Tag: language

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A Mind of Winter: Notes on Exile

As every immigrant knows, Rebecca Ruth Gould writes of the poet Ilya Kaminsky (and other exiles), everything you thought you knew, you have to learn all over again; best cultivate a ‘mind of winter’

PUBLISHED ON: 02/08/22

CATEGORY: Essays, Memoir

As every immigrant knows, Rebecca Ruth Gould writes of the poet Ilya Kaminsky (and other exiles), everything you thought you knew, you have to learn a …

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Hafez and Jones: Poets United for Peace

Shara Atashi on the links between eighteenth-century polyglot William Jones and fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafez

PUBLISHED ON: 30/03/22

CATEGORY: Column

(Above) frieze at University College, Oxford chapel showing Sir William Jones taking notes from Hindi speakers and scholars, (top) roof of Hafez tomb …

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Please

Laura Wainwright on a clever, funny and ultimately very moving novel that explores how language is ‘the very stuff of us’

PUBLISHED ON: 23/07/21

CATEGORY: Reviews

Is there any writer, of any genre, who can’t relate to the following thoughts?   I struggle to make it say what I wish, let alone wrestle it into …

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The Distance

Set in apartheid South Africa, this allegory of boxing, blood and brotherhood, writes Chris Moss, ripples with meanings and possibilities, is full of grace and tenderness, and demonstrates the light touch of a prose master

PUBLISHED ON: 03/11/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

Great boxing matches are ‘allegories authored in blood’, wrote Budd Schulberg. It’s quoted late on in Ivan Vladislavíc’s sixth novel, which, among oth …

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We Could Be Anywhere by Now

Katherine Stansfield’s latest poetry collection is a perceptive, humorous exploration of identity, language, and the boons and pitfalls of relationships, Luanne Thornton writes

PUBLISHED ON: 20/08/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

The poems in Katherine Stanfield’s second collection bristle with curiosity and the desire to understand the world through personal experience. Embedd …

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Footnotes to Water

Desi Tsvetkova is fascinated by a poetry collection that explores threatened tongues through giving voice to culverted rivers in Bangor and Paris, and touches on themes of lost heritage, herd mentality and cultural pollution

PUBLISHED ON: 30/06/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

Zoë Skoulding is a poet and translator whose newest collection with Seren deals with bodies of water and how they connect to people’s lives. Footnotes …

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Geiriau Diflanedig

Dewi Huw Owen notes the different emphasis of Macfarlane’s original text and its Welsh adaptation, the former addressing lexical shifts, the latter the shift, indeed possible loss of a whole language

PUBLISHED ON: 01/04/20

CATEGORY: Reviews

The 2014 revision of the United Nations’ document revealed that, for the first time, the globe’s urban population accounted for more than half of all …

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The Chosen

Thomas Pitts

PUBLISHED ON: 22/10/19

CATEGORY: Fiction

Leah’s father sighed and shook the reins. Twenty-year-old Leah, next to him in the one-horse buggy, looked up from her Gospel book. She knew that bein …

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Interview with João Morais

Ann D Bjerregaard interviews the Cardiff-based author João Morais about his debut short story collection, Things that Make the Heart Beat Faster, out on 1 October

PUBLISHED ON: 26/09/18

CATEGORY: Blog, Interview

João Morais holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Cardiff University, and he writes regularly for New Welsh Review and other publications. A number of …

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The Dragon Has Two Tongues

On the eve on the announcement of the winner of the New Welsh Writing Awards 2018: Aberystwyth University Prize for an Essay Collection, Tony Brown celebrates Glyn Jones’ deeply humane classic, The Dragon Has Two Tongues, published this summer in a new edition from the University of Wales Press

PUBLISHED ON: 28/05/18

CATEGORY: Blog

I was struck by the way in which the long list for New Welsh Readers’ Poll reached way beyond Wales: to America, to Canada and to Nigeria. I was quiet …

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