’s like talking about the Welsh rock’n'roll tradition – which is absurd, but doesn’t preclude the existence of a rock scene or rock culture in Wales. Likewise there is a surprisingly thriving English language literary culture in Wales, I just don’t believe it’s specifically ‘Welsh’.
8. This may be a semantic point but I think it’s a valid one. How would you or anyone define an Anglo Welsh writer? Is Sarah Waters one or can one opt out?. Am I one when I write a book set in Cardiff while I live in Cardiff, but not when I wrote a book set in London while living in London? My point is that if you can’t mark a clear dividing line between two things, if there is not an identifiable border, then they are not separate things at all.
Years ago I worked in a bookshop funded by the old GLC. In an early nod to PC culture we divided our fiction into books by writers of colour and books by white writers. But how to define this difference? Ultimately this came down to working out which side of the Bosphorus Orhan Panuk lived on. Asian side he was a persecuted writer of colour, European side he was another over privileged white guy. You see what I’m saying?
9. Should kids in Wales be taught books by Welsh writers? Sure, absolutely, if they’re good enough. But not merely for the sake of local colour. Kids get to read few enough books in school.
cheers
John
John, there’s almost nothing I’d disagree with in what you say.
I suppose I do think there’s a distinct Welsh literature in English, or several such things, none of them the same or wanting necessarily to be lumped together, but there for specific reasons of culture, history, language, place etc., but that the potential readership of people who share those characteristics (i.e. live in the places described, are living the consequences of the histories described etc) doesn’t get reached.
I totally share your point about the definitional ‘anglo-welsh’ stuff. It’s doubly annoying because despite the fact that it doesn’t matter, the ‘who is and isn’t question never goes away. In my Lynette Roberts example I probably evaded the issue slightly when I said it didn’t matter whether she was welsh or anglo-welsh or not, because she produced ‘anglo-welsh’ poetry. That shifts the burden of identification from person to what they do, and is of course an evasion in its way, but makes for a welcome opening out of the question.
The distinction you make between a ‘scene’ and a tradition (in context of music as well) is a good one, and I’ll think about it. I suppose I’d use ‘scene’ for present tense, and tradition for the way it’s made to fit together, and the sense the current ‘scene’ has of where it comes from, if it cares, etc. Most traditions are invented anyway, or at any rate composed and refined and altered all the time, so I’m not too worried about the implications of the word.
In that context, I do think however that the idea of a tradition is not a creatively crippling or stultifying one, and that often it’s the old , dead writers who are shaped by the living and not vice versa. i.e. that industrial literature in Wales, say, may well owe the little recognition it has to the good writing about urban and post-industrial Wales that’s happened in the last 20 years, that has revived interest in it, and that has perhaps created that sense of a thread. That’s probably the kind of tradition that most interests me: the one that makes you see and take an interest in what went before either in new ways or for the first time.
I think I’d take Gerald Kersh every time in that particular bout, but I see what you mean…
Thanks for that, and all best
patrick
The discussion here has focused more on literature, but compared to other art forms such as theatre, dance, and visual art, Welsh writing in English (however defined) does relatively well.
In the absence of substantial media arts coverage, the reviewing function of the literary and cultural magazines – in Welsh and in English – becomes absolutely critical to discussion of the arts in Wales. But where is the support? The magazines are indeed subsidised by the Books Council (including, in part, Cambria), and in some cases by cooperative arrangements with other institutions, but they also depend desperately on subscriptions and retail sales to stay afloat – sales that have of course been affected by the economic situation during the last two years.
In other words, while everyone involved in producing, analysing and ‘consuming’ the arts needs to lobby for wider coverage, if we want an arts debate at all we must at the same time do more to support the few outlets we still have, or we will risk losing even these.
Go back to Kiedrych Rhys’s Wales and you’d see much the same debate taking place between Rhys Davies (John Williams) and Pennar Davies (Patrick McGuinness). John W claims that “English-speaking Welsh writers (i.e. the vast majority of us) have always taken our place among the pantheon of British writers”. Really? And been rendered wholly invisible? Look at any of the major anthologies of British literature and spot the Welshman (usually a Thomas or two – and it’s never Gwyn). Strange to find the author of ‘Badlands’ placing himself in the great British pantheon. It strikes me that Welsh Anglophone writers have more consistently turned to the US – Gwyn Thomas to Damon Runyon and Howard Fast, Jack Jones to John Dos Passos, Emyr Humphreys to Faulkner, John Williams to Elmore Leonard and George V. Higgins etc. Some have of course located themselves within a Welsh pantheon and sought connections with Welsh language writers. Some have indeed thought of themselves as ‘British’. These are all contexts in which writers can be located, read and made sense of. Such contexts can be enabling or limiting. But the dimension of our literature and culture that we’re most oblivious to, and which we rarely see represented, is the Welsh dimension. Rather than missing the point, Patrick McGuinness is right on the button.