Taking Flight: Translation, Dafydd and Dyfalu in Gwyneth Lewis’s Devolving Poetics

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

    Abstract

    Most kinds of expression deploy, if they don’t depend on, metaphor. This lightly comparative discussion of two very different Welsh poets mobilizes that recognition in the context of ongoing devolution in twenty-first-century Wales. The widely respected bilingual contemporary poet Gwyneth Lewis writes – to acclaim – in both of her native languages (Welsh and English). The works of her fourteenth-century Welsh poetic forebear Dafydd ap Gwilym were originally written, of course, in their author’s native Welsh. Until now, Lewis’s perhaps surprising habit has been to keep her own languages separate: her works have been written exclusively in one or the other and the versions which exist in both languages are invariably new productions rather than translations. This essay was sparked by her relatively recent decision to produce a translation of ap Gwilym’s works, in a radical departure from a practice she has fiercely defended in the past.
    The critic Jahan Ramazani argues that poetry ‘– a genre rich in paradox and multivalent symbols, irony and metaphor – is well-suited to mediating and registering the contradictions of split cultural experience’. Sifting the reasons for Lewis’s shift of linguistic mode in her response to ap Gwilym, the account examines its implications for her poetic practice as a whole, in the light of the cultural-political transitions which have marked life in Wales since the 1997 referendum.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationDevolutionary Readings
    Subtitle of host publicationEnglish Language Poetry and Contemporary Wales
    EditorsMatthew Jarvis
    Place of PublicationBern, Switzerland
    PublisherPeter Lang Publishing Group
    Chapter8
    Pages209-234
    Number of pages31
    ISBN (Electronic)978-1-78874-070-8, 978-1-78874-069-2, 978-1-78874-071-5
    ISBN (Print)978-3-0343-1975-1
    Publication statusPublished - 2017

    Publication series

    NameModern Poetry
    PublisherPeter Lang
    Volume10
    ISSN (Print)1661-2744

    Keywords

    • Gwyneth Lewis
    • Poetry
    • Dafydd ap Gwilym
    • Translation
    • Wales

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