Issue 16 of Almanac: The Yearbook of Welsh Writing in English continues its commitment to publishing the best new research by established and emerging critics in the field.
This lively issue roams from Ceredigion to Russia, from London to Merthyr, via Argentina and Llanybri. Topics discussed include revolutionary poetry, the politics of translation, the forging of the canon of Welsh writing in English, and the peculiarities of Welsh Modernism. The essays reach as far back as the seventeenth century and bring us right up to the present with the indispensible annual critical bibliography, complied by Emma Schofield.
There are two contrasting essays by Tomos Owen and Kieron Smith providing fresh insight into the work of the figure who is still often seen as the ‘Father of Anglo-Welsh literature’, Caradoc Evans. Four essays examine very diverse poetry, embracing the working-class ballads expertly anatomised by Professor H. Gustav Klaus, the distinctive Modernist experiments of David Jones and Lynette Roberts, skilfully analysed by Luke Thurston and Laura Wainwright, respectively, and finally the new discoveries made by James Doelman among the manuscripts of the early modern poet, David Lloyd. T. Robin Chapman provides a wide-ranging and incisive survey of the politics and practice of translation in Wales, while Kirsti Bohata and Stephen Lovatt focus our attention on the fascinating Russian translation of Amy Dillwyn’s classic 1880 novel, The Rebecca Rioter.
Almanac 16 reflects the sheer range and diversity of Welsh writing in English and seeks to stimulate, provoke and illuminate all readers interested in the literature of Wales.