Author, Author

Glorious evening yesterday. We invited Niall Griffiths and Horatio Clare to read and discuss their Mabinogion retellings.

Horatio Clare

We started with a panel discussion (including yours truly) to explore the nature of mythology and its relevance, the practice of writing and a range of other subjects, went into the reading, and then opened the floor to questions from the students and colleagues massed (ahem) for the event. We talked about mythology being the history of the oppressed, resistance, the experience of reading PhD theses about your own work and a whole range of other subjects.

Horatio Clare

Horatio Clare and Niall Griffiths

Horatio Clare and Niall Griffiths listening to a question

Niall and Horatio are extremely good value as guests. They're thoughtful, relaxed, opinionated and ridiculously well-read. They also demonstrate the quality I think is essential in a writer: they're interested in people. Little details or events catch their attention and become material.

Niall Griffiths reading from The Dreams of Max and Ronnie

If you've not read their work so far, read their Mabinogion stories (Horatio's is The Prince's Pen and Niall's is The Dreams of Max and Ronnie), then all their other work, but don't expect them to be much like the mythical stuff. Niall Griffiths' might lazily be likened to Irvine Welsh: novels in full dialect (Liverpool in his case), low-life characters etc. Actually, there's a lot more to him than this: below the rush of violence, drugs and dark, farcical misadventures, his characters and plots draw on a rich hinterland of mythology and half-forgotten origins. Frequently set in Liverpool and/or its hinterland North Wales, the legacies of the population's Irish and Welsh roots locate and inform Griffiths' often disturbing presentation of a hand-to-mouth existence. Start with Stump (never has a Morris Minor seemed so menacing) and its semi-sequel Wreckage, Grits or the Welsh Straw Dogs novel Sheepshagger. Kelly and Victor, his novel about a desperate, existentialist dysfunctional relationship is about to be released as a film, and Wreckage is in production now.

Niall Griffiths

Niall's a gruff, scruffy, warm bloke – tattoos, cap and fascination with everything: he found the concept of Bilston Chips hard to swallow. He is Liverpool personified, boasting the full range of Irish and Welsh grandparents and an openness to the world rather than merely to England. Horatio's a different model of a writer: suave and sophisticated but just as warm. His work ranges more widely than Wales, and covers more genres - he's a journalist, a radio drama writer and a memoirist as well as a novelist. Running for the Hills recalls his rocky childhood amidst divorcing parents, expulsion from exclusive schools and the difficulty of being a borders Welshman with an aristocratic English accent: intriguingly, he wavered between 'we' and 'they' when talking about the Welsh. Truant: Notes from the Slippery Slope covers his wild 20s: the escapades an intelligent and privileged young man gets into when he tries to escape his origins - he discovers that slumming it can rapidly descend into squalor and futility. He's also a highly accomplished travel writer - particularly on Africa.

Horatio Clare and Niall Griffiths

Sadly, the audience only got a taste of Horatio and Niall's wit and wisdom. I got the lot, as we headed to the pub, then to Tipton for dinner at Mad O'Rourke's World Famous Pie Factory. If it isn't world famous, it should be. The pies were massive and delicious, and the conversation slipped easily between banter, teasing and erudite discussions of books. As usual, we all came away with a list of more to read… I also loved Niall's description of one great unwritten Welsh novel by Richard John Evans (author of the stunning Entertainment) as 'Don DaiLillo'. Perhaps you had to be there.

A grand night. Be there next year.

Horatio Clare

I've just come back from a lecture to Myth and Creative Writing students by Horatio Clare, author of the excellent novel The Prince's Pen, part of Seren Books' series of modern retellings of Mabinogion stories by hip Welsh authors.

Most of them have chosen non-realist, often SF or fantasy-style genres - one of the discussions we had was whether there's any other way to reintroduce myth, and why realism has come to dominate English literature. In Clare's novel, the Lludd and Llyfelys story (royal brothers battle three plagues: (little people, an infertility curse and a resources crisis) is recast as a Britain in which the Welsh are Taliban-style religious absolutists battling an invading force of technologically-superior imperialists - it's clearly an Afghanistan novel, and part of the Welsh tradition of identifying with subaltern groups: I'm thinking of Wiliam Owen Roberts' Y Pla (Pestilence) and Meredith's Griffri - Clare added Minhinnick's new collection The Keys of Babylon to the Welsh internationalist canon.

As a speaker, Clare's one of the best who's been here: fluent, learned, funny, very good at taking his audience seriously. Aperçus flowed fast: 'myths are always true' he said - 'it's truth that's the problem'. This was his major point. As man of faith himself, he sees myth as a way of providing perspective on the world's complexity. I think this is related to the turn away from realism: we don't live in a realist world of cause and effect. Pretending we do is comfortable, but dishonest. Instead, Clare says, 'myth is a dance between fact and truth', and 'our fate is to be made by myths'.

I don't mean to make him sound ponderous. Clare was refreshingly direct about the process of writing. He talked about his heroes, quoted a surprisingly long and funny chunk of Moby Dick to explain why he's spent the past few months as writer-in-residence on container ships, and recommended Auden's writing method ('to write a poem, go for a walk and a pint'). Writing, said Clare, should be hard, but a compulsion, citing in support Beckett's 'fail again, fail better'. If you don't struggle and have self-doubt, he claimed, you're 'a hack'.

The questions from students and colleagues were excellent, and answered very openly. He accepted that women ended up second-best in his novel, though defended by claiming that Islamic women he'd taken as models tended to be officially inferior but actually very influential - not particularly progressive.

Clare was particularly moving when he discussed the recent death of his sister. Explaining that absence in some ways made her more present to him, he told us about visiting the Greek cave which is said to be the entrance to Hades: the space between the myth of Orpheus bringing Eurydice back through the cave into life and the explorer's assertion that the cave is impassable gave him some hope through uncertainty.

All in all, a stimulating and fascinating event. Time for lunch with the author.

Of cardboard and paper

I'm definitely moving house to a decent enough flat in the town centre, getting the keys a week on Friday. Now I'm overwhelmed with thoughts of the packing, the shelving required (70-80 metres for the books and records) and the cold hard cash… frightening. Next week will be spent alternately teaching and packing! Obviously I should cut down on things which need moving, but I called into the bookshop to order the poetry course textbook and ended up buying four more books: Andrew Brown's examination of Sweden, Fishing in Utopia: Sweden and the Future that Disappeared, a new translation of Y Mabinogion (my fourth), Michel Faber's satirical The Fire Gospel, and some bracing polemic, Slavoj Zizek's Violence.

Neal, Emma and I went to the Hogs last night - watched Manchester United grind out a dull win and lost in the pool competition - me in the first game, Neal in the second.