Journal articles on the topic 'Welsh poets'

This article considers why bilingual poets from medieval Wales exploited their various languages as avenues of creativity. It discusses five poems from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that synthesize Welsh and either English or Latin to varying degrees. The article untangles the conscious and often complex linguistic integration, using the term 'extralinguistic bilingualism' to do so with two exclusively English poems that nonetheless use Welsh strict metre and 'orthography'. One of these is a series of once anonymous English englynion recently found to be the work of prolific poet Tudur Aled, who flourished in the last quarter of the fifteenth century and the first quarter of the sixteenth century. By examining the poems in tandem and contextualizing their apparent isolation within Wales's contemporary linguistic landscape and within the phenomena of multilingual poetry, Marian lyrics and 'aureate' diction, the impetus behind their curious hybridity is queried. It is argued that comedy, piety and literary craft are key considerations, and that all are connected by an overarching concern for relative linguistic prestige: the perceived divergence between the social and literary status of each language.

Born in a family of mixed linguistic heritage in a industrial village in north-east Wales, Grahame Davies found himself – thanks to a crucial meeting with a charismatic teacher – learning his poetic craft in the Welsh-speaking tradition. While working as a journalist in newspapers and later in broadcasting, he became one of his country’s most prominent poets and authors, later developing an international reputation as a librettist for classical composers. In this piece he reflects on the transmission mechanisms of individual and communal creativity, the varying status of poets in Welsh and English-language culture, the challenges and opportunities of working in joint artistic and professional enterprises, and on the delicate, but often hugely rewarding, process of working with audiences and with those who commission artistic works.

Welsh personal names sometimes present the indexer with problems not encountered when dealing with English names. The Welsh patronymic system of identity is the most obvious; this was normal in the Middle Ages, and traces of its usage survived into the mid-nineteenth century. Patronymics have since been revived as alternative names in literary and bardic circles, while a few individuals, inspired by the precedents of history, are today attempting to use them regularly in daily life. Other sorts of alternative names, too, have been adopted by writers, poets, artists and musicians, to such effect that they are often better known to the Welsh public than the real names. A distinctive pseudonym has a special value in Wales, where a restricted selection of both first names and surnames has been the norm for the last few centuries. Apart from the names themselves, there is in Welsh a linguistic feature which can be disconcerting to those unfamiliar with the language: the ‘mutation’ or changing of the initial letter of a word in certain phonetic and syntactic contexts. This can also occur in place-names, which were discussed by the present writer in The Indexer 15 (1) April 1986. Some of the observations made there about the Welsh language will be relevant here also.

Two desiderata in Medieval Studies continue to be rather troublesome because they have not been tackled effectively by many scholars. First, most of us are not familiar with medieval Welsh language and literature; second, we are still rather uncertain about the actual contribution by women to medieval poetry, for instance. But our Welsh colleagues have already determined for quite some time that the late medieval Gwerful Mechain was a powerful voice and offered many intriguing perspectives as a woman, addressing also sexuality in a rather shockingly open manner. She was the daughter of Hywel Fychan from Mechain in Powys in north-east Wales. She lived from ca. 1460 to ca. 1502 and was a contemporary of the major Welsh poets Dafydd Llwyd and Llywelyn ap Gutyn. She might have been Dafydd’s lover and she certainly exchanged poems with Llywelyn. Not untypically for her age, which the present editor and translator Katie Gramich observes with strange surprise, Gwerful combined strongly religious with equally strongly erotic—some would say, pornographic—poetry. Gramich refers, for instance, to the Ambraser Liederbuch, where we can encounter a similar situation, but it seems unlikely that she has any idea what this songbook was, in reality (there are no further explanations, comments, or references to the relevant scholarship). She also mentions Christine de Pizan, who was allegedly “forced to take up the pen” (10), which appears to be a wrong assessment altogether. There is no indication whatsoever that Gramich might be familiar with the rich research on late medieval continental and English women writers, but this does not diminish the value of her translation.

This essay focuses on André du Bouchet (1924–2001) and Heather Dohollau (1925–2013), a Welsh poet who lived most of her life in France and is only published in French. Poised as they are between French and English, these poets are uniquely placed to participate in current reassessments of language and bilingualism. Both poets were translators and relied on the experience of linguistic defamiliarization in their poetic practice. They view poetry as the translation of a language into, and out of, itself. By drawing attention to language in its materiality, and to the poem as a visual form, their poetics of ‘difficulty’ (Dohollau) or ‘surprise’ (du Bouchet) compels the Francophone reader to adopt a foreign perspective on his or her own language. Poetry is thus reinvented as the idiome dreamt of by Derrida: a defamiliarizing other language, potentially able to translate otherness in its own terms.

This article explores how Dylan Thomas's engagement with radio created an innovative collaborative radio poetic. Thomas contributed many broadcast essays and features to the Third Programme, the Home Service, the Welsh Home Service and the Eastern Service. Scholars have also long been aware of Thomas's important creative relationship with BBC producers such as Douglas Cleverdon (who produced Under Milk Wood). Yet there remains little analysis of his features for radio. Drawing on archival memos from the BBC's Literary Output Committee (held at the BBC's Written Archives in Caversham), this article initially considers the institutional relationship between poets and the BBC during the 1940s. Against this institutional backdrop, it then focuses on a specific 1947 BBC feature that Thomas wrote about post-blitz Swansea: ‘Return Journey to Swansea’. Examining the history and practicalities of the collaboration involved between Thomas and the producer P. H. Burton, the discussion links the feature's social commentary to the audio radio poetic collaboratively created between poet, broadcast institution, producer, and medium.

The paper presents a modified three-level model of possible relations between different cultures proposed by W. Welsh. There have been outlined multicultural, intercultural and transcultural aspects of such relations. The model is exemplified by the translations of Bohdan Kravtsiv. Life circumstances forced Kravtsiv to leave Ukraine and spend his life abroad. He had to work on his translations in different countries and cultures. Just like other cultures influenced his way of thinking, life experience and poetic creativity, due to his political, social, poetic, and translation activities, he himself influenced the cultures he was immersed in and where he was involved in the creative activity. Remoteness from Ukraine did not make the poet and translator break off his relations with his home country. In the Diaspora he did his best to help Ukrainians, replenish the poetic translations of the Ukrainian literature, retain memories of the repressed poets, enrich Ukrainian cultural heritage (transcultural aspect). The language personality of Bohdan Kravtsiv as a translator is considered in terms of his translations of Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry. The structure of the language personality of the translator encompasses verbal, cognitive and pragmatic-motivational levels. The paper focuses on the analysis of Kravtsiv’s translations of Rilke's poems into Ukrainian. It has revealed Kravtsiv’s brilliant mastery of the poetic word. The translations of Rilke's poems performed by Kravtsiv testify to the translator's efforts to remain faithful to the form and content of the original. In spite of the different morphological and phonetic structures of German and Ukrainian, he succeeded in most cases. The translator’s individual style is marked by concise and euphonious translations, multiple new coinages and in-depth knowledge of the original works.

The paper examines the poetry of Lynette Roberts (1909-1995), one of the most significant but little-studied authors of the late modernism era. A native of Argentina and Welsh by birth, in the 1940s, Roberts carried out a creative experiment, trying to reconstruct the Welsh heritage in her lyrical poetry based not only on traditional myth, but also on direct personal experience. This project resulted in the 1944 collection “Poems” analyzed in the paper. The aim of the research is to determine the specifics of Roberts’s 1940s poetry in the context of the poet’s search for her national identity. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the research is the first Russian work to provide a brief overview of the poet’s biography and writings. It is the first time that the key features of Roberts’s poetics have been identified by analysing the most significant texts from her 1944 collection “Poems”. The research findings showed that there is an unusual synthesis of the modernist and the traditional folk perception of reality in Roberts’s poems. The dual nature of the persona’s view is also explained by her contradictory position: she is inside the Welsh tradition as its heir, but at the same time, she observes it from the outside as a person belonging to a different culture.

A hitherto undeciphered englyn in the early fourteenth-century Hendregadredd Manuscript is here edited and argued to contain a reference to an incident involving a wolf attacking sheep. The englyn is probably contemporary with the writing and provides rare evidence for the survival of the wolf in Wales in this period.<br/> The Hendregadredd Manuscript (Aberystwyth, NLW MS 6680B) of medieval Welsh court poetry was first compiled around 1300 and supplemented through the first quarter of the fourteenth century. These two strata represent stages in the creation of the book which, as Daniel Huws argued, probably took place in the Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida in Ceredigion. Soon afterwards, the remaining blank spaces in the book were filled with miscellaneous poems in a number of often informal hands: this phase constitutes the 'third stratum' in Huws's analysis. As much of the material in this stratum relates to Ieuan Llwyd of Glyn Aeron, not far from Strata Florida, it is generally assumed that the book had now left the scriptorium where it was made and had become the property of Ieuan. At his home it was used to record poems of various kinds, most likely by poets who visited the house, over an extended period. This is suggested not merely by the variety of the poems themselves but by the fairly informal nature of the writing, which contrasts with the neat scriptorium work of the first and second strata, around which these pieces were fitted.<br/> This article concerns one of these pieces added as part of the third stratum. On fol.95v, inserted between two poems from the earlier strata of writing, is a single englyn. The hand of the inserter is called 'k' by Daniel Huws and he did not identify it anywhere else in the book. 3 The text was transcribed in the notes to the diplomatic edition of the manuscript, where it is given as follows:<br/> Gwladeid oed yr lleidrvleid llwyt gwlangach cadyr vwbach coet da[ ]feit m[ ]rnddel demyl waet dena vu gwr yneveit.<br/> The poem was noted as an 'englyn proest anghyflawn' in the edition of poems from the third stratum of the Hendregadredd Manuscript by Ann Parry Owen and Dylan Foster Evans, and it was not edited there or discussed any further, presumably because the text was too incomplete to be interpreted.<br/> Now that there is a digital facsimile of the manuscript available online, it is possible to make another attempt to read the whole englyn. The writing is fairly legible on the whole but faded in places, and as there is so little of it, it is difficult to find comparanda for all the letter-shapes. Nevertheless, the previous transcript secured the first half of the stanza and some of the second and proved a great help to me in finishing the job. Below I provide a new transcript and edition.

At Aristophanes, Equites 230–2, one of the slaves who speak the prologue informs the audience that, when the Paphlagonian (i.e. Kleon) appears onstage, his mask will not resemble him, for the σκεϒoπoιoí (‘stage-property manufacturers’ vel sim.) were afraid to make one that depicted him accurately. In an important article, K. J. Dover argued that it must in fact have been very difficult to create easily recognizable portrait-masks, and suggested that the joke in Eq. 230–2 may be that the Paphlagonian's mask is horribly ugly but allegedly still nowhere near ugly enough. In response, D. Welsh, following an anonymous ancient commentator on Lucian, argued that Cratinus fr. 228 K-A shows that the historical Kleon had strikingly unattractive eyebrows. Had anyone wished to caricature the demagogue's physical appearance, therefore, he coule easily have done so, and portrait-masks may not have been so uncommon after all. Welsh's argument is at first glance quite appealing, and has been endorsed without further comment or argument by Sommerstein and Storey. I suggest, however, that the ancient commentator was confused, and that Cratinus’ remark is much more easily explained by reference to what is known about the use of facial expression as a communicative strategy in classical and early Hellenistic Athens, particularly as it appears in the comic poets. Kleon's eyebrows were probably no more ugly than those of anyone else, although he may have used them in an offensive way, and as Dover saw long ago, Eq. 230–2 cannot be taken as evidence for the use of portrait-masks on the late 5th-century comic stage.

abstract: The term ymddiddan has been used by editors and scholars to refer to a body of medieval Welsh poetry usually containing or composed of dialogue. This paper begins by addressing the use and misuse of the term, assessing the meaning of ymddiddan and demonstrating how editors' application of the term to titles of poems that are frequently untitled in their manuscript context has shaped perceptions of a genre of medieval Welsh dialogue poetry. Arguments about the performance of ymddiddanau made in connection with evidence from prose tales such as Owein are also considered. The rest of the paper seeks to reach an understanding of the nature of medieval Welsh dialogue poetry by analyzing the poems themselves. For this, the Black Book of Carmarthen (NLW Peniarth MS 1) is used to provide parameters for investigation. Not only do the poems in this manuscript have a concrete historical connection, but the high proportion of them that have been designated as ymddiddan means that the Black Book scribe's idiosyncrasies and editorial decisions may have impacted our understanding of the corpus. With the form and features of dialogue poems clarified, the issue of a genre is re-evaluated. The results of this study form the basis of a sister article, in which the most famous Welsh dialogue poem, Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin , is tested against the definition of dialogue poetry established here.

A. M. ‘Donald’ Allchin (1930–2010) worked at Pusey House, Oxford, in the 1960s before serving as a Residentiary Canon at Canterbury Cathedral (1973–87). This article reflects his love of the influential poetry of the craggy Welsh poet and Anglican priest R. S. Thomas (1913–2000). Allchin taught himself Welsh by following the daily liturgical readings in Welsh and was fascinated by Celtic culture and ritual and Eastern Orthodoxy, writing a number of devotional books. Editor.

The article analyses one of the rare introductory works of Polish literature for a Welsh audience, i.e. the book Bannau Llên Pwyl ‘Highlights of Polish Literature’ produced by the Welsh scholar Thomas Hudson-Williams in 1953. First of all, astonishment is expressed, that there are only very few such works given the long record of massive immigration of Poles to Wales. Secondly, the work itself is analysed regarding its contents. As a result, a highly subjective approach to the literary works of Polish literature with clear emphasis on Romanticism can be noticed. In addition, most of the works selected seem to focus on what the target audience would supposedly like best. Considering the presentation of nearly all Polish titles in Welsh and a complete lack of any references, as well as the invention of titles for selected lines of poems, the specific character of Poland’s literature is hidden rather than promoted. In addition, in case potential Welsh readers were further interested in Polish literature and would have liked to read more from it, he or she would have had tremendous difficulties in finding out what to look for and how to get hold of the poems and prose works in question. Therefore, what is called, ‘The Highlights of Polish literature’ and which promised to be a nice surprise and an urgently needed book at the time turned out to be disappointment. Consequently, the question is posed, whether discovering a culture in rather a second-hand manner accounts for the problems outlined. Moreover, considering the insufficiencies of this overview, a more objective, updated work aimed at featuring culture-specific aspects of Polish literature is demanded.

The subject of the study is the real and probable connections of Aquitanian (and in particular Poitevin) poetry of the High Middle Ages with the traditions of early Medieval Celtic (and in particular Welsh) literature. A narrower topic of research was the influence of Welsh poems in the form of Englyns on the early samples of Guillaume IX's poetry, primarily in the early forms of englyn milwr and englyn penfyr. An additional subject of research was the metric features of these early forms of Englyns. At the same time, a broader topic of research was the topic of the possible origin of exact rhymes in continental poetry of all subsequent historical periods from an ancient Welsh poetic source. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that, firstly, within its framework, for the first time in European literary studies, specific features of the metrics of early Welsh Englyns were considered, and secondly, for the first time in poetry, a hypothesis was presented about a possible Welsh source of the origin of the exact rhymes of the poetry of the troubadours and their followers, and this hypothesis was confirmed by separate historical and literary facts, as well as general directions of work with her were indicated. Important conclusions of the author are: 1) the hypothesis about the Welsh origin of European rhymes was considered against the background of the "Arabic" and "Latin" hypotheses and found no less consistent, 2) the considered early samples of Welsh Englyns demonstrated a much greater looseness of the meter than the researchers who wrote about them imagined, exact metric formulas for each of the two mentioned early forms were established, and with the help of these formulas, the non-syllabic character of the early Englins was proved.

Abstract: In a collection of essays, thirteen writers discuss texts from medieval Britain and beyond, the common theme being translation or events abroad. Helen Fulton describes manuscripts and libraries in Wales; Elena Parina, Welsh medical texts; Victoria Flood, English Tudor versions of Welsh political prophecies. Joanna Bellis sets out Latin propaganda poems of the Hundred Years’ War; Rory McTurk, possible links between Langland and skaldic verse. Then come four studies relating to Ireland. Erich Poppe takes on the Charlemagne legend in Irish; Aisling Byrne, Irish texts on the Crusades; Mariamne Briggs, Statius in Irish; Julie Leblanc, legends in Irish about Aeneas. After that, four contributions on Iceland. Mathias Egeler surveys Otherworld islands in Norse, includ­ing the Land of Women; Sif Rikhardsdottir explores emotive literary identity in the Old North; Sarah Bacchianti analyzes Norse translations of Geoffrey of Monmouth; Sabine Heidi Walther examines the personality of Hercules in the Old Norse saga of Troy.

The Book of Taliesin (now at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth) is a fourteenth-century manuscript of Welsh poetry, with some of its material going back to the late sixth century. But it includes poems of later date. Amongst them are three political prophecies: 'Taliesin's Verdant Song'; 'The Contention of Gwynedd and Deheubarth'; 'A Short Poem About Lludd's Discussion'. The first two are of the tenth century, the last of the eleventh. What follows deals with place-names in each. The first can be shown to allude to the English victory over Vikings and Scots at Brunanburh, near Durham, in 937. It is therefore somewhat later, of the period 940 to 987, and not of before 937, as has been thought. The second, dated to 942 x 960, is a polemic by a poet of Gwynedd or north-west Wales against the men of Deheubarth or southern Wales. Its author makes mocking reference to places which can be identified as in North Britain or on the Welsh border: even if Gwynedd's enemies flee there, they will not escape vengeance. Of most interest to Spanish readers is the third text. Its obscure references to enemies will be to Arab and Berber invaders of Andalusia in 1086, after which Alphonso vi appealed for international help. The poem can hence be dated to 1087 or 1088, and will be the earliest reference to Spain in Welsh poetry.

This essay explores modernism's aesthetic and political implications through examining the works of Humphrey Jennings. The essay takes as a starting point the tension inherent to the democratic aesthetic of Mass Observation between the individual observers and the editors who write up. This tension can be effectively examined in terms of what Jacques Rancière calls ‘film fables’: the Aristotelian ‘fable’ of dramatic action and cinema's ‘fable’ of egalitarian treatment of ‘passive’ images. The essay argues that the paradox between the two ‘fables’ can be observed in Jennings's works, especially in his essays on Thomas Gray, his ‘report’ poems, and The Silent Village (1943), a dystopian propaganda film set in a Welsh village invaded by Nazis Germany. By looking at these works, the essay illustrates how the utopian longing for ‘pure art’ in modernism is related to the impossible idea of ‘democracy’.

This essay uses Samuel Johnson's characterization of Gaelic culture as an essentially airborne phenomenon as the starting point for a wide-ranging consideration of the links between atmospheric and Celtic discourses during the Romantic era. This period has been deemed foundational to the literary ‘appearance’ of air and the conceptual formation of Celticity, but these two cultural phenomena have rarely been considered in tandem. Beginning with a discussion of the atmospheric ideas that underpin the Poems of Ossian's infamous mists, the essay argues that critics have largely ignored the complexity of Macpherson's medicalized ecologies of air. The essay then moves on to consider the development of comparable cloudy symbolism during the Welsh cultural revival of the 1790s, when overcast skies became an organising metaphor used to express the cultural benightedness of Wales. The often-unexamined cliché of ‘Celtic mistiness’ is revealed as a vital metaphor for the allure and imperfection of intercultural mediation.

In 2003, Martin Rees referred to the present as “mankind’s final century.” A few years later, Slavoj Žižek wrote that humankind is heading towards “apocalyptic zero-point,” when the ecological crisis will most probably lead to our complete destruction. In his 2017 collection, Diary of the Last Man, Welsh poet Robert Minhinnick offers readers a meditation upon Earth at a liminal moment—on the brink of becoming completely unpopulated. Imagining a solitary human being, living in the midst of environmental collapse, Minhinnick yet entwines different voices—human and non-human—operating across vast spans of time. The speaker of the poems moves freely through different geographies and cultural contexts, but the voice that starts and ends the journey, seems to be the voice of the poet himself: he is the last man on earth, a survivor of ecological disaster. The paper discusses Minhinnick’s collection as a projection of the world we now inhabit into a future where it will exist only in the form of nostalgic memories. The analysis focuses on the role of objects in the construction of the world-within-the poem, where the fragments of human civilization are being claimed by forces of the environment—engulfing sand, progressive erosion—forming a retrospective vision of our “now” which will inevitably become our “past.”

abstract: The first poem in the Black Book of Carmarthen (NLW Peniarth MS 1) is known as Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin 'The dialogue between Merlin and Taliesin'; YMTh), a title which appears neither in the manuscript nor in later medieval copies of the poem. Nevertheless, YMTh is consistently treated as a dialogue poem and is frequently invoked as exemplifying the genre of medieval Welsh dialogue poetry. Resting on an analysis of that poetry presented in a sister article, this paper re-evaluates YMTh and argues that it is not a dialogue poem at all. The rubrication of YMTh in the manuscript gives the work the façade of a dialogue which, once dismantled, reveals the text to be a composite comprised of two distinct poems. These are edited separately at the end of the paper, following a diplomatic text. Neither poem was a dialogue, but the naming of Myrddin and Taliesin in the final lines of the second either inspired the conversion of the composite text into a dialogue or reinforced the belief that it was one, probably under the influence of the conversation between these characters in the Vita Merlini . The evidence of a composite poem converted into an ymryson in the Hendregadredd Manuscript (NLW MS 6680B) supports the argument presented here, demonstrating that this type of scribal editorial activity is not unique to YMTh. The later copies and afterlife of YMTh are briefly discussed in an .

Abstract Validated therapies for older pts with AML could rely on intensive or low-intensity strategies. Patient selection for these options remains controversial. There is currently no validated biomarker which can been used to guide therapeutic decision. TP53 mutations which are known to negatively impact AML pts outcome when treated with ICT, have been recently described as a positive prognosis factor for blast clearance with a 10-days regimen of decitabine (Welch, NEJM 2016). To date, it remains unclear whether AML pts with TP53 mutation represent a clinically homogeneous group. Several classification systems of p53 mutant, derived from in vitro or in vivo data, have been validated in solid tumors and aggressive lymphomas as predictors of p53 mutant functional impact or patient outcome. We retrospectively evaluated the impact of TP53 mutational status on the outcome of a real-world cohort of pts, treated frontline with standard doses of azacitidine (AZA). We further hypothesized that functional characterization of TP53 mutations could define a subgroup of pts with specific outcome with AZA From Jan 2007 to Dec 2016, we identified 279 AML pts enrolled in the regional cancer network ONCOMIP registry, treated frontline with AZA. Median age was 76 yrs (45-93), karyotype was adverse in 135 pts (49.1%), including 54 pts with -17 or del17p (19.4%). AML was secondary to MDS in 71 pts (25.4%), to MPN in 24 (8.6%) and therapy related in 46 pts (16.5%). Pts received a median of 6 cycles (1-67). Overall, 54 pts obtained CR/CRi (19.4%) and median OS was 10.6 months (95%CI ,9.7-12.1). For 224 pts with an available bone marrow baseline DNA sample, TP53 mutations were screened with next-generation sequencing on an Illumina® MiSeq sequencer. Sequencing results were filtered with the IARC TP53 mutations database and a variant allele frequency (VAF) >10%, strengthening the specificity of the data of this cohort. Of the 224 analyzed cases, 55 cases (24.6%) contained TP53 mutations. Response rates did not significantly differ between TP53mut (21.8% CR/CRi) and TP53wt (17.8% CR/CRi, p=.50) nor between pts with TP53mut and/or -17/del17p (19.1% CR/CRi) and pts without TP53 abnormality (18.6%CR/CRi, p=.93). Median OS was 7.9 months in pts with TP53mut and 12.6 months in TP53wt (p<.0001). With regards to the group of 109 pts with adverse karyotype, response rates did not significantly differ between TP53mut pts (20.8% CR/CRi) and TP53wt (14.3%, p=.37) and median OS was 7.9 months for TP53mut pts versus 9.6 for TP53wt pts (p=.02) Among the 55 pts with TP53mut, 53pts had adverse cytogenetics (96.4%), 16 pts had secondary AML to MDS or MPN (29.1%) and 13 had t-AML (23.6%). This subgroup included 49 cases (89%) with single TP53 mutation (missense n=42, nonsense n= 3, frameshift n=4) and 6 cases (11%) with 2 mutations (2 pts with missense and frameshift mutations and 4 pts with 2 missense mutation). We further characterized TP53mut pts with 3 validated classification systems. Due to dominant negative effect of TP53 mutation, for pts with >1 TP53 mutation, we selected the mutation with the predicted highest impact: 15 pts had disruptive mutations (i.e. missense mutation in L2/L3 helix of the DNA binding domain or truncating mutation) versus 40 pts with non-disruptive mutations (Poeta M, NEJM 2007), which was not associated with clinical response (25% in CR/CRi vs 27.9% in failure; p=1.00) nor with 6mOS (46.7% vs 55%, respectively; p=.79)Mutant p53 transactivation activity assessed with a 0-100 evolutionary score (Neskey D, Cancer Research 2015), was not associated with response (median score of 79.3[28-90] in CR/CRi vs 73.3 [49-96] in failure, p=1.00) nor with OS (HR 1.01; 95% CI, 0.99-1.03, p=.51).Relative fitness score (on a log2 scale) which was recently reported as a proxy of p53 mutant in vitro and in vivo cell proliferation advantage (Kotler E, Molecular cell 2018) was not associated with response (median score in CR/CRi of 0.094 [-0.79-0.58] vs 0.094 [-2.52-0.84] in failure, p=.68) nor with OS (HR 0.75; 95% CI, 0.45-1.22, p=.24) Overall, the response rate was not influenced by the TP53mut status, but median OS was negatively impacted by the TP53mut status in the entire cohort and in the sub-group of pts with adverse karyotype. None of the mutant p53 classification systems validated in other neoplasms succeed in identifying a subset of AML pts who specifically benefit from AZA suggesting a rather homogenous functional impact of TP53 mutations in this setting Disclosures Fornecker: Takeda: Honoraria; Servier: Honoraria.

A Rooted Man and a Sacred PoetBy Viggo MortensenA Review of A.M. Allchin: N.F.S. Grundtvig. An Introduction to his Life and Work. With an afterword by Nicholas Lossky. 338 pp. Writings published by the Grundtvig Society, Århus University Press, 1997.Canon Arthur Macdonald Allchin’s services to Grundtvig research are wellknown to the readers of Grundtvig Studier, so I shall not attempt to enumerate them. But he has now presented us and the world with a brilliant synthesis of his studies of Grundtvig, a comprehensive, thorough and fundamental introduction to Grundtvig, designed for the English-speaking world. Fortunately, the rest of us are free to read as well.It has always been a topic of discussion in Denmark whether Grundtvig can be translated, whether he can be understood by anyone except Danes who have imbibed him with their mother’s milk, so to speak. Allchin is an eloquent proof that it can be done. Grundtvig can be translated and he can be made comprehensible to people who do not belong in Danish culture only, and Allchin spells out a recipe for how it can be done. What is required is for one to enter Grundtvig’s universe, but to enter it as who one is, rooted in one’s own tradition. That is what makes Allchin’s book so exciting and innovative - that he poses questions to Grundtvig’s familiar work from the vantage point of the tradition he comes from, thus opening it up in new and surprising ways.The terms of the headline, »a rooted man« and »a sacred poet« are used about Grundtvig in the book, but they may in many ways be said to describe Allchin, too. He, too, is rooted in a tradition, the Anglican tradition, but also to a large extent the tradition taken over from the Church Fathers as it lives on in the Orthodox Church. Calling him a sacred poet may be going too far.Allchin does not write poetry, but he translates Grundtvig’s prose and poetry empathetically, even poetically, and writes a beautiful and easily understood English.Allchin combines the empathy with the distance necessary to make a renewed and renewing reading so rewarding: »Necessarily things are seen in a different perspective when they are seen from further away. It may be useful for those whose acquaintance with Grundtvig is much closer, to catch a glimpse of his figure as seen from a greater distance« (p. 5). Indeed, it is not only useful, it is inspiring and capable of opening our eyes to new aspects of Grundtvig.The book falls into three main sections. In the first section an overview of Grundtvig’s life and work is given. It does not claim to be complete which is why Allchin only speaks about »Glimpses of a Life«, the main emphasis being on the decisive moments of Grundtvig’s journey to himself. In five chapters, Grundtvig’s way from birth to death is depicted. The five chapters cover: Childhood to Ordination 1783-1811; Conflict and Vision 1811-29; New Directions, Inner and Outer 1829-39; Unexpected Fulfilment 1839-58; and Last Impressions 1858-72. As it will have appeared, Allchin does not follow the traditional division, centred around the familiar years. On the contrary, he is critical of the attempts to focus everything on such »matchless discoveries«; rather than that he tends to emphasize the continuity in the person’s life as well as in his writings. Thus, about Thaning’s attempt to make 1832 the absolute pivotal year it is said: »to see this change as an about turn is mistaken« (p. 61).In the second main section of the book Allchin identifies five main themes in Grundtvig’s work: Discovering the Church; The Historic Ministry; Trinity in Unity; The Earth made in God’s Image; A simple, cheerful, active Life on Earth. It does not quite do Allchin justice to say that he deals with such subjects as the Church, the Office, the Holy Trinity, and Creation theology.His own subtitles, mentioned above, are much more adequate indications of the content of the section, since they suggest the slight but significant differences of meaning that Allchin masters, and which are immensely enlightening.It also becomes clear that it is Grundtvig as a theologian that is the centre of interest, though this does not mean that his work as educator of the people, politician, (history) scholar, and poet is neglected. It adds a wholeness to the presentation which I find valuable.The third and longest section of the book, The Celebration of Faith, gives a comprehensive introduction to Grundtvig’s understanding of Christianity, as it finds expression in his sermons and hymns. The intention here is to let Grundtvig speak for himself. This is achieved through translations of many of his hymns and long extracts from his sermons. Allchin says himself that if there is anything original about his book, it depends on the extensive use of the sermons to illustrate Grundtvig’s understanding of Christianity. After an introduction, Eternity in Time, the exposition is arranged in the pattern of the church year: Advent, Christmas, Annunciation, Easter and Whitsun.In the section about the Annunciation there is a detailed description of the role played by the Virgin Mary and women as a whole in Grundtvig’s understanding of Christianity. He finishes the section by quoting exhaustively from the Catholic theologian Charles Moeller and his views on the Virgin Mary, bearing the impress of the Second Vatican Council, and he concludes that in all probability Grundtvig would not have found it necessary to disagree with such a Reformist Catholic view. Finally there are two sections about The Sign of the Cross and The Ministry of Angels. The book ends with an epilogue, where Allchin sums up in 7 points what modem features he sees in Gmndtvig.Against the fragmented individualism of modem times, he sets Gmndtvig’s sense of cooperation and interdependence. In a world plagued with nationalism, Gmndtvig is seen as an example of one who takes national identity seriously without lapsing into national chauvinism. As one who values differences, Grundtvig appeals to a time that cherishes special traditions.Furthermore Gmndtvig is one of the very greatest ecumenical prophets of the 19th century. In conclusion Allchin translates »Alle mine Kilder« (All my springs shall be in you), »Øjne I var lykkelige« (Eyes you were blessed indeed) and »Lyksaligt det Folk, som har Øre for Klang« (How blest are that people who have an ear for the sound). Thus, in a sense, these hymns become the conclusion of the Gmndtvig introduction. The point has been reached when they can be sung with understanding.While reading Allchin’s book it has been my experience that it is from his interpretation of the best known passages and poems that I have learned most. The familiar stanzas which one has sung hundreds of times are those which one is quite suddenly able to see new aspects in. When, for example, Allchin interprets »Langt højere Bjerge« (Far Higher Mountains), involving Biblical notions of the year of jubilee, it became a new and enlightening experience for me. But the Biblical reference is characteristic. A Biblical theologian is at work here.Or when he interprets »Et jævnt og muntert virksomt Liv paa Jord« (A Simple Cheerful Active Life on Earth), bringing Holger Kjær’s memorial article for Ingeborg Appel into the interpretation. In less than no time we are told indirectly that the most precise understanding of what a simple, cheerful, active life on earth is is to be found in Benedict of Nursia’s monastic mle.That, says Allchin, leads us to the question »where we are to place the Gmndtvigian movement in the whole spectmm of Christian movements of revival which are characteristic of Protestantism« (p. 172). Then - in a comparison with revival movements of a Pietistic and Evangelical nature – Allchin proceeds to give a description of a Grundtvigianism which is culturally open, but nevertheless has close affinities with a medieval, classical, Western monastic tradition: a theocentric humanism. »It is one particular way of knitting together the clashing archetypes of male and female, human and divine, in a renunciation of evil and an embracing of all which is good and on the side of life, a way of making real in the frailties and imperfections of flesh and blood a deeply theocentric humanism« (p. 173).Now, there is a magnificent English sentence. And there are many of them. Occasionally some of the English translations make the reader prick up his ears, such as when Danish »gudelige forsamlinger« becomes »meetings of the godly«. I learnt a few new words, too (»niggardliness« and »esemplastic«) the meaning of which I had to look up; but that is only to be expected from a man of learning like Allchin. But otherwise the book is written in an easily understood and beautiful English. This is also true of the large number of translations, about which Allchin himself says that he has been »tantalised and at times tormented« by the problems connected with translating Grundtvig, particularly, of course, his poetry. Naturally Allchin is fully aware that translation always involves interpretation. When for example he translates Danish »forklaret« into »transfigured«, that choice pulls Grundtvig theologically in the direction that Allchin himself inclines towards. This gives the reader occasion to reflect. It is Allchin’s hope that his work on translating Grundtvig will be followed up by others. »To translate Grundtvig in any adequate way would be the work of not one person but of many, not of one effort but of many. I hope that this preliminary study may set in train a process of Grundtvig assimilation and affirmation« (p. 310)Besides being an introduction to Grundtvig, the book also becomes an introduction to past and contemporary Danish theology and culture. But contemporary Danish art, golden age painting etc. are also brought in and interpreted.As a matter of course, Allchin draws on the whole of the great Anglo-Saxon tradition: Blake, Constable, Eliot, etc., indeed, there are even quite frequent references to Allchin’s own Welsh tradition. In his use of previous secondary literature, Allchin is very generous, quoting it frequently, often concurring with it, and sometimes bringing in half forgotten contributions to the literature on Grundtvig, such as Edvard Lehmann’s book from 1929. However, he may also be quite sharp at times. Martin Marty, for example, must endure being told that he has not understood Grundtvig’s use of the term folkelig.Towards the end of the book, Allchin discusses the reductionist tactics of the Reformers. Anything that is not absolutely necessary can be done away with. Thus, what remains is Faith alone, Grace alone, Christ alone. The result was a radical Christ monism, which ended up with undermining everything that it had originally been the intention to defend. But, says Allchin, Grundtvig goes the opposite way. He does not question justification by faith alone, but he interprets it inclusively. The world in all its plenitude is created in order that joy may grow. There is an extravagance and an exuberance in the divine activity. In a theology that wants to take this seriously, themes like wonder, growth and joy must be crucial.Thus, connections are also established back to the great church tradition. It is well-known how Grundtvig received decisive inspiration from the Fathers of the Eastern Church. Allchin’s contribution is to show that it grows out of a need by Grundtvig himself, and he demonstrates how it manifests itself concretely in Grundtvig’s writings. »Perhaps he had a deep personal need to draw on the wisdom and insight of earlier ages, on the qualities which he finds in the sacred poetry of the Anglo-Saxons, in the liturgical hymns of the Byzantine Church, in the monastic theology of the early medieval West. He needs these resources for his own life, and he is able to transpose them into his world of the nineteenth century, which if it is no longer our world is yet a world in which we can still feel at home. He can be for us a vital link, a point of connection with these older worlds whose riches he had deciphered and transcribed with such love and labour« (p. 60).Thus the book gives us a discussion - more detailed than seen before – of Grundtvig’s relationship to the Apostolic Succession, the sacramental character of the Church and Ordination, and the phenomenon transfiguration which is expounded, partly by bringing in Jakob Knudsen. On the background of the often observed emphasis laid by Grundtvig on the descent into Hell and the transfiguration, his closeness to the orthodox form of Christianity is established. Though Grundtvig does not directly use the word »theosis« or deification, the heart of the matter is there, the matter that has been given emphasis first and foremost in the bilateral talks between the Finnish Lutheran Church and the Russian Orthodox Church. But Grundtvig’s contribution is also seen in the context of other contemporaries and reforming efforts, Khomiakov in Russia, Johann Adam Möhler in Germany, and Keble, Pusey and Newman in England. It is one of Allchin’s major regrets that it did not come to an understanding between the leaders of the Oxford Movement and Grundtvig. If an actual meeting and a fruitful dialogue had materialized, it might have exerted some influence also on the ecumenical situation of today.Allchin shows how the question of the unity of the Church and its universality as God’s Church on earth acquired extreme importance to Grundtvig. »The question of rediscovering Christian unity became a matter of life and death« (p. 108). It is clear that in Allchin’s opinion there has been too little attention on this aspect of Grundtvig. Among other things he attributes it to a tendency in the Danish Church to cut itself off from the rest of the Christian world, because it thinks of itself as so special. And this in a sense is the case, says Allchin. »Where else, at the end of the twentieth century, is there a Church which is willing that a large part of its administration should be carried on by a government department? Where else is there a state which is still willing to take so much responsibility for the administration of the Church’s life?« (p. 68). As will be seen: Allchin is a highly sympathetic, but far from uncritical observer of Danish affairs.When Allchin sees Grundtvig as an ecumenical theologian, it is because he keeps crossing borders between Protestantism and Catholicism, between eastern and western Christianity. His view of Christianity is thus »highly unitive« (p. 310). Grundtvig did pioneer work to break through the stagnation brought on by the church schisms of the Reformation. »If we can see his efforts in that way, then the unfinished business of 1843 might still give rise to fruitful consequences one hundred and fifty years later. That would be a matter of some significance for the growth of the Christian faith into the twentyfirst century, and not only in England and Denmark« (p. 126).In Nicholas Lossky’s Afterword it is likewise Grundtvig’s effort as a bridge builder between the different church groupings that is emphasized. Grundtvig’s theology is seen as a »truly patristic approach to the Christian mystery« (p. 316). Thus Grundtvig becomes a true all-church, universal, »catholic« theologian, for »Catholicity is by definition unity in diversity or diversity in unity« (p. 317).With views like those presented here, Allchin has not only introduced Grundtvig and seen him in relation to present-day issues, but has also fruitfully challenged a Danish Grundtvig tradition and Grundtvigianism. It would be a pity if no one were to take up that challenge.

This article examines the responses of Welsh poets, writing in both English and Welsh, to nuclear power in the period after the Chernobyl disaster of April 1986. Fall-out from Chernobyl contaminated upland areas of North Wales adjacent to the country's two nuclear power stations, Trawsfynydd and Wylfa, prompting a backlash against the nuclear industry. Welsh poets played key roles in the anti-nuclear movement during the 1980s and 1990s, writing poems that respond both to the Chernobyl disaster and to nuclear threats closer to home. Furthermore, we trace the long aftermath of Chernobyl in the poetry of R.S. Thomas and Robert Minhinnick, which is frequently contaminated with the imagery and vocabulary of nuclear disaster.

Abstract This article describes the project Creating Across Languages, a collaboration between GwE, the North Wales regional school improvement service, and commissioned poets working in Welsh, English, and French, in response to the new Curriculum for Wales. A shift away from considering the poem as a challenging object of study, and towards engaging creatively with poetry as a plurilingual process, can provide learners with opportunities to use and experiment with languages at different levels. This is of particular relevance in Wales, where the Curriculum aims to integrate the teaching of Welsh, English, and French, but it also reflects a wider interest in translation in contemporary poetry. The article describes the materials that have been developed so far and reflects on their implementation with a group of Year 9 pupils.

Nature is one of the most predominant themes in Literature. Writers who are inspired by the beauty of nature write about it in different genres, especially in the form of poetry. They write poems briefly or elaboratively, about the splendid beauty of the physical world that has entralled them. In some of the nature poems, one could not only find wonderful descriptions of the natural world but also find a touch of pantheism, because of the poets' intense observation of the natural phenomena as the Divine power. In such works, the poets show a sense of gratitude to the Creator and His creations, because of the abundant blessings man has been receiving in various forms. The poems written on nature, can also be rightly called as 'Green poems' or 'Environmental poems'. These poems not only appreciate the loveliness of nature, but also tells about the importance of man's relationship with nature. Such poems insist on the value of the environment man lives in, which is sometimes taken for granted. If only man finds time to appreciate the greatness of the physical world, would the Welsh poet have written the poem "Leisure", which appeared in his collection of poems titled, "Songs of Joy and Others", published in 1911. "What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night, No time to turn at Beauty's glance,..." In the above-mentioned poem, the poet surrenders himself to nature admiring various things he sees around him. He states that each of the creations looks splendid in its way, but man fails to appreciate or even notice that. This is because, man has no time to spend for nature in this busy world, though he lives in the midst of it. Further, the poet also feels a communion with God when he values each of His creations. In the same way, the eleven poems mentioned in this article find a similarity, where the poets explicitly share the divinity and mysticism they find in the creations and the Creator. KEYWORDS: Creator, Creation, Nature poems, Mysticism, Pantheism, Pantheist, Environmental poems.

In early Celtic literature, a clear pattern may be identified in which the Celtic archetypal poet-prophet becomes inspired through interment in a tomb or some other dark, enclosed space. In this scenario, the novice poet-prophet undergoes an initiation into the secrets of his craft by means of a ritual death and rebirth that he experiences within a chthonic setting. The picture that emerges of the archetypal poet-prophet of Celtic, as well as other Indo-European literatures, is one of a mantically inspired figure who gains his phenomenal abilities directly from potent otherworldly forces, which are often, but not always, associated with spirits of the dead. Recent scholarship has established the validity of this pattern in the cases of the archetypal Welsh poets Taliesin and Aneirin, but it may also be demonstrated in the medieval Welsh and somewhat later Arthurian material concerned with Merlin (called

Abstract Drawing on Brian Larkin’s concept of ‘infrastructural poetics’, this article considers and compares a selection of English- and Welsh-language poems, by writers including Eliza Mary Hamilton, Frederick Faber, Richard Llwyd, and Eben Fardd, about two nineteenth-century infrastructures that transformed North Wales and Great Britain’s relationship to Ireland: the Menai Suspension Bridge (1826), and the Britannia Tubular Bridge (1850). I argue that these non-canonical poems complement perspectives derived from parliamentary records, official reports, technical planning documents, scientific manuals, and journalism, enhancing our understanding of the nineteenth-century infrastructural imagination. Specifically, building on the association of infrastructural development and modernity, I explore how the poems under discussion participate in nineteenth-century negotiations about Wales’s place and future in the United Kingdom, and how these negotiations evolved between 1819 and 1852. I show that, although Wales was the site of impressive engineering feats and accelerating industrial extraction, English-language poems present the Menai Bridge in picturesque terms, drawing on popular images of the Celtic fringe that evoke timeless, ideal beauty. Anglophone verse about Britannia Bridge, by contrast, focuses explicitly on the infrastructure’s technological modernity but claims it as an English landmark. Both strategies, I suggest, effect an erasure of Wales – as a distinct cultural and political entity – from a future conceived as Anglo-British. Poems written in Welsh, and the work of Welsh writers in English, complicate this picture, not because they reject British nationalism and imperialism, but because they seek to embed a modern Welsh nation more centrally within those political and ideological frameworks.

Abstract This article explores the relationship between Tide-race, a 1962 memoir by the Welsh poet and artist Brenda Chamberlain, and medieval culture and literature on Ynys Enlli. Written in the decades after the Second World War when Chamberlain had left mainland Wales, Tide-race is a memoir of the artist’s time on Enlli living with its small community of fishermen and farmers. In contrast to other works of twentieth-century island literature, I argue, Chamberlain rejected dominant, medieval patriarchal histories of Enlli, refusing to read the island as a male monastic site, or as a Welsh nationalist or cultural space. Tide-race is a medieval modern text that is deeply ambivalent about what medieval culture means for modern conceptions of identity, specifically Welshness and womanhood. Chamberlain’s late modernist work has been neglected because of her status as a Welsh woman writer working outside of the centres of modernism, and she has never been considered in the context of Medievalism Studies. By bringing archival material from the Brenda Chamberlain papers at the National Library of Wales together with the published memoir, this article brings to light an unremarked upon interest in Old English literature and traces the development of Chamberlain’s medievalism in the post-war period. Although her use of the Old English elegies—The Wanderer, The Seafarer and The Wife’s Lament—has remained unnoticed by Chamberlain’s critics, these early medieval poems are translated and adapted in her prose in ways that allow her to exorcize old grudges and challenge masculine ideals.

<p>This paper explores the possibility that Emily Dickinson was living with a form of epilepsy. It uses research by contemporary neurologists, who have differentiated how patients with epileptic seizures, and patients with non-epileptic seizures, use language features to describe their subjective seizure experiences. The features of language used by patients with epilepsy have been applied to the reinterpretation of a series of Emily Dickinson’s poems that appear to be related to neurological experiences, especially ‘inner’ poems focusing on the operations of the “Brain”, “Thought”, “Mind”, and “Consciousness”. Further contemporary research into the auras of seizures, identified four signs that could stay in a person’s memory if they remained conscious during a simple partial seizure (SPC). These are “suddenness, passivity or automatism, great intensity, and strangeness”, which provided insights into Dickinson’s ‘inner’ poem, Fr340, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,”. The identification of the sensory manifestations of auras, such as, Somatosensory, Visual, Auditory, Vertiginous, Olfactory, and Psychic auras, has also helped to clarify aspects of Dickinson’s ‘inner’ poems, especially Fr355, “It was not Death, for I stood up,”. The autobiography of the Welsh writer, Margiad Evans, identified language use arising from epileptic episodes, including the response of ‘giggling’, and the appearance of a ‘double self’, which revealed a close association to Dickinson’s language use in a range of poems. The application of research into autoscopy and “Déjà” experiences, and their appearance in poems, strengthened critical reading interpretations as expressions of inferential epileptic experiences. Finally, the poems featuring neurological experiences are seen to possess empirical dimensions that might help to explain Dickinson’s consultations with Dr Williams in Boston during 1864 and 1865, as a quest for a diagnosis and remedy for the disruptions to her consciousness.</p>

Abstract This article explores the use of computer-vision technologies in the context of digitally editing and researching letters and literary papers by the British-American poet W. H. Auden. Two documents in the previously inaccessible ‘Auden Musulin Papers’ contain colourless indented typewriter impressions of poetry. These impressions result from the papers’ original use as ‘backing sheets’, inserted into a typewriter below those sheets of paper on which Auden typed his poetry. Subsequently, these backing sheets were reused in the poet’s ‘working correspondence’ to Welsh-Austrian writer Stella Musulin. While standard image-digitization technologies fail to capture these 3D indented impressions, they can successfully be represented by means of Photometric Stereo, which has been fruitfully employed in the research of 3D cultural-heritage objects. Following a detailed outline of this method, this article demonstrates how Photometric Stereo can help to reconstruct poetry that has survived only in the form of indented impressions. Thus, the case study illustrates how computer vision can contribute to our understanding both of ‘poetic’ practices of composition and revision as well as of ‘material’ writing practices. It also has wide-ranging implications for re-conceptualizing sheets of paper as 3D objects in the research of literary documents from the twentieth century.

Abstract When Keats told friends he had ‘given up’ his epic project, ‘Hyperion’, in September 1819, he expressed dissatisfaction with its artful ‘Miltonic inversions’. While sailing to Italy in the autumn of 1820 and in the months before he died, however, Keats told Joseph Severn about an epic he wanted to write—on Sabrina, the river goddess in Milton’s Comus. This essay offers the first critical investigation of Keats’s projected poem. I pursue Keats’s unwritten epic, using Severn’s accounts, a selection of Keats’s letters and poems, and the source text to reveal what may have interested him about Milton’s rendering of Sabrina’s story and what it can tell us. Far from putting Milton behind him, Keats continued to draw inspiration from his poetry, returning to a work he had previously dismissed and finding fresh pleasure in a masque that Milton had composed in his mid-twenties, long before Paradise Lost. I suggest that in Sabrina, the tutelary spirit of the Severn, Keats found a figure of transformation, survival, and healing—a young goddess whose liminal existence on the Welsh border and whose partially told story appealed to his imagination and his belief in poetry’s enduring power to transcend mortal limits.