A Weekend In Wales and Other Stories

Good Monday to you all.

I"m not thinking swiftly or deeply today - I've just come back from the annual conference of Cymdeithas Llên Saesneg Cymru/Association for Welsh Writing in English. It's always held in the University of Wales's shabby-chic stately home, Plas Gregynog near Newtown in Powys – all rolling hills, sheep and wildlife. This year's theme was 'Hearts and Minds: The Mental and Emotional Lives of Welsh Writing in English', though we actually covered plenty of material in Welsh too, as is becoming increasingly standard.

Given the theme, it's unsurprising that the material was emotionally challenging – by inviting people like Ian Rowland (author of the harrowing Blink, Jasmine Donahaye (in conversation with Cath Beard, whose reading and discussion of Donahaye's poem 'Motherlove' from 2006's Misappropriations led to a revelatory exploration of maternal OCD) and Jo Edge (who intends to post a recording of her keynote) to talk about personal and literary experiences of child abuse, OCD, postpartum depression and other conditions, the organisers ensured that the field fully engaged with the themes that are at the forefront of public consciousness at the moment (except for Brexit-induced depression: maybe next year). There were some thought-provoking tensions too: while the neurologist Andrew Larner discussed the patient as narrative-text in his medical and literary practice and suggested that medical training in discursive pattern-recognition allowed him to ascribe aspects of literary style to media conditions, historian Jo Edge's keynote the next day warned against the ahistorical and philosophically unreliable nature of retrospectively diagnosing historical or literary figures with specific medical diseases.

I found myself thinking about this a lot, not just in relation to mental health, but also to gender and sexuality. While the archaeology of identities leads to the temptation to claim authors, historical personages and fictional characters for contemporary identity positions to combat hegemonic silencing of marginal or subaltern subjects, there's also something unattractive about imposing our own cultural perspectives on societies that may not have conceived of human relations and identities in any way like our own. When it comes to actual people too, there's a danger of reducing their work to clues or symptoms. Cath – whose professional life merges literary criticism with women's mental health advocacy – noted that medical case histories emerged during the same late-Victorian period that produced the detective novel. Siriol McAvoy's discussion of Lynette Roberts' poetry and the way her work has been ascribed to her schizophrenia reminded me of my PhD student's attempt to force critics to consider Zelda Fitzgerald's work on its own merits, rather than as medical evidence. There were too many fascinating papers to list individually (follow #awwe19 to get a flavour): all I can say is that you know it's a good conference when you're faced with the dilemma of not being physically capable of going to all the sessions you want to. My usual method is to go to the postgrads' presentations, not solely to suck out all their clever new ideas, but because I always appreciated people coming to my terrible papers and bothering to ask a question. This year I didn't have too: everyone attracted a decent audience and the questions flowed like the seaweed gin (yes, that's a thing) that made the post-seminar evenings such a cheerful blur.

I was proud of my colleagues' sensitive, probing and informed engagement with these ideas, in papers, creatively and in conversation outside the formal bounds of the sessions. There were also a lot more gags than I'd have expected too. The whole thing will sink in gradually I suspect: I always come away from AWWE with more ideas than I know how to deal with, but this year's event was more challenging and striking than ever – plenty of delegates needed a bit of time out to during the weekend to process what was being said.

Away from the central themes, I loved seeing the parade of talented new scholars taking their place alongside the founders of the field, many of whom are starting to retire – many of them like my erstwhile co-author Lisa Sheppard, or Siriol McAvoy, publishing in Welsh and English with equal brilliance. Siriol launched her edited collection of essays on Lynette Roberts, hopefully starting a revival of interest, while Lisa took her place alongside the greats in the massive new Cambridge History of Welsh Literature, also launched this weekend. It's £100 but it's also a once-in-a-generation book, and one which takes the bold step of covering Welsh-language and English-language work together in thematic chapters, establishing Welsh as a globally-significant medium. I gather that CUP had to be cajoled into commissioning the book, so I hope the news that the first print run sold out immediately – in part due to the Celtic solidarity of Irish scholars – has encouraged it to do more.

As always when returning from AWWE, I'm buzzing with ideas, physically exhausted and envious of the energy my friends and colleagues have. They seem to churn out good books whereas I'm struggling to get one going. Must try harder… I am contributing though: I'm organising next year's conference, with the help of a couple of very good people. It's on the broad themes of Childhood, Education and Learning in Welsh literature and culture. I'm hoping to attract some of the political decision-makers in Cardiff, teachers and educationalists, and to include some expertise from linguistically-similar places, such as Ireland. There will be strands on children's literature, language-learning, while adult learners won't be forgotten. In a country and literary culture packed with autodidacts, and one in which education has been a source of bitter struggle for centuries, a narrow focus would be inexcusable. The CfP won't be out for a while but if you're interested in contributing, do get in touch.

I bought the Cambridge History while there: the Welsh Books Council employ a young lady whose powers of menacing persuasion ensure that many of us leave with empty pockets. I also bought Stevie Davies's The Element of Water in the new Library of Wales edition, and was also given the two massive LoW short story volumes as part of the very generous society membership deal - ramming it all into my suitcase was tricky. As I already happen to have bought them, I'll donate them to the university library.

It didn't help that I also arrived with two novels to tide me over the three-day conference, both of which I did actually read. I suppose it's a testament either to my unsociability or the quality of the book that I sneaked away from one evening's revelry at midnight to read Barbara Comyns' The Vet's Daughter in one sitting, a wonderfully odd 1959 fable which coincidentally has a Welsh background. It reminded me of Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes: both are stories of downtrodden, apparently-superfluous women who quietly discover supernatural alternatives to fading into the background, and both novels introduce the magical elements gently and calmly. I'm definitely going to read all of Comyn's work now. The other book I read was James Lovegrove's Redlaw, a violent urban fantasy thriller that had some strong elements but just wasn't written well enough to justify the gore. However, AWWE saw the launch of a far superior Gothic chiller, the Honno Classics edition of Hilda Vaughan's Harvest Home, edited by the excellent Diana Wallace.

Lots of books in the post today too. Two more Left Book Club editions, vol. 1 of Robin Page Arnot's Russian Revolution (1937) and Paul Frölich's Rosa Luxemburg biography. Both in good condition but sadly lacking owner's names inscribed, or any of the fliers and bookmarks I like finding – one of my friends once found a Senate guest ticket signed by the notorious Huey Long. I don't have anything that historic but you can build a cultural history from inscriptions and insertions: Cath Feely did exactly that by tracing the circulation of Das Kapital by identifying all the people who'd written their names on the flyleaves of their copies.

Apart from those two, I also acquired Irish SF novelist Rachael Kelly's Edge of Heaven, Simon Ings' The Smoke on Adam Roberts' recommendation, and Marina Lewycka's Two Caravans, her tragi-comedy about immigrant fruit-pickers. Maybe I'll put it on my literature of migration module ('"They Come Over Here"') if it ever runs again.

All of these will have to wait, however: I have a massive stack of dissertations to mark, an overdue book and several other pressing matters – there are tutorials to run and lots of union casework to attend to this week, sadly. It's good and bad news here too. In the good news, David Crystal is here this week – he was just retiring from Bangor and joining the star-lecturer circuit when I went there as an undergrad, so it will be great to meet him again (get your free ticket here). In the bad news (or perhaps it isn't), my Faculty is undergoing its second restructure in a year, or third in 4 years if you count its foundation. While the niceties of 'leadership' mean that nobody senior is publicly acknowledging that it's been a continuous bin-fire of mismanagement, bullying and incompetence, overseen by people who are now conspicuous by their absence (and hand-picked by the current bosses), I don't have any qualms in saying that the faculty's dismemberment is welcome and overdue. The only fear is that we'll be dumped into the wrong alternative. During the most recent review I suggested Humanities be reunited with our cognate disciplines in History and Social Sciences, a proposal singled out for rejection in the final announcement, but perhaps our chance will come again. If so, I promise not to follow the VC round campus wearing my Told You So t-shirt. What I dread is English being returned to our origins as an arm of the Education department: the people who told my HoD that his insistence on promoting basic literacy was 'pedantic'.

I almost forgot: check out Heno on S4C, 7.00 on May 14th to find the AWWE delegates doubling as a crowd scene for the Welsh Literature book launch. I'm the impossibly glamorous one the camera can't resist.