{"id":521,"date":"2013-03-07T11:42:59","date_gmt":"2013-03-07T11:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aber.ac.uk\/devolvedvoices\/?page_id=521"},"modified":"2013-03-07T11:42:59","modified_gmt":"2013-03-07T11:42:59","slug":"devolving-poetry-questions-directions","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.aber.ac.uk\/devolved-voices\/materials\/devolving-poetry-questions-directions\/","title":{"rendered":"Devolving Poetry: Questions, Directions"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a brief edited extract from a research paper that Matthew Jarvis gave to the Department of English & Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University on 24 October 2012. The passage presented here is part of his discussion about the decision to start the timeframe of the Devolved Voices project from 1997 (the year of Wales\u2019s devolution \u2018yes\u2019 vote) rather than 1999 (\u2018the date of the\u00a0actual creation<\/em>\u00a0of the National Assembly for Wales, following the first Assembly elections on May 6th of that latter year\u2019, as he put it earlier in his presentation).<\/strong><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Whilst it is demonstrably false to look at 1999 as constituting some sort of clear-cut starting-point for devolved existence, it is nonetheless the case that the 1997 vote to create the National Assembly for Wales ushered in something very new indeed. Writing in the volume\u00a0The Challenge to Westminster: Sovereignty, Devolution and Independence<\/em>, the historian Keith Robbins suggests that, in the period 1536\u201343, Wales was essentially incorporated into the English state \u2018before Wales had achieved what we might call the scaffolding of statehood\u2019.[1]<\/a>\u00a0As such, the striking opening contention of Robbins\u2019s essay is, quite simply, that \u2018The assembly [\u2026] which has now been set up in Cardiff\u00a0cannot be meaningfully said to have had a predecessor<\/em>\u2019.[2]<\/a>\u00a0Effectively \u2013 and pertinently by comparison with Scotland, for example \u2013 Robbins is suggesting that\u00a0the practical machinery of statehood<\/em>\u00a0is historically absent from Wales.
\nThe constitutional historian Vernon Bogdanor makes a similar point when he writes, in his landmark 1999 volume\u00a0Devolution in the United Kingdom<\/em>, that \u2013 historically speaking \u2013 \u2018Wales, unlike Scotland, did not enjoy those independent institutions which not only ensured separate treatment, but, more crucially, preserved the memory of independent statehood\u2019.[3]<\/a>\u00a0And he goes on to contend the following:<\/p>\n

\n

Welsh nationalism, lacking an institutional focus, had to build on less concrete\u00a0factors \u2013 language, religion, and culture. It was left to writers, poets, and preachers to create \u2018the cultural form, the tracery of a nation where no state had existed\u2019.<\/span>[4]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Now I must be clear about what I\u2019m getting at here: Bogdanor\u2019s analysis at this point isn\u2019t claiming that no Welsh\u00a0nation<\/em>\u00a0has existed, but rather that no Welsh\u00a0state<\/em>\u00a0has existed \u2013 and, in this respect, he is building on the distinction between what he describes as \u2018a nation which had succeeded in retaining the institutions of statehood and one which had not\u2019. In Marxist terms, perhaps somewhat unfortunately, this is the distinction between what are termed \u2018historic\u2019 as opposed to \u2018non-historic\u2019 nations.[5]<\/a>\u00a0Wales, for Bognador, then, belongs to the latter category, along with (to cite his two parallel examples) \u2018the Corsicans and the Bretons\u2019.[6]<\/a>
\nFor the \u2018Devolved Voices\u2019 project, then, 1997 is the starting-point because \u2013 and exactly because \u2013that is the point at which Wales commits itself to having precisely such \u2018institutions of statehood\u2019, at least to the extent that they were embodied in the initial Assembly. The \u2018yes\u2019 vote itself is a fundamental declaration of intent, which seemingly makes a profound impact on the sensibility of the nation. As Richard Wyn Jones and Roger Scully indicate in their fascinating study of the 2011 referendum, opposition to an elected body in Wales dropped sharply from 37% to 24% between 1997 and 1999 \u2013 only going down a further 7 points in the subsequent decade. In parallel, support for a parliament shot up 10 points in those same two years.[7]<\/a>\u00a0A striking change in sensibility, in other words, appears to have taken place in the post-vote, pre-Assembly period of 1997\u201399. Given such observations, there\u2019s no way \u2013 for our purposes as a project \u2013 that we could start from 1999, rather than 1997, in terms of thinking about poets who emerge within the devolutionary flux of the late 1990s.
\nAnd to step away from statistics for a moment, we need only turn to\u00a0Poetry Wales<\/em>\u00a0to get a sense of the 1997 vote being claimed as a sort of game-changer, and potentially a literary game-changer at that. Robert Minhinnick took over the editorship of\u00a0Poetry Wales<\/em>\u00a0in 1997. His first editorial \u2013 written in the immediate aftermath of the \u2018yes\u2019 vote \u2013 was appropriately entitled \u2018A Country That Said Yes\u2019.[8]<\/a>\u00a0Whilst acknowledging that \u2018The daily grind goes on\u2019 and observing that \u2018the measure of political power we have awarded ourselves would seem small beer to inhabitants of New Brunswick or Schleswig Holstein\u2019, Minhinnick nonetheless turns his argument in another direction:<\/p>\n

Yet very carefully, and with considerable reluctance, Wales is remaking itself. What changes this morning, imperceptibly but permanently, is a sense of a people\u2019s esteem for itself. With that must come tolerance \u2013 indeed, celebration \u2013 of the differences of others. Writers here should savour such things. And then be wary.<\/p>\n

Why \u2018wary\u2019? Well, Minhinnick goes on to urge that,\u00a0whatever<\/em>\u00a0the result of the referendum had been, there would be no future in what he calls \u2018the dour, regional introspection that underlies much art in this country\u2019. Rather, on the back of what he sees as the new potential for post-vote self-esteem, he urges Wales\u2019s writers to \u2018look at the wider world, read about it, and visit it. [\u2026] Then come back and for all our sakes share what has been discovered\u2019. In short, for Minhinnick, the new post-vote confidence should free our creative powers from naval-gazing and turn us outwards to the world.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n[1]<\/a>\u00a0Keith Robbins, \u2018Cultural Independence and Political Devolution in Wales\u2019, in H. T. Dickinson and Michael Lynch, eds,\u00a0The Challenge to Westminster: Sovereignty, Devolution and Independence<\/em>\u00a0(East Linton: Tuckwell, 2000), pp. 81\u201390: p. 82.\n<\/div>\n
\n[2]<\/a>\u00a0Ibid., p. 81; emphasis added.\n<\/div>\n
\n[3]<\/a>\u00a0Vernon Bogdanor,\u00a0Devolution in the United Kingdom<\/em>\u00a0(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 144. Bogdanor\u2019s quotation here is from key New Left thinker Tom Nairn, who was writing in\u00a0Planet\u00a0<\/em>in 1976.\n<\/div>\n
\n[4]<\/a>\u00a0Ibid.\n<\/div>\n
\n[5]<\/a>\u00a0Ibid.\n<\/div>\n
\n[6]<\/a>\u00a0Ibid.\n<\/div>\n
\n[7]<\/a>\u00a0Richard Wyn Jones and Roger Scully,\u00a0Wales Says Yes: Devolution and the 2011 Welsh Referendum\u00a0<\/em>(Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012), p. 68.\n<\/div>\n
\n[8]<\/a>\u00a0Robert Minhinnick, \u2018A Country That Said Yes\u2019,\u00a0Poetry Wales<\/em>, 33\/2 (October 1997), p. 2.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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This is a brief edited extract from a research paper that Matthew Jarvis gave to the Department of English & Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University on 24 October 2012. The passage presented here is part of his discussion about the decision to start the timeframe of the Devolved Voices project from 1997 (the year of … Continue reading “Devolving Poetry: Questions, Directions”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13396,"featured_media":0,"parent":17,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-521","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P9R2R9-8p","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.aber.ac.uk\/devolved-voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.aber.ac.uk\/devolved-voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.aber.ac.uk\/devolved-voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.aber.ac.uk\/devolved-voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.aber.ac.uk\/devolved-voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.aber.ac.uk\/devolved-voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/521\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.aber.ac.uk\/devolved-voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.aber.ac.uk\/devolved-voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}