New Welsh Review 81, Autumn 2008

Editorial:

Digital Cultures (Francesca Rhydderch)

The power of the worldwide web for a minority culture like Wales is clear, starved as it is of a serious broadsheet culture. For although the inherently democratic nature of the internet can lead to a dilution in quality, it is far from being a dumping ground for those who can’t find publication elsewhere. Serious writers are very much into blogging, launching themselves on Facebook, and publishing snippets of their latest work on their personal websites. Publishers are similarly taking steps to secure their place in a digital future, and online reviewing communities are burgeoning. The very texture of our literary culture is changing.
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Features

• Freedom of Information by Peter Lord
  Peter Lord considers digital media and posterity from the perspective of the life and work of Cliff McLucas: a visual artist whose work was dominated by graphics and performance.
  
  
• Babylon Wales by Anthony Brockway
  Anthony Brockway considers the phenomenon of blogs, how they reflect and influence Welsh culture, and the literary conventions. Are bloggers an ‘online mob of wannabe journalists, frustrated amateurs and shrill egomaniacs’ or are blogs a ‘testament to the importance placed on the written word in the new millennium’?
  
  
• Father Figures by Gary Owen
  Playwright Gary Owen explores the genesis of his play Father Figures from oral history to YouTube to stage.
  
  
• The Abandoned by Dannie Abse
  Dannie Abse introduces a new version of his poem.
  
  
• Photo / Poem Collaboration by David Hurn and Dannie Abse
  
  
  
• A Publisher's Internet by Nicholas Spice
  
  
  
• Photo Essay by Rhodri Jones
  The photographer explores internal migration in the People's Republic of China
  
  
• Poetry / Photo Collaboration by Philip Gross and Simon Denison
  
  
  

Fiction

• Brawn by Alix Nathan
  
• Hurricane by Candy Neubert
  

Poems

Poems by :
Maura Dooley
Rose Flint
Elaine Gaston
Stephen Knight
Anna Wigley

Reviews

The majority of books reviewed in New Welsh Review can be bought online from gwales.com, the Welsh Books Council's online bookshop, by simply clicking on the 'buy now' icon. For any that are unavailable, please contact the publishers or ask in your local bookshop. All details were correct at the time of publication.

• The Banquet of Esther Rosenbaum by Penny Simpson
  Published by Alcemi
  ISBN 9780955527234  pb £9.99
  Reviewed by Ceri Gorton
  
  
• Selected Later Poems by Peter Finch
  Published by Seren
  ISBN 9781854114402  pb £9.99
  Reviewed by Kathryn Gray
  
  
• The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales by Jon Gower
  Published by University of Wales Press
  ISBN 9780708319536  hb £65.00
  Reviewed by Jon Gower
  
  
• Love and Other Possibilities by Lewis Davies
  Published by Parthian
  ISBN 9781905762040  pb £6.99
  Reviewed by Jerome de Groot
  
  
• Almanac, Volume 12 by Ed. Katie Gramich
  Published by Parthian
  ISBN 9781905762781  pb £9.99
  Reviewed by Sarah Morse
  
  
• Fragments from the Dark: Women Writing Home and Self in Wales by Eds. Jeni Williams and Latéfa Guémar
  Published by Hafan
  ISBN 9780954514747  pb £6.99
  Reviewed by Zoë Brigley
  
  
• Other Useful Numbers by Sarah Broughton
  Published by Parthian
  ISBN 9781902638508  pb £7.99
  Reviewed by Anna Scott
  
  
• Sunday at the Skin Launderette by Kathryn Simmonds
  Published by Seren
  ISBN 9781854114617  pb £7.99
  Reviewed by Katherine Stansfield
  
  
• Remains of a Future City by Zoë Skoulding
  Published by Seren
  ISBN 9781854114754  pb £7.99
  Reviewed by David Hart
  
  
• Lynette Roberts: Diaries, Letters and Recollections by Ed. Patrick McGuinness
  Published by Carcanet
  ISBN 9781857548563  pb £14.95
  Reviewed by Francesca Rhydderch
  
  

Letters