There are two other dimensions of this new Welsh writing that deserve to be given full credit. One of these is an affinity with the wider movement in Wales towards a well-developed consciousness of our responsibilities to our environment. Undoubtedly, Wales is the most advanced quarter of the British Isles in this respect, being on the one hand at the forefront of experiment and new technology in designs for 'greener' living, while maintaining a clear hold on the vitality of folk and craft traditions in materials and art. Some sense of the intermingling of all of these impulses can be seen in Richard Gwyn's own beautifully-produced collection BEING IN WATER (Cardigan: Parthian, 2001). The book is illustrated with drawings by Spanish artist Lluís Peñaranda, all of which drawings act as a commentary on the poems, while inviting contemplation in their own right. Throughout there is a blend of the quotidian, the elemental and the symbolic, and overall I thought the concept of the collection very good. At times, the mix of veracity and imagination can make some poems feel almost prosy or over-extended, but many individual passages are marvelous, creating lines and images that demand to be re-read for sheer pleasure. My favourite piece, and one which might serve as an epigraph for the whole book, is a poem called 'Well-Shaft':
Above the village there's a disused well,/ a place where people started digging down/ in search of water. How far down it's difficult/ to say without descending deeper than I'd care to go./ One night a villager, driven by who knows which god,/ falls into the well, but lands on a ledge./ Badly bruised, no broken bones. Unable to scale/ the sheer walls, he sleeps, and while he sleeps./ he dreams about a woman made entirely of water./ His dream describes the contours of an impossible/ liaison, where flesh meets fluid, skin turns to scale. [...]
It is, all together, a handsome and thought-provoking collection, artistic and contemporary in its joining of anxiety and hopefulness.
The second dimension of Welsh writing I feel must be spoken of, is its capacity for unflattering and amused self-assessment. It's been said that maturity as an artist, or as a culture, comes when one can retail one's faults ironically without loss of face. My best example of this quality this month comes from an English poet living in Wales. Ann Drysdale's third collection, BACKWORK (Calstock: Peterloo Poets, 2002), is a consummate piece of writing, in that she achieves a kind of detachment in observation which, nevertheless, allows no room for the observer to exercise complacency. As she says in 'Welsh Now':
