Books Books
Category: Art and Photography, Non Fiction, Poetry, Poetry Anthologies, Poetry and Art
Number of pages: 96
ISBN: 9781781726068
Publication date: March 18, 2021
Price: £12.99
To turn, to dig, to plough, to upset, to translate… Bend, lap, journey, time… The Welsh word troeon unfolds meaning after meaning. In TROEON : TURNINGS, two poets confident in their own traditions meet in the hinterland between translation and collaboration – Cyril Jones from the disciplines of Welsh cynghanedd, Philip Gross from the restless variety of English verse. Rather than lamenting the impossibility of reproducing any language’s unique knots of form and content in translation, they trust each other to explore the energies released.
In the cloud chamber, atoms tear, spin, split, translate the past and future into spirals, spun silk, sheer release, the heart of the matter.
In the same spirit, Valerie Coffin Price plays an equal part with striking letterpress designs that surprise the language of both writers into new awareness of its possibilities.
…
Troi, aredig, cerdded, treigldŵr… Yn y gyfrol TROEON : TURNINGS mae dau fardd sydd â’u gwreiddiau mewn gwahanol draddodiadau yn cyfarfod yn y cytir rhwng cyfieithu a chydweithio. Daw Cyril Jones o gefndir disgyblaeth y gynghanedd a Philip Gross o gefndir mwy amrywiol ac aflonydd barddoniaeth Saesneg. Yn hytrach na gresynu nad yw’n bosib atgynhyrchu clymau ffurf a chynnwys ieithoedd trwy gyfieithu, maen nhw yn ymddiried yn ei gilydd i ryddhau egni o’r newydd ar sail y gred fod haearn yn hogi haearn.
Ar waetha’r storm a’r hwthwm o glefyd, geilw haf ei fwrlwm adar i dewi’r larwm a churo’n galon trwy’i gwm. (Mehefin 2020)
Yn yr un ysbryd mae Valerie Coffin Price yn chwarae’i rhan hithau trwy gyfrwng dyluniadau trawiadol ei hargraffwaith, gan roi tro annisgwyl i iaith y ddau fardd a chreu ymwybyddiaeth newydd o’l phosibliadau.
Philip Gross
Born in Cornwall, son of an Estonian wartime refugee, Philip Gross has lived in Plymouth, Bristol and South Wales, where he was Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University (USW). His 27th book of poetry, The Thirteenth Angel (2022), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2022. It follows eleven previous books with Bloodaxe, including Between the Islands (2020), A Bright Acoustic (2017), Love Songs of Carbon (2015), winner of the Roland Mathias Poetry Award and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; Deep Field (2011), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; The Water Table (2009), winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2009; and Changes of Address: Poems 1980-1998 (2001), his selection from earlier books including The Ice Factory, Cat’s Whisker, The Son of the Duke of Nowhere, I.D. and The Wasting Game. Since The Air Mines of Mistila (with Sylvia Kantaris, Bloodaxe Books, 1988).
He is a keen collaborator, most recently with artist Valerie Coffin Price on A Fold in the River (Seren, 2015), with poet Lesley Saunders on A Part of the Main (2018), and with Welsh-language bardd Cyril Jones on Troeon/Turnings (Seren, 2021). I Spy Pinhole Eye (Cinnamon Press, 2009), with photographer Simon Denison, won the Wales Book of the Year Award 2010. He received a Cholmondeley Award in 2017.
Philip Gross’s poetry for young people includes Manifold Manor, The All-Nite Café (winner of the Signal Award 1994), Off Road to Everywhere (winner of the CLPE Award 2011) and the poetry-science collection Dark Sky Park (shortlisted for the CLiPPA award 2019).
Cyril Jones
Cyril Jones is Welsh language poet who writes strict and free metre poems. Since moving from to work in south Wales in 2001 he has collaborated with artists, an archaeologist, and other poets. During recent collaborations with artists and an archaeologist – and the present project with Philip Gross and Valerie Price – he has also adapted and composed poems in English. The early influence of Welsh languge strict metre poetry has also inspired him to experiment with poetic metres and forms.
“This collaborative collection manages to combine an expansive sense of the epic with a lively, lighthearted approach to language. This admixture of playfulness and profundity makes the book at once intelligent and engaging, giving it depth yet also keeping it accessible.”
Mab Jones, Buzz Magazine
