Books Books
Category: Ebooks, Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 98
ISBN: 9781781726969
Publication date: February 27, 2023
Price: £9.99
Category: Ebooks, Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 90
ISBN: 9781781726976
Publication date: March 13, 2023
Price: £7.99
Out of stock
“Nerys Williams has written a ‘gold rush’ of a book, at times explosive and at other times meditative and soulful.” – Menna Elfyn
What constitutes a republic? Not Wales, a nation subject to military claims on its landscape and a second home explosion which has hollowed out its communities. The achievement of a republic can be a subversive activity, as was the writing of Republic.
Republic is about class, culture and community in west Wales. It recounts the story of a young woman growing up listening to the post-punk music of the 1980s and indie labels of the 1990s. These decades culminated in the explosion of “Cŵl Cymru” and new devolutionary powers in Wales.
In Republic offensive attacks on the Welsh (and Welsh language) are dissected with satirical humour and an appalled fascination. A token female outsider on a TV panel show is tolerated but studiously ignored. Acts of civil disobedience are reflected upon. A male account of punk rock is challenged and all hell breaks loose.
Republic offers stories that are overheard, handed down, magnified, often translated from Welsh. Its sequence of 80 prose poems creates a patchwork of narratives which share the challenges faced by women, Welsh-speakers, and other marginalised groups. This volume arose from the need to tell an alternative social history, one that commits an oral history to paper.
Nerys Williams
Nerys Williams’s first collection Sound Archive (Seren) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and won the Irish Strong First Collection Prize. In 2017 she was a Government of Wales-Literature Wales poet in residence at Passa Porta, Brussels as part of the Literature of Loss programme. That same year her second collection Cabaret was published by New Dublin Press. Her third collection Republic was published by Seren in 2023.
Nerys is an Associate Professor in poetry and poetics University College Dublin, a Fulbright alumnus and is originally from Carmarthenshire. She lives in Kells Co. Meath Ireland.
“The very brilliant poems in Nerys Williams’ Republic are subversive, and deliciously irreverent… The questions about language and identity are deeply felt, and expertly articulated.”
Paul Perry, Sunday Irish Independent
“The writing is deft and authentic, creating a vivid sense of place and compelling us to share Williams’ indignations and sympathies … Republic became something to savour, to sit in the sunlight and ponder and enjoy slowly, encouraging me to look at a familiar world anew and to savour the little, seemingly inconsequential moments Williams captures so neatly that make up who we really are”
Rebecca Roberts, Nation Cymru
” … restraint can cause unusual and unique imaginative compulsions and creative outpourings, and that is what’s to be found in this wonderful collection, for sure.”
Mab Jones, Buzz Mag
“It’s difficult to describe just how good Republic is at times. Music, memories and words collide in what should be a tangle of recollections; it should be chaotic and confusing and yet, it works. Williams is light in writing and her tone, moving with ease between reflection and amusement in a way belies what a tightly written collection this actually is.”
Emma Schofield, Wales Arts Review
“Each 20 sentence chapter is a gem. Nerys speaks to a generation growing up in Wales at a crucial age. She transports you to the sounds of her life in such a way they enter your own.”
Patricia Morgan (Datblygu)
“This is a rampage of words, if Republic were set to music it would be Nina Simone meets Crass.”
Rhys Mwyn (Legendary punk rock musician, antiquarian and author)
“A west Wales Baudelaire in Dr. Martens… The music and the culture of the times riddle this wonderful work like a string of lights.”
Peter Finch
“Nerys Williams has written a ‘gold rush’ of a book, at times explosive and at other times meditative and soulful. Her magnificent lyrical inventions, veering from the zany to the profound, should make this a modern day classic.”
Menna Elfyn
“Republic is a tour de force, a masterful account of the intellectual, political and personal. Pitched against nostalgia, Williams’s prose poems are tough-minded, shrewd and hugely evocative of the times she chronicles.”
Gwyneth Lewis
Listen to the accompanying Republic playlist on Spotify.
