The Forum section of the 1996 edition of the Yearbook of Welsh Writing in English offers an interesting vignette of the state of criticism of Welsh poetry in English: Patrick Crotty, exercising his rather sharp analysis, takes John Pikoulis to task for his damaging "praise-criticism" article on the poet Alun Lewis in the 1995 issue. "It is perhaps unfair," Crotty writes, after dissecting Pikoulis's praise of one of Lewis's poems, "to open a piece on Alun Lewis with a destructive reading of one of the most inept stanzas he ever published. My only defence is that such an approach is no more inimical to the poet's reputation than the undiscriminating praise which too often passes for criticism in Anglo-Welsh circles." Pikoulis responds in the same issue by expressing his regret that Crotty's article should have been published at all, and his equal regret that he should have to respond; he writes that he feels only diminished by association. He ignores entirely the central point that Crotty makes and devotes much of his rebuttal to the personal. "It is evident that Dr Crotty is unimpressed by views that are not his own," he claims, and accuses him of "a species of intra-Celtic condescension which holds that Welsh literature in English is inferior to Irish and Scottish literature..."

The problem with this over-ready praise for undeserving work has another undermining effect. For those who encounter Welsh poetry in English from outside, as I have done, there is a marked disparity between the way in which the poetry is presented and quality.

That "best English-language poetry" proved a great disappointment, and the discrepancy between the promise and the product drew attention to its poverty rather than serve as an inspiring introduction, the poetry hardly providing an incentive to look any further. However, the discrepancy intrigued me and I did read further. If it had been an isolated fault by a slightly over-zealous promoter of the culture, it would not need to be taken quite so seriously, but this praise and its dislocation from the work being praised is one I found reiterated in the criticism and in reviews. (The ratio of anthologies to criticism, at least until recently, rather highlights the same problem). This is evidently changing, and the Yearbook indicates that there is a growing body of sharp and interesting criticism, from which the work of such writers as M. Wynn Thomas and Francesca Rhydderch stand out, offering as they do a very rich cultural analysis, context and history. But with the exception of Patrick Crotty, there is apparently a dearth of writing that examines the function of criticism itself in Wales or that addresses itself - critically and rigorously - to the question of literary quality.

It is this context of language, politics and the quest for legitimacy that informs the development of the criticism that Crotty attacks and which Pikoulis defends. It is a shame that while the poetry, and the English-language culture from which it arises, seem to have outgrown this defensiveness, the criticism has for the most part not caught up, and is still busy staking out political positions.

The consequence of this continued reaction to the politics of the '60s and '70s is that in addition to the distancing from any political commitment, deep sentiment of any kind has also been suppressed. Whether the poetry carries what Glenda Beagan calls the "guilt-ridden melancholia" of work in the '70s and '80s, or the witty entertainment of the poetry of the '90s, the result is poetry that seriously lacks emotional depths. Beagan effectively sums up the content, motivation and tone of much of the work that Crotty dismisses, when she describes "the landscapes of nostalgia and stasis that have loomed large in the topography of Anglo-Welsh poetry" and running under the surface of the poet's consciousness, "those clustered associations which carry the force of another history, another culture, and, more poignantly and remotely, the language which should have been [one's] own."

To believe that poetry should engage deeply, or that the poet should engage with deeply felt experience, might well be seen as an anachronistic position to take, but I think it's viewed as anachronistic because of an unfortunate conflation of confessional poetry with engaged poetry - the former encouraged, nurtured, and thriving in the self-disclosure culture of creative writing workshops, and the latter somehow achieved through vision, hard work, passion and a particular kind of detachment. But the distinction between these different kinds of poetry is not something that gets much discussion in Wales, and the difference between skill and excellence none at all.

It is nevertheless repeated with the same suspicious frequency as the term "praise poetry" is trotted out about the poetry, or as often as the far more damning defining feature, repeated time and again, that Welsh poets in English write in accessible language. Whether a kind of egalitarianism really pertains or not, the fact that it is cited suggests at least that it is believed it ought to pertain.
In the same way, the frequency with which it is suggested that writers of Welsh poetry in English speak to each other serves as a powerful suggestion that they ought to. In such a situation, the idea of taking risks, of being compelled to use form or idiom which is made imperative by the subject matter rather than by social expectation, is actively discouraged, and the expectation to write accessibly becomes a creative straitjacket. I wonder if anyone was as enraged as I by the patronage in Dannie Abse's claim that in Twentieth Century Anglo-Welsh Verse "readers are likely to discover that these poems prove to be accessible for, generally, the Welsh poet with his sense of community, while recognising that the language of poetry differs from the language of logic, acknowledges his or her duty to communicate person to person." Whether true or not, belief in this accessible egalitarianism, publicly acceded to and reiterated, seems to have resulted in confusion between equality and homogeneity. This confusion suggests one of the many reasons why criticism seems unable or unwilling to distinguish between mediocrity and excellence.
In this context, asking questions about quality involves taking the desperate risk of incurring charges of elitism and conoisseurialism.

While the reactionary shadow of Harold Bloom rather looms in the background whenever this question of quality arises, there are other approaches to the question than conservative conoisseurialism on the one hand and uncritical cultural relativity on the other. What those approaches might be in Wales, and what Wales might offer other cultures in this regard have not yet been developed.

This defensiveness precludes the gift that can be offered by constructive criticism. Good criticism doesn't simply dismiss poor work but asks for something better because the critic believes something better is possible. Welsh poetry in English has the potential to offer something unique and particular to the world, and it desperately needs a critic willing to venture out into the mined No Man's Land of quality that has been left by post-modern criticism - a critic who can clear a path here in the particular context of Wales. He or she may well be accused of nefarious motives, but ultimately a courageous criticism would allow Welsh poets writing in English to create excellent work, would allow Welsh culture to be enriched, and the poetry to be accurately represented both within Wales and to the world outside.