Slanderous Tongues addresses the gap in Welsh literary studies of English language poetry over the last thirty years. For the first time here is a book which looks at that subject in the round, and in its many diversities. It is distinctive too for being the work of Wales''s young critics, who bring a fresh perspective to the subject while acknowledging the legacy of academics like Wynn Thomas and James A Davies.
Slanderous Tongues adopts a thematic approach, exploring the field through the prisms of politics, nationhood, gender, the environment, external influences (particularly Welsh language, American and Irish), translation experimentation in form and language.
Among the many poets whose work is considered are R.S. Thomas, Dannie Abse, Nigel Jenkins, Mike Jenkins, Gillian Clarke, Harri Webb, Robert Minhinnick, Tony Conran, Ruth Bidgood, John Tripp, Deryn Rees-Jones, Gwyneth Lewis, Menna Elfyn, Pascale Petit, Evan Boland and Medbh McGuckian.
Lively and informed, provocative and perceptive, this specially commissioned book is a superb guide to English language poetry in Wales in the last thirty years. It will be invaluable for students from year 12 to graduate level, and their teachers and lecturers, in addition to the general reader.
Editor Daniel Williams is a Senior Lecturer in the English Department at Swansea University, and Assistant Director of CREW (the Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales). He has written on a range of subjects within the field of Welsh writing in English for a wide number of books, journals and magazines.
Industry Reviews
'The explosive nature of Welsh literature is present everywhere in Slanderous Tongues, as the authors reflect on the tensions between languages, between cultures, between an ardent nationalism and its isolationist twin, between an inherited tradition and the modern world, between a male canon and female expression, between a local point of view and a global one, between the individual's right of self-expression and the culture's critique of that selfhood, and between the avant-garde and poetic convention. The eight essays, each one different in orientation, not only provide recent ways to map the development of modern Welsh poetry in English but also raise - and raise intensely - questions about literary culture in general, applicable to poetries beyond that of Wales. Conscious of scholars in Welsh culture who have preceded them, from Raymond Williams to M. Wynn Thomas, they exemplify a welcome sobriety in their approach to such critical matters as nationalism, bilingual translation, American influence, and the place of immigrants in a literature hitherto composed principally by the Welsh-born. This enlivening collection will alert readers to the ferment of imagination and language generating an array of new voices in Welsh poetry in English.' Professor Helen Vendler, Harvard University
