National Poet of Wales

Our Other Language

In Wales we are blessed to have two languages, each enriched by centuries of literature. It is a poet’s gold-hoard. I think of Welsh as the language in which Wales talks to itself, and English as the language in which it speaks to the world.

No inheritance could offer more to a word-lover: Welsh, Britain’s first language, repository of earliest British poetry and mythology, yet fit and fine for the 21st century; English, word-magpie and lingua franca, its dictionary growing bulkier by the year, its vocabulary taken and absorbed for over a thousand years from so many tongues, beginning with Welsh. We could have been landed with two minor languages with little literature. Instead, we have huge wealth. We could have been one those bilingual countries – like Belgium – where language represents two communities who hardly speak to each other. We in Wales, from fully bilingual to monoglot English, are one people. We speak, argue, agree, disagree with each other because we are a people with a common history. The younger literature has inherited its special qualities from the Welsh tradition.

I suppose the title ‘National Poet for Wales’ is like the conch shell in ‘Lord of the Flies’. If you happen to be holding it, you may speak. The trick must be to carry it carefully, not to drop it, and, while holding it, to speak with tact, passion, truth, persuasion. I see the role as ambassadorial, within and outside Wales. I hope it will open doors. I interpret the Academi’s chosen model for the role of National Poet as being one of cumulative development, one poet’s work building on another’s, with careful attention paid to the bilingual nature of Wales. So now it is the turn of English, our other tongue, the language of the poetry of R.S. Thomas and Dylan Thomas, whose influence on poetry in English in the twentieth century was vast. But we still have minds to change inside Wales. Not long ago no Welsh poet was considered good enough to study in Welsh schools, never mind in our universities. Today Welsh writers in English are studied at examination level all over Britain and the English-speaking world.

Poetry is for everyone. Many admit to turning to poetry, to write or read it, in times of extreme emotion. I want far more people to do so. I want to see the audience for poetry grow. Well-organised readings in pleasing venues, inviting good poets who read well, do not attract a big audience without local good will. But writers’ or readers’ groups, their members made personally responsible for raising an audience, can increase audience numbers. The Lampeter Writers Workshop has achieved this.

I would like to see poetry further infiltrating popular culture and crossing boundaries, as when two years ago a television company commissioned poems for films advertising the Rugby World Cup.

I want schools to bring students to performances of poetry specially for them. Why not? If Poetry Live can get 150,000 teenagers a year out of schools in England to attend huge poetry events, I want that for Wales too.

I want Wales’s poets better known throughout Britain and always included in literary festivals.

Gillian Clarke, National Poet of Wales