Symposium Organised by the Wales-Ireland Research Network, with the support of the Wales Remembers centenary programme and the Welsh Government
14 September 2016
Location: Room A14, Hugh Owen Building, Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Wales
Attendance is free but registration beforehand is essential. Contact:
history-enquiries@aber.ac.uk
(please put ‘1916 in Ireland and Wales’ in message title)
For more information, please click here to download the Programme.
Those familiar with The Modernist Society’s work in Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool and Birmingham will be interested to hear that a new Cardiff chapter is in the pipeline. The Modernist Society Cardiff will be open to any member of the public interested in modern architecture, art, design, literature and public space from 1900-1999. The group is planning a range of public events celebrating all things Modernist: those interested in attending or getting involved can sign up to the mailing list via http://www.modernist-society.org/cardiff.
24 to 27 June 2016, Aberdaron
The annual RS Thomas Literary Festival celebrates RS Thomas in the Welsh seaside town where he was vicar and wrote some of his best poetry.
The theme of the 2016 Festival is “Convergence of Creativity.” We will explore the influence of RS Thomas’s wife, Elsi Eldridge, an accomplished artist, on his work. We will also examine Thomas’s influence on other artists and how Thomas’s poetry was inspired by modern art.
The RS Thomas Literary Festival features the launch of the latest collection of unpublished Thomas poems, Too Brave to Dream. Presentations from three respected Thomas scholars, an evening concert in St. Hywyn’s Church, a walk through the landscape that inspired RS Thomas, poetry performances, an invitation to RS and Elsi’s studio, and an art exhibition complete the festival. This year we are also joined by the Coleridge in Wales project.
For more information, or to view the full festival programme, please visit https://rsthomaspoetry.co.uk/.
The artist and poet David Jones (1895-1974) considered The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to be ‘one of the great achievements of English poetry, and not only great but unique’.
In 1929 Jones made copper engravings for an illustrated edition of the poem, and these prints are displayed in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff this summer as a response to the Coleridge in Wales festival.
We are delighted that leading international authority on David Jones, Prof. Tom Dilworth has offered to give this illustrated lecture as part of the Coleridge in Wales journey, in association with Aberystwyth University’s David Jones Centre.
Discover how the illustrations by David Jones give fresh insight into the structure and interpretation of Rime of The Ancient Mariner.
For more information, or to book a ticket, please contact Luke Thurston (lut@aber.ac.uk).
Those attending the event may also be interested in a current exhibition at the National Library of Wales:
23 January – 30 July 2016
For centuries, Welsh poets and prose writers have depicted the experience of war, either by celebrating victories or mourning defeat. This exhibition focuses on four historic conflicts from the sixth to the seventeenth centuries – both battles and skirmishes. Poignant eyewitness accounts and later reactions by artists such as Aneirin and David Jones, Bleddyn Fardd and Gerallt Lloyd Owen will be shown alongside the narrative testimonies of contemporary and later chroniclers. Let the poets take you to Catraeth, Cilmeri, Bosworth and the Somme.
Parts of the manuscript of In Parenthesis will be on display alongside a fascinating range of other documents. For more information, please visit https://www.llgc.org.uk/collections/activities/exhibitions/words-of-war/
Image Copyright © 2016 Coleridge in Wales Festival. All rights reserved.
19th-21st April 2017, Cardiff University
Confirmed speakers include: Professor Edna Longley and Professor Lucy Newlyn
Call for Papers
Edward Thomas is a poet of retrospect. His poetry memorialises states of mind, people, and places. It also attempts to voice what is absolutely lost and what was never significant: ‘so many things I have forgot/ That once were much to me, or that were not’, he writes. Thomas also considers obscure futures for others and for himself. His poetry anticipates indifference as much as longevity when it asks what they will ‘do when I am gone?’: ‘they will do without me as the rain/ Can do without the flowers and the grass’.
What should we do with Thomas, whose reputation and writing is more present than ever? In 2017, we will mark the centenary of his death with a major conference at Cardiff University, where an important collection of Thomas’s manuscript materials and letters are held at SCOLAR. With the preparation of a major edition of his prose and with his acknowledged centrality to new forms of nature writing, study of Thomas is now rarely confined to any single aspect of his practice. We want to celebrate Thomas and approaches to his work in the fullest possible diversity.
A new exhibition at Cardiff University’s Special Collections and Archives explores David Jones’s work as a wood engraver. Curated by Prof. Judi Loach, School of History, Archaeology and Religion, the exhibition includes rare examples of his work for interwar private presses such as St. Dominic’s Press, Golden Cockerel Press and Gregynog Press.
For more information, and to see some of the images included in the exhibition, please visit the SCOLAR blog. The exhibition runs from 9 May – 29 July 2016.
