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Singing about the dark times
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[Carlos Figueroa/CC]
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“IN THE dark times will there be singing?” Bertolt Brecht famously asked when he was in exile. His answer was that “there will be singing about the dark times.” Here are four strong new collections about the dark times in which we now find ourselves.
Mike Jenkins (ed) Gwrthryfel/Uprising (Culture Matters, £12) is a fantastic collection of radical poetry from contemporary Wales. There are almost 80 poems here, in English and Welsh, including some great poems by Sheenagh Pugh, Des Mannay, Alun Rees, Christopher Meredith, Tracey Rhys, Annest Gwilym (Wales for Sale) and Anne Phillips (We are a proud nation of call centres).
It is a collection of poems about violence – against the poor, against women, against language, against common decency, against Nature. In Gelliwastad Ablaze Dyfan Lewis watches the summer-dry gorse burn one night above Swansea:
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