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This is the first full-length scholarly study of the prize-winning poet Ruth Bidgood, a writer who is best known for her long-term literary engagement with the landscape and communities of the mid-Wales region she has made her home.
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Showcasing poems from her five earlier collections as well as an assortment of new poetry, this landmark collection celebrates one of Wales's most important and consistent poets, Ruth Bidgood. In addition to many of her most characteristic poems, including "Sheep in the Hedge," "At Strata Florida," and "Edward Bache," which reflect her often darkly suggestive and mysterious themes and evoke the storied landscape and history of mid-Wales, the anthology features a selection of Ruth Bidgood's more recent work. Among them are "Llanvetherine Angel," from her series about angels, "Bereft," an elegy to R. S. Thomas, and a persuasive group called "Riding the Flood."
With this publication, Bidgood's 70th birthday is celebrated. Chosen from her previous collections, many of which are now out of print, it also includes a generous selection of new work. Her continuing popularity is often attributed to her strong feeling for landscapes, the environment, and women's issues.
Symbols of Plenty is the tenth collection of verse by leading Anglo-Welsh poet Ruth Bidgood. It includes her Hymn to St Ffraid (Brigid), published here in its entirety for the first time. Weaving together the complex strands of myth and legend that surround this sixth century saint, it is an insightful and articulate statement of Celtic belief.
Welsh Gothic, the first study of its kind, introduces readers to the array of Welsh Gothic literature published from 1780 to the present day. Informed by postcolonial and psychoanalytic theory, it argues that many of the fears encoded in Welsh Gothic writing are specific to the history of Welsh people, telling us much about the changing ways in which Welsh people have historically seen themselves and been perceived by others. The first part of the book explores Welsh Gothic writing from its beginnings in the last decades of the eighteenth century to 1997. The second part focuses on figures specific to the Welsh Gothic genre who enter literature from folk lore and local superstition, such as the sin-eater, cŵn Annwn (hellhounds), dark druids and Welsh witches. Contents Prologue: ‘A Long Terror’ PART I: HAUNTED BY HISTORY 1. Cambria Gothica (1780s–1820s) 2. An Underworld of One’s Own (1830s–1900s). 3. Haunted Communities (1900s–1940s). 4. Land of the Living Dead (1940s–1997). PART II: ‘THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE CELTIC TWILIGHT’ 5. Witches, Druids and the Hounds of Annwn. 6. The Sin-eater Epilogue: Post-devolution Gothic Notes Select Bibliography Index
Based on the author's visit in 1965, this unique volume is written as a love letter to the mid-Wales county of Radnorshire. Within its autobiographical frame, this account covers the history and religious life of the area as reflected through its local writers and its adjacent townships, from 1176 to the present day. Exploring this fascinating location in detail, this investigation depicts its rural landscape as remote, wild, and renowned for shaping the lives of its inhabitants. Selecting key moments in its history--from the Middle Ages to the 21st century--this examination reviews the responses of writers as varied as Thomas Traherne, Bruce Chatwin, and Jean Jacques Rousseau. The result is a unique portrait of the county--what it is like to have lived there and to live there still--that captures the essence of a hidden part of Wales and Britain. Within this intriguing narrative, the various landscapes of borders--physical, emotional, and intellectual--from the author's own particular racial, religious, and spiritual identity are analyzed, forming a complementary exploration of the human condition.
Poetry, Geography, Gender examines how questions of place, identity and creative practice intersect in the work of some of Wales' best known contemporary poets, including Gillian Clarke, Gwyneth Lewis, Ruth Bidgood and Sheenagh Pugh. Merging traditional literary criticism with cultural-political and geographical analysis, Alice Entwistle shows how writers' different senses of relationship with Wales, its languages, history and imaginative, as well as political, geography feeds the form as well as the content of their poetry. Her innovative critical study thus takes particular interest in the ways in which author, text and territory help to inform and produce each other in the culturally complex and confident small nation that is twenty-first century Wales.
Inspired by the history and nature of the poet s region of mid-Wales, this collectionrecommended by the Poetry Book Societycommunicates an established voice of distinction and quiet authority and symbolizes a writing career that spans five decades. Reviving both personal memories and knowledge of the stories associated with a place, these exploratory and discursive narratives hint at a subtle, conspiratorial edge. Avoiding sentimentality but not sentiment, these observations engender joy, sorrow, and fear uncluttered by irony, depicting nature as not always a benign presence but also often inescapably dark and mysterious. Largely concerned with the fragility of the environment, this compendium illustrates the vanishing countryside as well as how it affects the world in general. Transcending the lyric and moving towards a more epic, multifaceted form, this is a portrait equal to the many experiences of the author s long life."
Whether dealing with Welsh physical landscape or the social landscape, or ranging over speculative questions of science, the precision of thought and language in these poems is always razor sharp; a lyricism that pushes at the boundaries of life.