Words by Sam Adams, Editor of Poetry Wales 1973-75
Congratulations on the 60th Birthday of Poetry Wales. May I take the opportunity to remind readers of the early days of the magazine. It was of course founded by Meic Stephens. I have a copy of the first number, ‘Spring 1965’, before me. The title page carries the motto ‘Cylchgrawn Cenedlaethol o Farddoniaeth Newydd’ (which I am pleased to see is still there in the latest issue) and the information that it is ‘published twice a year by The Triskel Press at Garth Newydd, Merthyr Tydfil’.
At that point the magazine was the first and only publication of the press and its address was a rather grand abandoned property which had become a squat Meic shared with Harri Webb and sundry others. No Arts Council funds for publishing magazines then: Meic paid the magazine’s printing costs from his own pocket and sold copies around local pubs. Among the sixteen listed contributors in that first number we see Alison Bielski, Bryn Griffiths, Roland Mathias, Robert Morgan and Harri Webb, together with an obituary by Professor Gwyn Jones for one of the lost stars of Welsh writing in English, T Harri Jones, who had recently drowned in Australia.
The second number, ‘Autumn 1965’, includes poems from Dannie Abse, Anthony Conran and Leslie Norris, together with articles and reviews. The third, ‘Spring 1966’, features Raymond Garlick, John Tripp, Bobi Jones, Herbert Williams, Robert Morgan, Cyril Hodges. In ‘Summer 1966’, along with writers who were already regular contributors, we find Sally Roberts (Jones), John Ormond, Vernon Watkins, Bryn Griffiths, and the Welsh poets Euros Bowen and Gwyn Thomas. RS Thomas turns up in ‘Winter 1966’, Emyr Humphreys in ‘Spring 1967’, Peter Finch in ‘Summer 1968’.
The ripple was becoming a wave of some magnitude, or to put it another way, ‘the second flowering’ of Welsh writing in English had begun, and if we look back, we see that Meic Stephens, sadly no longer with us, was the initiator and vital facilitator of all that has followed, right up to this latest number of Poetry Wales, the magazine he launched in 1965.
Reflections at 60
