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Guest Post: Listening to Republic – Nerys Williams

As we publish her new collection Republic, poet Nerys Williams gives us an insight into the music which accompanied its writing.

Listening to Republic

Writing Republic I found that post punk music of the 80s and 90s became key in an attempt to articulate a relationship between community, language and culture. Given the current preponderance of School Disco compilations, initially it might seem that retreating to the music of the 80s and 90s is another variant in communal nostalgia. This is not the intention of Republic. I believe that music carries an energy for future action and desire for change. What you learn over the years changes how you listen to those important early albums. Context shifts meaning.

This cover shows a colourful print of a woman dressed in a black hoodie with large bunny ears on the hood. She has dripping dark blue rings around her eyes and stands out against an acid yellow background. The text reads: Republic. Nerys Williams.

Republic is an anti-memoir, it came from a need to transcribe the voices of a community (as opposed to a single voice) and a refutation of the easy and often predictable epiphanies of some memoirs. Music has a voice throughout this volume. Music is not a soundtrack or sonic wallpaper. Some of the lyrics I cite are just as beloved to me as Emily Dickinson’s poetry.

The sounds in this discography list are eclectic – moving from SKA, 80s pop, Welsh language electronica and rave to 90s shoegazing, jazz samba and classical minimalism.

I grew up in a part of West Wales which in the early 80s had an ambivalent relationship to the Welsh language. Welsh bilingual education was still an experiment. The 11+ existed to partition kids. English language music culture was king. Crucially Welsh language post punk music gave me a love of language that no primer could ever do. 

In the late 1980s Fideo 9 on S4C, with is wonderful presenter Eddie Ladd, pushed boundaries. It was a relief to watch bands with strong female leads like Fiona Owen of Eirin Peryglus and Patricia Morgan from Datblygu performing in videos and asserting a space for non-rock female personas. Before the web, encountering such bands as Datblygy, Anhrefn, Y Cyrff on the TV and at gigs arranged by Cymdeithas yr. Iaith, felt like finding a community. An outsider Wales which was vibrant and questioning.

Logo for Fideo9

The range was broad: moving from the reggae dub of Llwybr Llaethog, the malleable beats of Pop Negatif Wastad and guitar riffs of The Crumblowers to Traddodiad Ofnus’s socialist love letters and Tŷ Gwydr’s dance utopianism. Welsh language music was part of a global community. Datblygu could be cued between Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares and The Sugarcubes.

Republic offers a full discography. A Spotify playlist accompanies the book giving a sense not only of the period, but also issues that remain. Elfyn Presli’s “Jackboots Maggie Thatcher” and  The Specials’ “Ghost Town” have not lost their resonance, or their relevance. There are some bands (especially Welsh bands from the listing above) whose work cannot be located on Spotify. Archive recordings exist on various web platforms (such as Ffarout’s YouTube channel). But I want to stress that Apple Music and Bandcamp offer ways of financially contributing to Welsh bands and labels through subscription downloads.

Writing this, on Welsh language music day 10th February 2023, I am grateful to those 1980s bands who were never able to get any sustainable income from their music, but did it anyhow. I thank those bands who loaded their vans and cars, went cross-country in the cold and rain to visit run down country hotels. I hug those band members who having travelled on B roads, played to drunken audiences. I acknowledge those experimentalists who often faced jeering or apathy. I salute the women who organised gigs and Cymdeithas cells tirelessly. I carry this archive of voices with me (with recent updates).

Nerys Williams

Full Discography (by section number)

8

Elfyn Presli ‘Jackboots Maggie Thatcher’ The First Cuts Are The Deepest (Words of Warning, 1987)

10

Grace Jones Island Life (Island, 1985)

Talking Heads ‘Psycho Killer’ Talking Heads: 77 (Sire, 1977)

11

David Bowie ‘I can’t give everything away’ Blackstar (Columbia, 2016)

12

Sex Pistols ‘God Save the Queen’ Never Mind the Bollocks: Here’s The Sex Pistols (Virgin, 1977)

The Cure ‘The Top’ The Top (Fiction, 1984)

13

my bloody valentine ‘only shallow’ loveless (Creation, 1991)

Joy Division ‘She’s Lost Control’ Unknown Pleasures (Factory, 1979)

15

Ludovicio Einaudi ‘Nuvole Blanche’  Una Mattina (Sony, 2004)

Ludovicio Einaudi ‘Fuori Dal Mondo’ Eden Roc (Sony, 1999)

19

Frank Sinatra ‘Theme from New York, New York’ Trilogy: Past Present Future (Reprise, 1980)

22

Beatles ‘Help!’ Help! (EMI, 1965)

Val Doonican Val Doonican Rocks but Gently (Pye, 1967)

23

Tom Jones ‘Delilah’ (Decca, 1968)

24

Monkees ‘The Last Train to Clarksville’ The Monkees (Colgems, 1966)

Primitives ‘Crash’ Lovely (RCA, 1988)

25

Sonic Youth ‘Tunic (Song for Karen)’ Goo (Geffen, 1990)

The Pixies ‘Bone Machine’ Surfer Rosa (4AD, 1987)

Cocteau Twins ‘Lorelei’ Treasure (4AD, 1984)

Bjork ‘Human Behaviour’ Debut (One Little Independent, 1993)

my bloody valentine ‘Cigarette in your Bed’ You Made Me Realise  (Creation, 1988)

26

The Wedding Present ‘A Million Miles’  George Best (Reception, 1987)

28

The Stone Roses ‘Elephant Stone’ (1988, Silvertone)

The Happy Mondays ‘Step On’ (1990, Factory)

34

Fred Waring & His Pennsylvanians ‘Dry Bones’ (Decca, 1947)

35

The Sugarcubes ‘Deus’ Life’s Too Good (One Little Independent, 1988)

36

Cocteau Twins Heaven or Las Vegas (4AD, 1990)

39

Adam & the Ants ‘That Voodoo’ (CBS, 1981)

Adam & the Ants ‘Dog Eat Dog’ Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS, 1980)

The Specials ‘Ghost Town’ (2 Tone, 1981)

42

Stan Getz and João Gilberto Getz /Gilberto (Verve, 1964)

Bessie Smith ‘Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl’ (Columbia, 1931)

The Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks: Here’s The Sex Pistols (Virgin, 1977)

Datblygu ‘Cristion yn y Kibbutz’ Wyau (Anhrefn, 1988)

The Velvet Underground ‘The Gift’ White Light / White Heat (Verve, 1968)

Barbara Streisand ‘Send in the Clowns’ [from Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Light Music] The Broadway Album (A&M, 1985)

43

David Bowie Low (RCA, 1977)

New Order ‘Vanishing Point’ Technique (Factory, 1989)

44

my bloody valentine ‘Instrumental no 2’ (Creation, 1988)

my bloody valentine Isn’t Anything (Creation, 1988)

my bloody valentine ‘Honey Power’ & ‘Moon Song’ Tremolo (Creation, 1991)

45

Adam & the Ants Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS,1980)

46

Soft Cell ‘Tainted Love’ and ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’ Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret (Some Bizzare, 1981)

Duran Duran ‘Last Chance on the Stairway’ Rio (EMI, 1982)

47

Phil Oakey & Giorgio Moroder ‘Together in Electric Dreams’ Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder (Virgin, 1984)

58

Lush ‘Sweetness and Light’ Gala (1990, 4AD)

Ride Going Blank Again (Creation, 1990)

Lush‘Nothing Natural’ Spooky (4AD, 1992)

Bob Dylan ‘Rainy Day Women #12 + 35’ Blonde on Blonde (Columbia, 1966)

62

Dyma’r Rysait [An Artists For Animals Compilation]:

Y Gwasgwyr ‘Ond Mae’r Dawns yn Mynd Ymlaen’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKzLvelr3Xk

Eirin Peryglus  ‘Cusanau’r Gwaed’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4by1lP_M6KA

Datblygu ‘Brechdanau Tywod’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grFxHUXOAsQ

Crisialau Plastig ‘Rigor Mortis’ (OFN, 1988) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqxTm24bbXc

Y Cyrff Dan y Cownter (Yn Fyw) (Y Cyrff, 1985) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf39b1XYQsKESvv-rybJ8y6gJ40MYyda5

Anhrefn Defaid Wellies a Skateboards (Workers Playtime, 1987) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf39b1XYQsKGhOZ5EL4A40nxGAoxOQUb0

Traddodiad Ofnus  Welsh Tourist Bored (Constrictor, 1987)

Ffa Coffi Pawb Dalec Peilon (Ankst, 1988) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf39b1XYQsKEj6Tgtq6MGHf-GUbFwjCIc

63

Datblygu ‘Bar Hwyr’ Trosglwyddo’r Gwirionedd (NEON 1983

Datblygu ‘Dafydd Iwan yn y Glaw’ Wyau (Anhrefn, 1988)

Public Image Ltd. Metal Box (Virgin, 1979)

The Fall Bend Sinister (Beggars Banquet, 1986)

The Jesus and Mary Chain Psychocandy (Blanco y Negro, 1985)

Patti Smith Horses (Arista, 1975)

64

PJ Harvey ‘Send His Love to Me’ To Bring You My Love (Island, 1995)

67

Madness ‘Shut Up’ 7 (Stiff, 1981)

71

The Buggles ‘Video Killed the Radiostar’ The Age of Plastic (Island, 1971)

Abba ‘SOS’ ABBA (Epic, 1975)

Elvis Presley ‘There’s a Brand New Day on the Horizon’ Roustabout (RCA, 1964)

The Cure ‘Plastic Passion’ Boys Don’t Cry (Fiction, 1980)

72

David Bowie ‘Ziggy Stardust’ The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (RCA Records, 1972)

The Fall ‘New Big Prinz’ I Am Kurious Oranj (Beggars Banquet, 1988)

73

Japan ‘Ghosts’ Tin Drum (Virgin,1981)

Joy Division ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ (Factory,1980)

Depeche Mode ‘Somebody’ Some Great Reward (Mute, 1984)

Kylie Minogue ‘I Should be So Lucky’ (Mushroom, 1987)

76

PJ Harvey ‘Sheela-Na-Gig’ Dry (Too Pure, 1992)

Patrick McGee & Honor Blackman ‘Kinky Boots’ (Decca, 1964) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI0v0GCFrjc

Crumblowers Llithro mewn i Ffantasi (Headstun, 1989)

Y Fflaps Amhersain (Probe Plus, 1988) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf39b1XYQsKFwISdsbaHyS1qZEsYeDcxx

The Slits Cut (Island, 1979)

Gadael yr Ugeinfed Ganrif [Compilation featuring bands Yr Anhrefn, Elfyn Presli, Datblygu, Traddodiad Ofnus, Igam Ogam] (Anhrefn, 1986) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf39b1XYQsKG4ofEn6ZPlbnLmmDSBhr0P

77

Coldplay A Rush of Blood to the Head (Parlaphone, 2002)

PJ Harvey Let England Shake (Island, 2011)

This cover shows a colourful print of a woman dressed in a black hoodie with large bunny ears on the hood. She has dripping dark blue rings around her eyes and stands out against an acid yellow background. The text reads: Republic. Nerys Williams.

In her explosive new poetry collection Republic Nerys Williams opens a window on life in rural west Wales during the 1980s and 90s. English and Welsh-language post-punk bands, politics, feminism and family life are thrown together on the page as she questions what makes a republic?

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Friday Poem – ‘FISH’ by Peter Finch

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘FISH’ by Peter Finch. Originally published in The Machineries of Joy (2020), it now features in Volume Two of his Collected Poems which was published in 2022.

The covers of Peter Finch's collected poems show mirrored image of a geometric pattern made of grey 3D hexagons. The text reads Peter Finch Collected Poems.

Peter Finch’s remarkable career spans over fifty years. He has been taking poetry to places it didn’t know it wanted to go from the beginning; blending the avant-garde, concrete, visual, sound, performance and more conventional forms to create something unique. His new two-volume Collected Poems, edited by Andrew Taylor, cement his reputation as one of Britain’s leading poets.

Volume One brings together work from long lost chapbooks, broadsheets and limited editions, as well as more conventionally published work. Volume Two focuses on the second half of Finch’s career with poems from later collections sitting alongside works from his prose books and those engraved in the public realm on sculptures, walls and buildings, particularly in his native Cardiff. Nerys Williams and Ian McMillan provide appreciative forewords to each volume.

FISH He wrote the things decades back He did them underwater He pulled them out like sonic fish, Dada hake, Bauhaus trout, Schwitters skate, Showed them to Ormond who shook his head. You’ve energy, Finch, but they’ll not put that on your grave. Flailing in the Welsh fog. This man punctuates using the chance methods of John Cage. Potato’s Potatoe’s Potatos. There are monkeys and there are typewriters and the two shouldn’t be allowed to mix. Your leaflet advertising your amateur magazine is a joke, is it not? Beer mats, they read better, boy. Bwthyn, Llanbradach, Cariad, Hiraeth, Pysgodyn. Finch has never used words like those. Vous êtes une nation poétique san concours4, dit Chopin, piling on the micro-particles sans son sea sip seeeeth yat rat ata ata ata ata aaaah tick tick tick ttttt ttttt tteeee. Chopin this is an incorrect claim. Wales is a nation of standard-stoppages engaging with pasteurised modernism forty years outside the frame. I sound now like Kingsley Amis, it’s come to this at last. Asked him once to send in a poem. Got a postcard back reading Mr Amis regrets but he cannot do as you ask. 4. You are a poetic nation without competition

Order the Collected Poems Complete Set on the Seren website for £30.00, or buy them individually for £19.99 each.

The Machineries of Joy is available on the Seren website: £9.99

Peter Finch will be reading alongside Philip Gross at Seren First Thursday in Cardiff on Thursday 2nd March. Find out more here www.serenbooks.com/event/first-thursday-march-peter-finch-and-philip-gross.

Seren First Thursday March. Peter Finch and Philip Gross. In person and via Facebook Live. Thursday 2nd March 7:30pm GMT. Tickets £3 on the door on wach live on Facebook for free. Supported by Seren and Literature Wales.
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Recipe: Pancakes with blueberry compote and coconut cream

To celebrate Shrove Tuesday aka Pancake Day, we’re sharing this delicious recipe for pancakes with blueberry compote and coconut cream from The Seasonal Vegan by Sarah Philpott.

If you’re looking for an in-season alternative to blueberries, why not serve with stewed apple, rhubarb, or frozen blackberries?

The Seasonal Vegan is a kitchen diary of seasonal recipes with a delicious mixture of Sarah Philpott’s fine food writing and Manon Houston’s beautiful photography. This guide to eating with the seasons takes a realistic approach to shopping cheaply and sustainably and proves that the vegan lifestyle is anything but expensive.

Pancakes with blueberry compote and coconut cream

Under 20 minutes | Makes 2 large pancakes

This photo shows a plate of large flat pancakes stacked up beside an inviting scoop of coconut cream and topped with blueberry compote.
Photograph by Manon Houston

Ingredients

– 160g chickpea/gram flour
– 1 ½ tsp baking powder
– 2 tbsp maple syrup
– 1 tsp cinnamon
– 200ml plant milk or water
– 2-3 tbsp oil
– Half a tin or packet of coconut cream

For the compote

– 200g fresh or frozen blueberries
– 45ml water
– 50g granulated sugar
–The juice of half a lemon
– 1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix the dry ingredients together and gradually add the water or milk and the maple syrup and stir until it has a thick, but pourable, consistency. Heat the oil in a non-stick pan over a medium heat (test if it’s hot enough by dropping in a tiny bit of batter – it should sizzle) then pour in half the batter and cook, flipping over occasionally, for 3-4 minutes. Repeat with the rest of the batter.

To make the compote, combine the blueberries, water, sugar, vanilla extract and lemon juice in a small saucepan. Cook over a medium heat for about 10-15 mins. Serve warm or cold.

Serve with the compote and coconut cream.

The Seasonal Vegan is available on the Seren website: £12.99

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Looking for something a little more heartwarming? Why not try Sarah’s recipe for Beetroot & Hazelnut Soup also from The Seasonal Vegan.

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Friday Poem – ‘The way you knew’ by Alison Binney

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘The way you knew’ by Alison Binney from her Mslexia award-winning pamphlet Other Women’s Kitchens.

This cover shows a colourful painting of a kitchen with the faint shadows of people moving through it. The text reads: Other Women's Kitchens. Alison Binney.

Other Women’s Kitchens is Alison Binney’s debut pamphlet of poems and introduces us to a poet who writes with flair and feeling about coming out and coming of age as a gay woman in 21st century Britain. The collection explores the challenges of discovering and owning a lesbian identity in the 1980s and 1990s and the joy of finding both love and increased confidence in that identity as an adult. An adroit admixture of the heart-wrenching and the humorous, the book features shaped and ‘found’ pieces, traditional narrative and compact prose poems. Beautifully entertaining, pointedly political and often very funny, Other Women’s Kitchens is essential reading.

The way you knew the way you knew your own coat in the cloakroom the way you knew as you chewed how big the next bubble would be the way everyone knew the new boy was weird even before he began drinking ink the way you knew how to share crisps and when to and why it mattered the way your bike always knew the way home the way you knew when to laugh and how much and who with the way you knew not to sit at the front the way you knew when to put your hand up and why no one did any more the way you knew not to wear shoes like that the way you knew what behind the bike sheds meant before anyone said the way everyone knew who went the way you knew the name carved on the desk wasn’t yours but the izza lezza made you go red the way you knew not to wear your hair short the way you knew how to walk how to talk how to french kiss a boy and why you had to and more the way you knew for sure that if anyone knew about you you were dead

Other Women’s Kitchens is available on the Seren website: £5.00

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Friday Poem – ‘You and I are ghosts in the future’s forest’ by Rhiannon Hooson

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘You and I are ghosts in the future’s forest’ by Rhiannon Hooson from her latest collection Goliat.

This cover shows a ghost-like figure wrapped in a sheet standing in a field at dusk. The text reads: Goliat Rhiannon Hooson

Goliat is the second collection by Rhiannon Hooson, a follow-up to her Wales Book of the Year shortlisted debut, The Other City. An intelligent and beautiful book, Goliat offers absorbing stories of a precarious world on the brink of climate emergency. Employing startling imagery and a deep sense of history, these poems explore the irreplaceable beauty of a wild world, and the terrible damage that humans might do to each other and the earth.

You and I are ghosts in the future’s forest It is a gentle, haunted world. Circumstance has thrown it far into the future, but there are things in it you and I would understand: the way silence settles across a wet morning and the roe deer raise their heads. Perhaps, also, a sense of things that need not find their equilibrium. Our sighs are vapours: no myth exists to hold us like a heart in aspic. Again and again the sun sets, swings under the earth’s belly, lifts a worn edge of cloud come morning. Perhaps we grieve for language, realising our fluency was false. Words are a closed loop. A tight knot. The roe deer raise their heads, move between the trees, listening for wolves. Pale moths and the moon’s white light. Where once we walked, water rises. You and I are ghosts in the future’s forest.

Goliat is available on the Seren website: £9.99

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Friday Poem – ‘Candlemas’ by Hilary Llewellyn-Williams

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Candlemas’ by Hilary Llewellyn-Williams from her new and selected poems The Little Hours.

This cover shows an illustration of a pagan calendar depicting the seasons. The text reads: The Little Hours: New and Selected Poems. Hilary Llewellyn-Williams.

The Little Hours: New and Selected Poems is a landmark volume which collects key poems from the career of Hilary Llewellyn-Williams, one of the outstanding poets of her generation in Wales. In addition to the classic sequences ‘The Tree Calendar’ and ‘Book of Shadows’, the book also includes ‘The Little Hours’, a sequence of new work arranged according to the traditional monastic hours. Llewellyn-Williams is one of the earliest environmental poets; her response to nature always profound, passionate and keenly observed. The Little Hours will remind readers of her many strengths and beauties and shows new readers the breadth and talent of a writer whose eye for vivid imagery and startling detail has always astounded.

Candlemas for my father, d. 2/2/81 On Brigid’s Night there was rain and wind and miles of darkness between us; there was a generation of pain between us, but I stayed awake for love’s sake, and because of the candles. On Brigid’s Night spring was calling a long way off, below the horizon invisible, but heard, like a changed note; my ears attuned, I lit candles around the room. My children slept upstairs, bundles of summer. I was tight-strung and humming. Nineteen points of fire in a small room needed watching: I sat with them. My eyes half-closed I watched them burn all night, watched wax spill pools and curl and flow, the flames dip low, wrapped round in shadows, caught in the eye of light. The night you died I talked to you through webs of sleep, recalling you in my years of childhood solid and sure, filling the fiery spaces. I slept at last towards dawn, in a darkened room. Slowly I woke to sunlight striping the carpet, the cold little heaps of wax: and my children shouting, and spring one day nearer and bottles clanking outside, and a sense of peace and freedom; then the shrill cry of the telephone, which I stumbled up to answer.

The Little Hours: New and Selected Poems is available on the Seren website: £12.99

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Watch Hilary reading her poem ‘Considering the World’ on our Youtube channel: