Books Books Books
Category: Anthologies, Fiction, Non Fiction, Poetry, Poetry Anthologies
Number of pages: 174
ISBN: 9781854110671
Publication date: October 1, 1991
Price: £7.99
Out of stock
‘Who made an ache under my rib?’ asks the poet on the first page of Love from Wales, and just what makes the Welsh a passionate race? This selection of poetry and prose on the theme of love by Welsh poet Tony Curtis and novelist Sian James offers some lively answers.
Love from Wales features extracts from novels and short stories, as well as complete poems and letters, ranging from the eleventh century to the present. The book includes many translations from the original Welsh.
We begin in the Spring section, with the shy, awkward adolescents of Dylan Thomas’s ‘Extraordinary Little Cough’ and Dannie Abse’s ‘Ash on a Young Man’s Sleeve’, then move towards the full Summer love of Gillian Clarke’s ‘Choughs’ who ‘mate for life’ and John Ormond’s lovely poem to his wife, ‘Design for a Quilt.
Then it’s onward to Autumn where love ripens into Alun Richards’s ‘The Scandalous Thoughts of Elmyra Mouth’. Here we find Caradoc Evans’s sly tale of a farmer’s son sent off to market to find a wife akin to ‘A Heifer Without Blemish’. Finally, to Winter and Alun Lewis’s poignant ‘Post-script: for Gweno’, and R.S. Thomas’s stern ‘Like That’, to finish with Vernon Watkin’s moving ‘Great Nights Returning’. Other writers featured include: Jean Earle, Gwyn Thomas, David Lloyd George, Dafydd ap Gwilym, Richard Llewellyn, Edward Thomas, Emyr Humphreys, Jean Rhys, Idris Davies, John Tripp, Alexander Cordell, and many more.
Tony Curtis
Poet, critic, essayist, expert on Welsh Art, Tony Curtis was born in Carmarthen in West Wales in 1946. He studied at Swansea University and Goddard College, Vermont. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including his latest: From the Fortunate Isles: New and Selected Poems. He has also written volumes of critical work on poets and artists and edited popular anthologies of poetry. He is Emeritus Professor of Poetry at the University of South Wales, where he established and was Director of the MPhil in Writing for many years. He has been elected to the Royal Society of Literature and has toured widely reading his poetry to international audiences.
Siân James
Brought up and educated in West Wales, Siân James (1930-2021) is the author of twelve novels, including Love and War, Return to Hendre Ddu, and Storm at Arberth, as well as two collections of short stories. She has twice won the Yorkshire Post Prize for fiction and her novel A Small Country was filmed as the award-winning Calon Gaeth. Her translation of Kate Roberts’ The Awakening, is also published by Seren. Twice-winner of the Yorkshire Post Prize.
