My best writing however, comes from a place of contentment, a place in nature – a calm sort of high is what drives my pen. So as to mania and creativity, I would concur with Jeanette Winterson – in Why be Happy when you could be Normal? – that madness does not inspire, but that creativity is the means by which one defeats madness. Creativity was a slow ladder out of it all.
Glyn Edwards is a teacher in North Wales, an MA student at Manchester Metropolitan University and a graduate of The University of South Wales. He has guest-edited the poetry in the forthcoming 11th issue of The Lonely Crowd and co-edits ‘Cheval’, the anthology comprising entrees to the Terry Hetherington Prize for Young Writers. He is…
My most recent experience at that time is sleep, and the wild irrationality and emotional defencelessness of dreams. This is when my imagination is most vivid and my intelligence sharpest. That part of writing is almost invariable and I’m happy about it. I’m not so happy at all with how often I manage to make time to sift, type out, revise, sift again, arrange, and share. Life always seems to get in the way of those parts of the process.
I’ve known Susmita Bhattacharya for a couple of years now, and 2018 was particularly special as we both hadshort story collections published by Daliha Publishing (Subjunctive Moods for me and Table Manners for Susmita). I’m delighted to interview her and find out more about her experience of writing and publishing these pieces. Table Manners contains a number of prizewinning stories and is a…
John Freeman is a prize-winning poet and critic whose work has appeared in magazines and anthologies over several decades. His most recent books are What Possessed Me (Worple Press), and Strata Smith and the Anthropocene (Knives Forks and Spoons Press), both published in 2016. Earlier collections include A Suite for Summer (Worple), White Wings: New and Selected Prose Poems (Contraband Books), Landscape with Portraits (Redbeck…
Jonathan Edwards was born and brought up in Crosskeys, south Wales. He has an MA in Writing from the University of Warwick, has written speeches for the Welsh Assembly Government and journalism for The Big Issue Cymru, and currently works as an English teacher. He won the Terry Hetherington Award in 2010, was awarded a…
Christopher Meredith is the award-winning author of four novels and three collections of poetry, and also translates Welsh to English. His collection of short stories Brief Lives was published by Seren this summer. Glyn Edwards: How long did it take you to assemble the stories that comprise Brief Lives? Christopher Meredith: The final process of writing the…
Jo Mazelis Our interview with the inspirational Cardiff-based photographer continues… Jo Mazelis: Photographers like Andreas Gursky and Hannah Collins produce massive, almost life-size prints of their work to create images that are almost immersive — yet with most of humanity now seeing all images on their mobile phone screens do you think something has been lost…
Jo Mazelis Born in the Rhymney Valley in 1968, conceptual landscape photographer and photography writer Rob Hudson turns 50 this year. Now living in Cardiff he has developed a vision for landscape photography that embraces ecological concerns and seeks to develop our appreciation of our land through sharing ‘the stories we tell each other of…
Gary Raymond is a novelist, critic, editor and broadcaster. He is one of the founding editors of Wales Arts Review, and has been editor since 2014. His second novel The Golden Orphans was recently published by Parthian and chosen as Pick of the Week in The Bookseller. He is a widely published critic and cultural commentator, and is the…
Every piece of writing feeds into something else. The two poems here [in Issue 9] were written on the same day, which is most unusual for me. But nothing comes from nowhere. All writers are walking around with a headful of tunes. Sometimes you find the energy to write them down. I’ve been thinking about my ‘boots’ and that overgrown back lane for years. I owned a pair of Dakota boots in Saskatchewan and have written about those.
Because I think it an extraordinary place, the three miles between the mouths of the Cynffig and Ogwr are often where I locate my writing. And when you’ve been to Saddam Hussein’s Babylon or the old totalitarian squares of Tirana, you don’t need to invent new worlds because it’s already impossible to do those factual places justice…
Martina Evans grew up in County Cork and trained in Dublin as a radiographer before moving to London in 1988. She is the author of eleven books of poetry and prose. Bernard O’Donaghue has described her new book, Now We Can Talk Openly About Men, as ‘a remarkable document, a major work’. Here, our Editor, John Lavin, talks to…
John Lavin Nuala O’Connor is one of the most talented and prolific Irish writers of the new millennium, having published five short story collections, three novels and three poetry collections in little more than ten years. Joyride to Jupiter, her fifth short story collection, was published this year to considerable acclaim in Ireland and it…
Dan Coxon Ask five writers what it is that makes a great short story, and you’ll probably receive five different answers. Some will focus on form, others on characters, or plot. Some will be all about the language. If there’s one point that they’ll all agree on, it’s that a short story should be concise.…