New Welsh Review - Issue 83 published in early March

New Welsh Review 83 will be published in early March and will feature Tom Anderson on La-La Land and the Culture of Impulse, Jane MacNamee on the life and work of Eiluned Lewis, Judy Kendall on Edward Thomas and John Sam Jones on gay literature. In our opinion and comment pages, David Adams considers the death of theatre criticism in Wales and Robert Minhinnick considers his latest work-in-progress, In Goliath's Country.

Poems and Fiction come from Charles Simic, Kelly Grovier, Paul Henry, Richard Marggraf Turley, Carrie Etter, Katherine Stansfield, Henry Shukman and Bethan Roberts.

For details on how to subscribe visit our website

It's a hard knock life

Peter Finch, in a recent Insider column for The Western Mail, writes an interesting and witty piece on that relentless triumph of hope over experience: the literary magazine.

The literary magazine scene has always been fraught with difficulty and financial crisis – across the UK and Ireland. For the majority of small magazines, privately run in someone’s front room and without subsidy, the mortality rate is beyond high. For those with subsidy, nothing can be taken for granted any longer. We’re in a recession. Belts must and will be tightened. It will be enough to break many magazines.

If only the number of unsolicited submissions to small magazines were reflected in the sales and subscriptions. Thousands, it would seem, want to appear in magazines. But, strangely, many don’t want to buy them and read them. Certain writers overlook an indisputable truth: that you really do have to be in(to) it to win it. Submitting without an evidenced knowledge of the magazine limits the chances of success to almost non-existent. And if you want an audience for your work you have to play a part in supporting the magazines that first connect you with such. It’s a cooperative, you might say.

The e-zine scene hasn’t yet taken off – having so many of the problems of the smaller print magazines in attracting leading writers who quite rightly want payment, credibility and cachet. It will eventually, however, as much of our current print experience moves online over the next five to ten years – in tandem with advertising, and enhanced and cheaper mobile technologies.

Life online, in 2019, despite cost savings on print, won’t be any easier for the magazine seeking a wide, engaged audience or those committed stewards who edit and promote them, who believe – as they should – that magazines shape and drive the future of a literature, however subtle or unattributed that can sometimes seem. Yet the small magazine will continue to come - and go. Reanimation has always been the chief characteristic of the scene. Mags will still be around to take the risks, to push the boundaries, to get it wrong and sometimes get it so right.

Tough times are indeed ahead. But necessity is the mother of invention. And invention – and re-invention – is what it’s all about.

Dirty Protest - The Bells of Shoreditch

15 January 2009 - 16 January 2009

The Bells of Shoreditch
By Tim Price

Paul has been suffering from anxiety attacks. He can't stop himself throwing his property over bridges. He goes to work with no shoes. He's a man falling apart. So he puts an advert in the newspaper for a bedmate. Someone to sleep, to help him through the night. Follow Paul on his journey through London, with the loneliest people he can find.

With the support of Sherman Cymru and the Arts Council of Wales, Dirty Protest have workshopped this full-length play. Seeking to fill the vacuum between rehearsed readings and full scale productions, they hope this development production will be the first of many.

Visit Sherman Cymru for further details

To keep up to date with events in the Dirty Protest diary, become a fan on Facebook.

And now for something completely different

Steven Spielberg fails to see the funny side - lawyers send 'cease and desist' letter to University of Wales Lampeter.

Prizes from New Welsh Review and Poetry Wales

A reminder of the details of the New Welsh Review Poetry Prize - closing date 30th January:

New Welsh Review, in association with Aberystwyth University Department of English and Creative Writing, is delighted to announce a new prize for poetry.

The prize, to be judged by award-winning poet Philip Gross, is open to New Welsh Review subscribers, and to students in the Aberystwyth University Department of English and Creative Writing. Entry is free. The winner will receive £200, with £50 each for two runners-up, at a ceremony in March 2009.

Visit the New Welsh Review website to download an entry form.

Over at Poetry Wales, there's the The Poetry Wales Purple Moose Poetry Prize. Sponsored by Purple Moose brewery, Porthmadog, and judged by poets Zoë Skoulding (Poetry Wales Editor) and Patrick McGuinness, this is an open competition for short collections of 20-24 poems. The winner of this pamphlet competition will receive £250 and publication of their short collection. Closing date 1st May.

Poet Mick Imlah dies

Scottish poet Mick Imlah has died at the age of 52, the Guardian reports.

Imlah debuted with the highly acclaimed Birthmarks in 1988. A twenty year hiatus followed. Astonishingly, despite battling Motor Neurone disease, he returned with The Lost Leader last year – garnering him plaudits and the Forward Prize for Best Collection. Imlah was poetry editor of the Times Literary Supplement. News of his death is deeply saddening and arrives just as the winner of the T S Eliot Prize, for which he is nominated, is about to be announced.

Happy New Year

Apologies for the lack of posting in recent weeks. I've fallen foul of the flu. There'll be more posts soon. In the meantime, I'd like to wish everyone a very Happy New Year!