by Gregg Hill, Planet 161

Welsh Writing in English is poorly served by the education system in Wales. Here Greg Hill examines the problem and suggest some possible solutions

The Streets and the Stars, an anthology of writing from Wales, was published in 1992 by Seren Books as a “secondary English text”. It came complete with a teaching plan, assignments and discussion points and was marketed as a GCSE resource book. Competently put together by John Davies and Melvyn Jones it both addressed the needs of school teachers for a focused collection of writing suitable for the classroom and also potentially introduced the work of Welsh writers, including some Welsh-language writing in translation, to teenagers in Welsh schools. No doubt it was used for this purpose by a small band of informed and dedicated teachers. Beyond that, doubt is all we can be sure of. Whether at school or university level, individuals have managed to keep a candle burning here and there, and occasionally to light a beacon bright enough to ensure that some serious work is done. But it can hardly be said that the study of writing from Wales permeates the teaching of English at any level of education in Wales.

So what do we need? More texts? Prescriptive syllabus specifications? More support materials? A look at what has already been done might suggest answers to these questions. It might, for instance, be thought that there is no shortage of texts. Both original work and classic reprints have benefited from subsidies making publication possible where large, or even moderate, sales could not be guaranteed. So the texts are available? Well, yes and no. Take the case of Glyn Jones. When his novel The Island of Apples appeared on the A-Level syllabus there would, presumably, have been an arrangement with the University of Wales Press to keep it in print while it remained a set text. Even so, no paperback was available when it was first set and the press agreed to make the hardback available for the price of the paperback. That was, perhaps, no more than a problem of timing and once published the paperback has remained both in print and on the new WJEC A2 syllabus. In addition to this republication we have definitive editions of Glyn Jones’s complete poems, complete short stories and a re-publication (promoted by the Association for Welsh Writing in English) of his work of critical autobiography The Dragon Has Two Tongues. How long these works will remain in print is anyone’s guess, but university libraries that have placed multiple copies on their shelves will, at the very least, be able to refer students to his work. For schools, or the general reader, however, access to texts other than The Island of Apples might be difficult. Certainly none of his other novels will be accessible except in libraries holding copies of the original editions. There are useful selections of his work. In 1988 Poetry Wales Press, as it was then, published a Selected Poems, which is still available from Seren Books. In 1994 Gomer published Goodbye What Were You?, a selection of poems, short stories, essays and occasional writing by the author. A few years ago remaindered copies of Goodbye What Were You? turned up in an Aberystwyth bookshop specializing in such things. I put it on the reading list for a course I was teaching and directed students to this bargain buy. By the following year they had all gone and the reading list instead directed students to the library copy. Such is the ephemeral nature of the availability of texts.