Poetry Wales: Barddoniaeth, Nodweddion ac Adolygiadau Beirniadol

Thanks to Peter Finch for his kind words about PW in his column ‘The Insider’, in the Western Mail, October 9 2010.

“It is in the new Poetry Wales, however, that revolution is really apparent. In the 1970s, when the late Eric Mottram held the helm of London’s Poetry Review, the English-speaking literary world was split into two mutually opposed factions – the traditionalists and the innovators. In the cause of progress Mottram favoured the work of the latter. In Wales space was only ever available to the former. My own Welsh work sank into the mist.

Thirty years on Zoe Skoulding’ s new issue turns the tables. London’s Poetry Review now represents English poetry’s calm centre while Poetry Wales displays a wide range of innovative work. Alice Entwistle interviewing Wendy Mulford, John Goodby on Welsh modernist poetry. Poetry by Lee Harwood, Ralph Hawkins, Geoffrey Hill, John Powell Ward, and a stream of innovators from inside Wales and without. I enjoyed every page.

It’s taken an age but Wales might at last have caught the world up.”

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