Rachel Trezise

Christmas in May

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:00:00 +0000

My short story Christmas '83/A Mother's Christmas in Wales, originally written for In Chapters, was broadcast recently on BBC Radio 4. You have a limited amount of time to listen to the story again.

Also I had the pleasure recently of reviewing the Library of Wales edition of Gwyn Thomas' All Things Betray Thee for Planet 206. You can read part of the review on the Parthian website.

Since the beginning of the year I've been thoroughly enjoying training to play roller derby and am now a greenhorn in training for Rhondda Cynon Taff's first amateur derby team, the Valleys Roller Dolls. My derby name is Tuff Mckagan. Although I've had to take a short sabbatical due to writing commitments, I am currently doll of the month. I get back on the track this July.

Fresh Apples to go on tour

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:05:00 +0000

Teenagehood in all its transience and emotional intensity will be brought to life on stage during a new touring production by Cwmni Theatr Fran Wen. The company is producing 'Fala' Surion', a Welsh-language adaptation of Rachel Trezise's acclaimed 'Fresh Apples'.

The cast includes Mold-born Rhodri Meilir, who appeared in the BBC hit comedy 'My Family' and Terry Pratchett's 'Hogfather' on Sky One. Also starring are Pobl y Cwm's Catrin Mara and Rhodri Miles, who won the Best International Artist award at the 2010 Hollywood Fringe Festival for his portrayal of Welsh icon Richard Burton in the one-man show 'Burton'. Other actors include Lowri Gwynne from S4C's 'Rownd a Rownd', stage actress Lynwen Haf Roberts and Carys Eleri. The production is being directed by Iola Ynyr who was supported by Manon Eames and Catrin Cafydd who translated the work from English to Welsh.

For the full story go to WalesArts, and for a full list of the tour dates and ticket information please visit Cwmni'r Fran Web.

New Neale Howells Shows

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:28:00 +0000

John Martin Gallery, London and Edward Cutler, Milan are delighted to present the first major show of Welsh artist, Neale Howells, for almost four years. The exhibition, 'American Mama Gun Run' is divided into two parts throughout February with works also being previewed at Arte Fiera Bologna at the end of January.

Part 1. John Martin Gallery, London 3rd - 25th Feb 2012
Part 2. Edward Cutler Gallery, Milan 9th Feb - 4th March 2012
(Arte Fiera Bologna, 27th - 30th January 2012)

Above: Neale Howells - Captain America vs. the rest of the world. (2011) Acrylic, oil, pastel and pencil on wood 175x490 cms.

www.artistnealehowells.webs.com

The Silent Village goes to Prague

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:36:00 +0000

'The Silent Village: Humphrey Jennings / Peter Finnemore / Rachel Trezise / Paolo Ventura, will be curated by Russell Roberts for the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague. The exhibition opens on January 11 2012 and a symposium is planned to coincide with the exhibition in March 2012 to explore the roles of art and literature to reflect on historical memory. This exhibition coincides with the 70th anniversary of the Lidice atrocity which Humphrey Jenning's original film sought to evoke in his 1943 film of the same name; responses by leading artists Finnemore and Ventura along with the meomrable prose fiction of Trezise, introduce a number of strategies to examine the significance of the film as history and its contemporary relevance.'

More info here: http://www.dox.cz/en/exhibition?85/about

Coventry Inspiration Book Award

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:26:00 +0000

My quick read title, 'Loose Connections' has been nominated for the Coventry Inspiration Book Award. If you've read and enjoyed it please take a moment to vote for it following this link. Thank you! Your support is very much appreciated.

A Piece of Me

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:45:00 +0000

I, along with the Children's Commissioner for Wales, Keith Towler, was honoured to open 'A Piece of Me', a Barnado's Cymru Seraf Service exhibition of young people's artwork and film, at the Pierhead Building, Cardiff, last Friday. The exhibition remains open until Thursday 29th September, after which it will go on tour. If you get a chance to see it, please do.

Merthyr Rock

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 15:31:00 +0000

To celebrate the awesome rock fest that is Merthyr Rock, organised by the wonderful people at Hay Festival, and taking place in Cyfartha Park THIS WEEKEND, I've written a blog about why Merthyr deserves such an event on the official festival 'Why Merthyr Rocks' blog. Click on the link to read it, along with interviews from many of the bands playing this weekend.

Death or Glory

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:26:00 +0000

In this month's Planet Magazine Rachel Trezise weaves National Theatre Wales’s The Passion into her own personal relationship with Port Talbot. Buy a copy.

Rachel Trezise to Judge 2011 Dylan Thomas Prize

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 10:55:00 +0000

It was announced earlier this month that former winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize Rachel Trezise will sit on the 2011 judging panel for this year's prize. She will be joined by Peter Florence, creator and director of the Hay Festival, (chair), Kurt Heinzelman, professor of English at the University of Texas, Dr Mererid Hopwood, poet, linguist and winner of a National Eisteddfod Bardic chair, as well as Dr Kim Howells, former Pontypridd MP and Foreign Office Minister, Peter Stead, former history lecturer and creator of the prize, and Allison Pearson, novelist and Daily Telegraph columnist.

Fresh Apples from Page to Stage

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 10:55:00 +0000

Given that one of the characters from my debut collection of short stories, Chelle, a six-year-old chicken-killer, can clearly be witnessed berating her cousin Anna for wanting to do something as other-worldy as act, (she's playing Snow White at an amateur production at the Parc and Dare), and possess something as pretentious as 'theatre friends,' it might have seemed unlikely that the collection in question, would, six years after its publication, spawn not one, but two separate theatre adaptations, both of which would culminate in live readings in and around March this year.

Early evening, Friday February 25th, I put the finishing touches to a manuscript assessment I've been working on, attach it to an email, press send. Downstairs my husband is watching a Cardiff Blues game on TV. I check the time, 7.25. Suddenly the prospect of pouring myself a big ol' glass of Pinot and curling up on the settee becomes perverse. It's Fresh Apples Small Bites opening night at Tactile Bosch, forty-five minutes 'til show-time. How many fiction writers get to see their work performed on stage with a full cast? 'Loads,' I tell myself. Then, 'No, not that many.' 'How many fiction writers get to see their work adapted and performed on stage with a full cast?' I ask Darran. 'That’s not straight,' he says shouting at the line-out on TV. I text director and script writer, Julie Barclay, annexing an earlier good luck message; 'Forget the tomorrow bit, I'm on my way.' The eyeliner goes on in the passenger seat of our moving car. At the roundabout on Llantrisant Road the phone rings. The performance is about to start. They're waiting for me. Everyone is waiting for me, and Fanny, our reluctant satellite navigator refuses to acknowledge Andrews Road. 'Come on,' I say thumping the dashboard. Already my life seems to have taken on a windswept interestingness unbeknown to a mostly cloistered Welsh writer.

By the time I arrive they're a little way through the performance. Shelley Rees, in the guise of Jacqueline, daughter of a Valleys property millionaire, cavorts coyly, and then brazenly into the lens of her pornographer husband's video camera, the audience poised in the palm of her hand. I'm not here to lament the differences between the original and the script, but to gauge them; I'm here for the actor's interpretations, the audience's reaction, the potential in something I once considered complete. In the end, I'm not sure where I stop and where Julie's writing begins. The dialogue is altered, scenes shortened and lengthened, but her writing has got to the heart of my intentions in a way that makes the adjustments invisible. I watch, mesmerised, as Gareth Milton reads the end of the title story Fresh Apples to the audience. It is usually me who reads those sentences and it's surreal suddenly to be on the receiving end of my own words. Later he'll tell me he's learned to leave spaces in certain parts of the monologue where the audience will usually laugh uproariously, and about how disappointed he feels when the audience does not laugh uproariously, leaving the room in cold silence. Processes I know. Secrets I've never disclosed. As I leave I overhear a member of the audience comment on the characters, '… but they’re all beautiful people.'

The purpose of these early readings, both Fresh Apples Small Bites and Fale Surion, the Welsh language adaptation by Cwmni'r Fran Wen, is to gather feedback in order to help with the continuing development of a full show. At the second night at Tactile Bosch I offer free copies of Fresh Apples in exchange for peoples thoughts. Gradually opinions begin to drift in. There were certain things that weren't clear. The performance was good but the actors could have done with costumes… Next I take the train to Anglesey to sit in on rehearsals for the Welsh language readings. The actors have a few questions for me. 'Is Lissa from The Joneses a bit of a goer? 'How many chickens did Chelle kill?' (In the book it's described as a 'gathering' but they need numbers, if only for the right sound effects). My Welsh isn't brilliant but somehow I know what's going on, I understand how Manon Eames and Catrin Dafydd have gone about their adapting. Since Cwmni'r Fran Wen produce theatre for children and young people, the concern of the script is decidedly different to Small Bites with its strict over 18 rating. And yet the effect is the same. Here I am again, my fingers wrapped nervously around a mug of cold coffee while my world view is amplified and projected by actors, surely too talented to be bothered with anything that came originally from me. A little worrying, and, simultaneously, strangely and inexorably gratifying. From my hotel room I ring Darran. 'I think one of the actors is famous,' I say. 'Famous, in that Welshy Pobl-y-cwm way.' Later, at a reading in Chapter, Darran leans over and whispers into my ear. 'I can’t believe you didn't know who that was! It's Alfie, mun. Alfie Butt, the Welsh lodger out of My Family.' Darran loves his Friday night TV.

On the 11.05 from Holyhead to Cardiff I bump into my writer friend Tristan Hughes. We tuck into the cheese and tomato sandwiches his mother prepared for his journey. We talk about how we thought our lives as writers would be, and how they've actually turned out. 'Listen,' I say, chewing on tomato rind. 'I always thought Sixteen Shades of Crazy would be made into a film, with Johnny Depp playing Johnny. That's why I called him Johnny. But last night, as I was going to sleep, I heard the actor in the room next door rehearsing his lines from Fresh Apples. Huzzah.’ We laugh because I say it as if it is a joke. And it is, but not really. As a fiction writer I've been allowed a little glimpse of what many fiction writers don't ever get to see; their work filtered through other people, their work in action. Art is about pumping the things that excite you into other people's hearts and imaginations, and that's exactly what seems to have happened.

Now the readings are over. I'm back in the quietude of my office, back at my writer's desk. The National Theatre of Wales offered me a full commission last week so I have my own theatre production to think about, and start writing in July. Theatre friends? Don't knock 'em. Turns out they're alright.

You can still catch readings from the Fale Surion script at this year's National Eisteddfod in Wrexham. A full tour of the production begins in 2012. Photograph above from Fresh Apples Small Bites, (Gareth Bale and Catrin Mai) by Claire Cousin at Claire Cousin Photography.

A Different View from the Valleys

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 12:03:00 +0000

In 1992, fourteen-year's-old and living on the Penrhys Estate, I attempted a consumer survey in a teenage magazine in exchange for a free tube of shocking pink mascara. It was the mascara that was important; I was paying little attention to the questions, until I got to this: 'Do you consider yourself, A) British, B) European, or C) a mixture of both?' It was the first time in my life I'd been asked to reflect on that most critical of things; my own identity. Of course there was nothing in those multiple choice answers that came close to a true definition. I didn't consider myself British. To my mind Britain was England; a Royal family, a Conservative prime minister. Wales wasn't represented on mainstream television, (that's where my worldview came from at the time). It wasn't represented in the Union Jack either, but I knew I was Welsh because I'd dressed up as a Welsh lady on St David's Day at Junior School, plus my vocabulary was peppered with words my mother's English boyfriend couldn't understand, 'cwtch,' and 'bard' and 'ych i fi.' I crossed out British and wrote in 'Welsh'. I'm not sure I understood the meaning of 'European,' I had yet to encounter a Spanish holiday or the taste of pizza, but there was something other than 'Welsh' that I wanted to proclaim, some feeling I couldn't quite classify there and then.

In the south Wales valleys we've always been proud of our immigrant heritage. We are not simply Welsh. We are Italian-Welsh, Irish-Welsh, in my case Cornish-Welsh, here because of the 18th Century Industrial Revolution and the discovery of the coalfield. In 1921 anthropologist Alfred Zimmens claimed that the industrial society of south Wales could, because of its cosmopolitanism and industrial dynamism, be called 'American Wales.' We were outward-looking, non-Welsh speaking, and proud of it too. The valleys are a place that bred, as Pontypridd author Alun Richards would have it, 'champions of the world, not bloody Machynlleth.' Even as I was growing up in the economically-depressed Rhondda valley of the 1980s, fragments of this audacious attitude prevailed. Mining was dying but Tom Jones was on the telly, getting his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We were still out there somehow, performing on the world stage, citizens of the planet. It is this attitude that former Pontypridd MP Kim Howells was referring to in a recent BBC Wales documentary, A Valleys View of the World. On accepting a place at Hornsey College of Art in 1965, he said: 'I was ready for London. I felt I could out-draw, out-paint and out-sculpt anyone there, as well as out-run 'em and out-fight 'em.'

For people like us, self-proclaimed internationalists, the extension of law-making powers for the National Assembly is thorny territory, as is devolution. Does agreeing to it conclude that we are indeed merely Welsh, confined to a very small country, a language that we failed to inherit, and everything else which those things entail? However we like to think of ourselves, the truth is that the south Wales valleys is a very different place to the one it was in 1921, devastated by Thatcher's eleven-year reign and facing savage cuts from the current Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition; Merthyr Tydfil known only outside of Wales as the fifth worst place in the UK in which to live, the fire in our bellies replaced with steadfast apathy. In A Valleys View of the World, Kim Howells also mentioned how annoyed he is with the victim mentality we have harvested here in south Wales. It's easy to blame Thatcher and Westminster for our misfortunes, and harder to take responsibility for ourselves. I agree with him to an extent. Where our thought processes part ways is on the referendum itself. He says he feels ambiguous and confused and will vote no, whereas I believe the only way to instil a renewed sense of pride in our young people is by giving their country full law-making powers. I'll be voting yes. Not because I want to wave my Welsh flag in London's face, but because I think the south Wales valleys deserve to be governed by people who understand its history and unique geography. Iain Duncan Smith's recent disingenuous comments about the unemployed of Merthyr are evidence of Westminster's naiveté and unfamiliarity with the south Wales valleys, and the specific issues that affect them. And Roger Lewis is right when he says further powers will create a no-excuse culture for Welsh politics. Let's stop harping on about Maggie and learn to believe in ourselves again. This isn't about patriotism, for me it's simply about identity. So, let me just rephrase that opening eighteen-year-old question for myself: 'Do you consider yourself, A) Welsh, B) International, or C) a mixture of both?' Easy.

(Originally published in Celyn Magazine.)

'...A kind of make-believe for adults who've forgotten how to dream.'

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 15:43:00 +0000

An article I wrote about living with an alcoholic parent for The Telegraph's Stella Magazine can now be read online.

Shoes Or No Shoes

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 15:27:00 +0000

I recently wrote a short story, 'Grown-Up Shoes' for the author's collection at the Shoes Or No Shoes Museum in Kruishoutem, Belgium.

You can read the story at the museum, or by visiting online. (Collection 115).

Reading at Mostyn Gallery

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:37:00 +0000

As part of the opening of the Silent Village Exhibition, 8pm Friday 21st January. Oriel Mostyn Gallery, 12 Vaughan St, Llandudno. LL30 1AB.

Fresh Apples on the Stage

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 14:25:00 +0000

Fresh Apples is currently being developed for theatre in both Welsh and English. The English version, directed by Julia Barclay and Richard Tunley, will be previewed at three free showings in Tactile Bosch, Cardiff and the SOAR Centre in the Rhondda this spring.

Cast: Shelley Rees (Pobol y Cwm), Jonny Owen (Shameless, Torchwood), Gareth Milton (Pen Talar, Crash), Richard Tunley (Bouncers), Rhian Blythe (Deep Cut, Blink), Lauren Pillips (Pobol y Cwm), Julie Barclay (Belonging, Torchwood).

Designed by Steve Denton. Supported and funded by National Theatre of Wales and Arts Council of Wales. (Check the calendar on this website for dates and venues).

Sixteen Shades of Crazy Paperback

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 14:06:00 +0000

Sixteen Shades of Crazy is released in paperback today with a snazzy new green and red cover.

Praise for Sixteen Shades of Crazy: 'Trezise opens up the lives of her characters with surgical skill, making you wince as well as laugh.' THE WESTERN MAIL 'We in the know have come to expect brilliance from Rachel Trezise, and Sixteen Shades of Crazy doesn't disappoint. This is a powerful, unflinching and extremely funny novel. It's a beauty.' DAN RHODES 'Sixteen Shades of Crazy is a dirty but Day-Glo slice of modern Valleys life.' NEW WELSH REVIEW 'written with great energy and verbal skill and its characters … are immediately engaging.' SYDNEY MORNING HERALD 'Trezise sings a sharp and suffocating song.' THE AGE

Available from all good bookshops.

Ambassador to the Dylan Thomas Prize

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 15:31:00 +0000

I'm please to announce that I've become an ambassador to The Dylan Thomas Prize, along with Welsh comedian Rhod Gilbert. Full story below.

Blue Door author Rachel Trezise has been invited to become an ambassador for The Dylan Thomas Prize, the world's largest literary prize for young writers. Having won the inaugural prize in 2006 for her short story collection Fresh Apples, Rachel will be joining fellow ambassadors Michael Sheen, Catherine Zeta Jones and The Rt. Hon Lord Neil Kinnock to promote the prize. The Dylan Thomas Prize was founded in 2006 and is aimed at encouraging raw creative talent worldwide for writers under 30. At £30,000, it is one of the largest literary awards in the world.

Following her award in 2006, Rachel went on to write Dial M for Merthyr, a rockumentary following an emerging band from the Valleys, Midasuno, and their quest for fame. Having achieved critical praise with her first novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl, Rachel turned her hand once again to fiction. In 2009, Blue Door bought her second novel, Sixteen Shades of Crazy, a razor-sharp dissection of small-town life and drug culture, doing for the Valleys what Trainspotting did for Edinburgh. The novel centres around three women, Ellie, Sian and Rhiannon, the party-loving wives and girlfriends of aspiring punk band The Boobs. Within the trappings of small-town life they are desperate for new thrills. When a seductive stranger arrives in town, their lives are changed forever. Already hailed as ‘an outstanding young writer’ by The Times, the future looks very bright for Rachel Trezise.

Harder, Better, Faster, Rhondda

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 10:21:00 +0000

On Thursday the 17th of June there's really only one place to be:

Balloon celebrates a host of valleys talent in one of Cardiff's most iconic venues with Harder, Better, Faster, Rhondda, where I will be unleashing Sixteen Shades of Crazy on a Cardiff Crowd. Expect psycopathic hairdressers, smokey-eyed Cornish lotharios and dream-filled looks towards New York City.

Alongside me you will find a veritable feast of young, gifted performers and musicians including Samuel Bees, Jimmy Watkins (Strange News from Another Star and Future of the Left), Matt Jon, punk-country band Fatty's Leg and Aberdare psyche popster's The Broken Vinyl Club. There's also a pub quiz, a raffle and huge merch stall.

£3. Doors 8pm. Supported by the Academi

Hanging out at Hay-on-Spy

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:48:00 +0000

For me the Guardian Hay Festival 2010 starts here, 10am, on the Saturday of the opening weekend. I've just arrived on site wearing a dress. It's raining, yes, but this isn't the Hay festival of old, when you needed waders that went up to your tuchus. D tells me they have flood defences these days. Still, I'm an hour early for my radio interview and I don't want my hair to go frizzy so I have no choice but to go in the green room. Time was the Hay Festival green room was situated in the staff room of the local primary school, with the little girls' toilet next door trimmed-up to serve as the dressing room for the female guests at the festival. We used to have some fun in there; there was that time Benjamin Zephaniah practiced his Maya Angelou intro on us, and that other time Ray Mears sat on D's lap.

Nowadays, green rooms make me feel like a fraud. To walk in is to invite a silent assessment on the level of your celebrity, and I'm not a celebrity, I'm a writer. Could I just get an annex where nobody looks at me and wonders who I am? Or is that megalomania turned around a 180 degrees? Yes, I know that there are writers who would gladly take my place, and yes I know that I have a book to promote, but honestly I'd rather be writing. I circumnavigate Grayson Perry (in full Bo Peep get-up), Ed Miliband, Robert Peston, Oliver James and manage to get hold of a cup of coffee. We sit in the corner until the Radio Wales people come to collect me. They aren't able to do the interview in the green room they tell me, because that is where celebrities go to get away from journalists and their prying microphones. The green room? Really? However, they mention they managed to interview Sting last year. It was the last day of the festival, too late for security to throw them off site. So we go to a nearby cafe where the interviewer tells me he enjoyed my book, describing it as 'Gavin & Stacey gone bad.' Talking of Gavin & Stacey, Rob Brydon has arrived by the time I get back to the green room. So has Dmitry Bykov, the Russian author with whom I am sharing a stage.

Our chair, the lovely Kathryn Gray takes us through the protocol and it's off to the Emley Foundation Dream Stage, our Hay festival aide carrying the roses that she will graciously hand to us at the end. The end. What a lovely thought. Actually, allow me to be nostalgic again for a moment and mention that the roses used to be whiter. They used to have a smell. Nostalgia is something I warn the audience about when Kathryn is questioning me about my new novel. The south Wales valleys aren't much about coal mining anymore. Don't expect a coal mine in the story. Elsewhere the very erudite and entertaining Dmitry Bykov laughs so hard at his own responses the whole stage bounces and I feel like I'm going to topple out of my chair. Soon it is the end, and a man in the bookshop gives Dmitry and I miniature boxes of my favourite chocolates, as a thank you for signing his books. What was it Leonard Cohen said about a box of chocolates and a long stemmed rose? Hmm. My publisher and agent drag me to Ascari's for lunch where I tell them a story about the time Owen Sheers tried to help a bag lady across the road. It's interrupted by the arrival of the softly spoken Bill Bryson who comes over to say hello to my publisher. He is swiftly handed a pristine copy of my novel. 'He doesn't read fiction,' my publisher says when he's left. 'But he'll give it to his daughter.'

Later at the Summer tent, a kind of Wendy house for adults, I launch said novel with the help of a few close friends and a trunk of booze. The sun comes out and my publisher gives a little speech about sheep-shagging. The party slowly drifts up to Kilvert's Hotel and D and I crawl back to the HarperCollins cottage circa 2 a.m. As a reward for getting myself through day one, D and I go to see the remarkable Tim Minchin on Monday night. Highlight of the show is The Pope Song. "And if you don't like the swearing that this motherfucker forced from me/And reckon that it shows moral or intellectual paucity/Then fuck you motherfucker, this is language one employs/When one is fucking cross about fuckers fucking boys." 'Yes, it's a bit wordy,' he says. 'But I thought it'd be OK. It's you guys afterall.'

My day two begins almost a week later on Friday 4th June, having tempoarily popped back to the Rhondda valley for my brother's birthday celebrations. I'm at Hay Library this time to talk about Merthyr and the Library of Wales with journalist Mario Basini, author of Real Merthyr. Mario reads from Jack Jones' Black Parade while I explain why I dedicated Sixteen Shades of Crazy to The Dark Philosophers author Gwyn Thomas. Then we both have a go at criticising How Green Was My Valley. The event has been examined in part by Plaid Cymru Assembly member Bethan Jenkins. Next, I want to see poet and novelist Nick Laird but I get back to the festival site late and time slips away as I catch up with Marella Paramatti, my host at the Mantova Literary festival way back in '02, Christopher Meredith, one of my creative writing tutors at Glamorgan University from even earlier, Catrin Dafydd, this year's Scritture Giovani participant and Tom Anderson who is writing a daily blog from the festival. The atmosphere in the green room is relaxed. The only celebrities in sight are Alastair Campbell and Rachel Johnson. And so I make the mistake of asking one of the festival assistants what I think is a very sensible question: 'Since I've done two events, do I get two crates of Cava?' (Standard payment for an appearance at Hay is a rose and six bottles of fizz and I've got two roses now.) He looks at me like I'm Maria Carey without the tits, or the ability to hit an F note, and suddenly I'm back to my default position; rank outsider with a fluctuating inferiority complex. Appropriately perhaps, I take myself off to see Ruby Wax's Losing It, which tells me that even people who've been on TV feel like frauds. Depression, she says, isn't a blues song about having lost your baby, it's about not knowing whether you should go get a manicure, or throw yourself off of the nearest cliff, something I've known all along. She also says that we're all capable of rewiring our brains. That's something I'm learning gradually.

And so now, back at my little west-facing writing desk, the sad news of Stuart Cable's death is finally sinking in. Word Gets Around was an incredibly important album for me, as it was for many people who grew up in the south Wales valleys, and though I didn't know Stuart exceptionally well, we often found ourselves at the same openings and parties in Wales, the last time at the closing night of Mal Pope's Cappuccino Girls in late 2009. Once, at an exhibition at Washington Gallery I returned to the room after using the toilet only to find Stuart stood on a chair reading aloud from my diary. '15th October 2003. Period due. Buy tampons.' It was his way of reuniting the handbag left on the table with its rightful owner, and fast. It worked. God bless you, man.

It's Alive

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Sun, 16 May 2010 08:15:00 +0000

It's always a bit of a nail-biting time, the moment a manuscript turns from a file on your desktop to a real book with a cover, landing on the doormats of reviewers and on bookshelves in shops, a barcode on its arse, an ISBN number on its opening page. It's been years in the making - an editor's been over it five times, and each time you said, 'Enough already. It's time to let it go.' Yet you want to edit it again now. Just one more time. Just one more time, please? Too late. There's nothing to do. People are reading it and your job as a writer is over.

On the day that Sixteen Shades of Crazy was released, Super Thursday as my publisher Blue Door described it, I was at a conference at Swansea University arranged by The First Choice Project, an initiative exploring creative approaches with young people excluded from conventional education. I gave a speech about my own experiences and acted as rapporteur, which took my mind off what was happening in the university bookshop downstairs; the shop manager arranging a display of my new and old books on a perspex rise. At the end of the day I did a signing there. When it came to scribbling my name I wondered if I was spelling it correctly. It seemed like such a long time since I'd sat at a Waterstones table, sharpie in hand. 'Would you like me to write anything in particular?' In my head I did a quick calculation. Amazing! It had only been three years since Dial M for Merthyr was published. Funny how spending the best part of your life in front of a keyboard seems to distort time. The books were on a 3 for 2 deal and some of the delegates bought three copies each. I think that's why I sold out.

Now I sit in my attic, trying to concentrate on the novel-in-progress, but, at the end of each afternoon torture myself by typing the title of the book into search engines, eyes peeled for newly published reviews. I do it the way you might watch a horror film, my hands covering my face. Fortunately I've only found one, and that was favourable. I tell myself I'll have grown bored of the pursuit by the time the bad ones materialise! Actually, that isn't too far from the truth. Publication, by it's very nature, teaches you not to dwell on old work. There will be one chance to celebrate, at the Hay Festival at the end of the month where the book will be officially christened. (Sorry, launched. The comparisons between publication and childbirth is ubiquitous but I'll try not to do it again - I'm sure that publishing a book is actually nothing like giving birth.) It's time for me to indulge in my pre-launch tradition, the purchasing of a new little black dress for the occasion. And then, afterwards, back to the blank page.

If you've read Sixteen Shades of Crazy already and you're looking for your next literary adventure, you'd do a lot worse than get hold of Nuala Ni Chonchuir's You. This is a debut novel from the established Irish short story writer and poet about a 10-year-old girl who lives with her seperated mother and two brothers. Set against the semi-urban backdrop of the River Liffey in 1980, the story unfolds through the narrator's observations and interactions and her niave interpretations of adult conversations and behaviour. Heartbreaking, enchanting and incredibly tense. The little girl's voice is pitch perfect. If it's short stories you're after you'll find some of the best I've ever read in Alex Epstein's Blue Has No South. This is Epstein's first collection to be published in English. Previously his prose has been hailed by Israeli critics as reminiscent of Borges and Kafka. Populated by wounded angels, chess players, and lovers young and old, his tales are set in airports, the sites of legends and countries that no longer exist. The one-hundred-and-thirty-one stories here truly revel in the possibility of a single sentence and are my favourite ever, ever. Small is beautiful. Yes it is.

Drinking and Death at Laugharne

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 08:22:00 +0000

Back at my desk after three days at the fourth Laugharne Festival. Friday I was first writer on the bill, reading from Sixteen Shades of Crazy, despite Blackwell's, the festival bookshop, having failed to acquire any copies, (not as insulting as you'd imagine since they failed to order Roddy Doyle's new one too, allegedly because they didn't think Doyle was 'all that important.') Turned out I was sharing the venue with a funeral party, a situation that turned surreal when Dan Rhodes arrived to read from the brilliant Little Hands Clapping, (set in a suicide museum). Also there's a rumour that an event at the Boathouse has been cut short for an impromptu ash-scattering ceremony. Death quickly becomes one of the themes of the festival. D and I order sea bass and a bottle of house white in the Green Room, then head to the Millennium Hall to watch Nick Kent interviewed by Lee Brackstone.

Saturday morning I mistakenly ask the barman at the Portreeve for a cold beer instead of a hot coffee, and then sit down to listen to the lovely Carys Eleri reading from Aeronwy Thomas' memoir, (published two weeks after her death), and Charlie Connelly reading a chapter from his latest travelogue. Niall Griffiths reads from his novel-in-progress, and Catrin Dafydd from the very funny Random Deaths and Custard. No matter how many hair of the dog's I take, (I've moved onto gin by 3pm), I can't shake the numbness of the hangover and by 8pm I'm at The Fountain Inn watching Keith Allen's 'Laugharne's Got Talent.' Apparently Keith had a fight with the sound man earlier. A friend from the Rhondda is up doing a song but my tolerance for drink, and for drunks, is quickly waning. Somebody shouts very loudly across the crowded room something that sounds like 'RACHEL TREZISE! EAT A PACKET OF SALT & VINEGAR CRISPS AND GO TO BED!' at me, which I don't quite understand, but which I take as my cue to leave. We go back to the farmhouse to share a quiet bottle of red and listen to the barn owls in the derelict shed opposite.

Sunday seems to come all too quickly and determined to see Helen Griffin's one-woman play Caitlin, having missed it last year, we make our way back to the Millennium Hall. The whole performance can be encapsulated with this line: 'The world forgives great artists, but not the fucking bad mother's, oh no,' which somehow makes me cry. Afterwards, we head straight for Dylan and Caitlin's grave in the cemetery across the road, wondering why we've never done so before. Someone has left a half bottle of Jameson's on the ground for them. Back to the hall then to see Nicky Wire. Loved the 'Be pure, be vigilant, behave', quote he stole from Torquemada. Not so keen on his interviewer, Phil Wilding, who seemed to think that constantly repeating the word 'Fuck,' for no obvious reason made him appear clever. And so we rounded the remainder of the day off with more drinks in the sun. Already I'm missing Yoda and Bagpuss, the energetic cats from the farmhouse, as well as the wonderful company of the other guests, and feeling bad for Faith, Hope and Charity, the pigs, who are to be slaughtered today.

And so, despite much opposition, it is true that there is always a laugh to be found in Laugharne. But now for the detox.

The Max Boyce Prize

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:13:00 +0000

Late last month it was announced that Dial M for Merthyr was the inaugural winner of The Max Boyce Prize. Fflur Dafydd won the Welsh language category with Y Llyfrgell. Residents from Glynneath chose the winners by voting for their favourite English and Welsh language book from the past decade. We were presented with our prizes at Glynneath Library. It was great fun to read the first page from Dial M for Merthyr, with Max Boyce sitting in the front row. If you've read it you'll know that Max is mentioned, right before the bit about my standing up in nursery class to sing 'Friggin' in the Riggin' to my classmates. (Photograph courtesy of John Fry.)

I've been busy the past few months working on my current novel but I'm being forced out of hibernation now to promote Sixteen Shades of Crazy which is released on April 29th. I managed to get hold of a hard copy on a recent visit to my publisher's in Hammersmith, and I have to say, I LOVE it. Readings start at the Laugharne Festival on Friday April 9th. (3.30pm at the Portreeve with Tiffany Murray for me). Hopefully there'll be a few advance copies of the book available at the reading, although at this stage I can't confirm it. There are many more readings to come, including the official launch of the book at Hay. Hay haven't released their complete programme yet so keep checking the calendar. Looking forward to seeing you in the Wild West then. And if I don't see you, I'll definitely be seeing Nick Kent, Dan Rhodes, Martin Carthy and 'Laugharne's Got Talent' with Keith Allen! Gonna miss Willy Vlautin this year but I'm reading his latest novel Lean on Pete at the moment, and that's a pretty good consolation.

Happy New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:17:00 +0000

Well, 2010 is almost upon us and promises as ever to be a busy one for me.

First up is The Silent Village exhibition at Ffotogallery in which contemporary artists, namely myself, Peter Finnemore and Paolo Ventura offer our response to 'The Silent Village', Humphrey Jenning's film which is both a reconstruction of a Nazi atrocity in the Second World War and an evocation of Welsh life in the early 1940s.
I have written a short story called 'A Child Called Lidice,' that will accompany the visual art. You will also be able to listen to it read on headphones in the gallery space. The exhibition opens on January 15 and closes February 27th.

For more information visit: www.ffotogallery.org

Secondly, 'Loose Connections,' a novella I've written for the Accent Press Quick Reads series, will be published on March 4th to celebrate World Reading Day. The 96 page book tells the story of Mother-of-two Rosemary, a woman under pressure. With two difficult teenaged children, a distant husband and a busy job, the stress is mounting. The loss of her internet connection pushes her over the edge. After waiting a month and two failed attempts to fix the problem, a third repair man arrives. When he too says he can't get her back online, his incompetence forces Rosemary to take drastic action. The repair man realises that Rosemary is not as naive as she first appears. She is a woman with a secret and is capable of causing him harm. Loose Connections may now be pre-ordered from Amazon for only £1.99!

Of course, my second novel 'Sixteen Shades of Crazy,' will also be published this year by the excellent new HarperCollins imprint Blue Door. The book will be officially launched in May, at the Hay Festival but can also be pre-ordered from Amazon now. After five years in the making I cannot tell you how excited I am to see this baby hit the shelves.

'Went out, got pissed. Same shit, different day.' Aberalaw, a tiny South Wales valley village where nobody ever arrives and nobody ever leaves. The new police chief has declared war on recreational drugs, resulting in an eighteen-month drought. The party-loving wives and girlfriends of local punk band, The Boobs, are getting desperate, both for drugs and thrills: Ellie, factory girl with dreams of a better life in New York; Rhiannon, hairdresser with a taste for violence and designer clothes and Sian, unappreciated, obsessive compulsive mother of three. Into their lives, enter the languid dark stranger, Johnny: Englishman, drug dealer and shameless seducer. In the space of just a few months, three women's lives will be changed forever.'

Finally, as part of the Glynneath: Big Read 10 campaign, the public have been invited to vote for their favourite Welsh book, in both English and Welsh languages, from a short list of 10 titles. My rockumentary Dial M for Merthyr has been shortlisted. If you've read and enjoyed the book please show your support by clicking on the link below and voting for it. The result of the vote will be announced shortly after the closing date of 12 February 2010.

cymunedau09communities.cllc.org.uk/27197?rc=27197

And Happy New Year! xx

Meet at the Gate

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:47:00 +0000

So, I was interviewed recently by the lovely Fflur Dafydd for Canongate's 'Meet at the Gate' series of authors interviewing authors. You can read the original here:

www.meetatthegate.com

Or read the transcript below. News of new releases and events coming soon.

FD: Let's start perhaps with the obvious question. You were the inaugural winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize, the biggest financial prize in the world for a single work (£60,000); a prize only open to writers under 30. When the announcement was made, it was evident you weren't expecting it at all! Am I right in saying that this prize changed the course of your writing career? Tell us about some of the exciting things that have happened to you since then.

RT: I certainly wasn't expecting it. Being Welsh, and therefore paranoid and extraordinarily self-doubting, I was sure I was the token Welsh contender, there only because the Dylan Thomas Prize was based in Wales. That alone would have been enough to change my career. For the first time ever my work was being reviewed in The Times and The Independent, and being read for the first time, I'm quite sure, on the other side of the Severn Bridge. Actually winning it was completely bizarre. Accepting the title came with a residency at the University of Texas in Austin. Sitting down and discussing my work, until that point obviously all set in Wales, with students who grew up in the USA, but who identified with it, was a totally exhilarating experience. It took a lot of that Welsh paranoia away and gave me the confidence to start believing in myself simply as a 'writer' rather than a 'Welsh writer'. I spent a month in the States at that time and married my fiancé in Vegas, so it changed my personal life too.

FD: Another surprise perhaps was the fact that your book, Fresh Apples, which is a short story collection, managed to see off stiff competition from several novels. Do you think that in many ways the short story collection allows the writers to show the breadth and depth of their vision, and perhaps to show their versatility, even more so than a novel?

RT: Well a novel and a short-story are two very different art forms. I always like to say that a novel is a bonfire whereas a short story is a firework. For me, it takes at least two years to write a novel so it's a little like dragging bits of wood and debris from here there and everywhere and building it into a structure that will burn for quite some time in order to keep your reader interested, and obviously that takes an amount of patience and effort. A short story however is a short, sharp, shock. It's quick and you can write it quickly but it has to be brilliant from beginning to end or you'll lose your reader immediately. If the Catherine Wheel doesn't light first time, everyone looks away. In terms of presenting your abilities, a whole collection of fireworks is much more effective than one long bonfire, because you're presenting a substantial range of characters and scenarios, themes, ideas and settings. The second winner of the prize was a short story collection too, The Boat by Nam Le, so I guess that sort of proves the theory, but short stories shouldn't just be seen as a way for young people to communicate their talent. I think short story writing is a real skill and I can't wait to get started on a new collection now that I'm over 30 and hopefully won't be constantly referred to as a 'young writer' any more.

FD: I use your short stories a lot in my creative writing classes at Swansea University, and these are the kinds of stories that make undergraduates wake up from their morning coma and actually listen. I think one of the reasons for this is because of the unique combination of the dark subject matter and the startling, lively nature of the language in your stories, which often pulsates on the page and gives us arrestingly original descriptions. Is this an intentional contrast in your work; the often despondent nature of your characters versus the vibrant nature of the language that surrounds them?

RT: I was reading one of the stories to a group of disadvantaged sixteen-year-olds at Bridgend College very recently and as soon as I finished it, one of the girls at the back sat up and said, 'Oh my God! I thought some boring old bitch was going to come in here and go on and on about something totally shit, but I really liked that.' It's pretty much the best review I've ever had because to impress someone who doesn't ordinarily read literature is much more satisfying than impressing someone who does. Another girl asked me if I was rich and when I told her about The Dylan Thomas Prize purse, she said, 'I don't want to be a footballer's wife anymore. I want to be a writer.' I thought she was joking but as I was leaving the lecturer told me that the girl spends her evenings hanging around Ninian Park football ground. The contrast between the dark subject matter and the bright language isn't intentional at all. It's a very naive feature of my work, or perhaps I should say organic. The characters and plots are amalgamations of people and things I knew growing up in the Rhondda Valley. I was dragged up, pretty much, and was dirt poor, and knew all about desperation in every sense of the word, so that was my life experience and that's what I draw on for inspiration, but I've always loved words and reading and song lyrics, so at an early age I learned to become very inventive with language and learned to use it evocatively. It's a sort of happy accident that I naturally manage to blend those two facets together.

FD: You recently visited the wonderful European Short Story Festival in Croatia. Can you tell us a little about your experiences there? How important do you think it is to have such a festival, and what did you as a writer gain from it?

RT: The Croatian short story festival was the third and best short story festival I've attended. I also previously did The Frank O'Connor Festival in Cork, and the Wroclaw Festival in Poland. Being a writer I spend a lot of time sitting in front of a keyboard and thrashing ideas around in my own head, so sometimes just popping into the local for a drink can be a bit of a culture shock. It's always wonderful to spend time with other writers, especially writers from other countries and cultures and as a writer it's always important to travel to other countries, and so doing both at the same time is always good for the soul. I discovered an Israeli writer called Alex Epstein who has yet to be published in English, but whose short stories are utterly sublime, and made me feel privileged to be sitting in the audience listening. It's so inspiring. Unfortunately for me, I feel like I've read the stories in Fresh Apples to death which is why I'm so keen to start work on a second collection.

FD: Do you feel that each published work contributes something to your technique when writing the next? Your next published work will be a novel. Did Fresh Apples or Dial M for Merthyr (your non-fiction) teach you anything about writing in the meantime, which you then passed on to your latest novel?

RT: Each piece of work published or otherwise absolutely contributes to my technique when I sit down to write the next. Fresh Apples in particular taught me a lot about story writing. My first novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl was to a large extent autobiographical so there was no plot or planning involved, it was just a matter of extending or limiting the truth. To a certain degree, all fiction is like that; I sometimes say that writing is editing the truth. But the short stories taught me to manipulate themes, work with metaphors, and create completely fictional characters by fusing aspects of many different people together. I experimented for the first time with different ages and sexes so I learned to use a variety of voices which I realise now is essential for a writer of fiction, but that was a big stumbling block for me between the publication of the first and second book. Like actors who can't watch themselves on screen, I find it very difficult to read my first novel because there are so many improvements I could make now. Every book is a learning curve and Fresh Apples was a steep one. That's what makes writing exciting. You are constantly trying to better yourself.

FD: Can you tell us a little bit about the content of your next novel Sixteen Shades of Crazy? Does it connect to your other works? Do you feel that this is an important milestone in your journey as a writer?

RT: Sixteen Shades of Crazy is a novel about an English drug-dealer who arrives in a small Welsh village amidst a six month drug drought. To the young people in this very insular and downtrodden area, he is the epitome of exoticism. He is also a shameless womaniser who quickly sets about seducing the women of the village. The story is told in three voices, those of three young women who over the course of a year fall in love with him, and whose lives are changed irrevocably because of him. The story obviously involves narcotics, which connects with many of my short stories, in fact the novel is based very loosely on one of my short stories, but it is mostly a cautionary tale about the dangers of obsession and the confines of community. It is definitely an important milestone in my career because it's my first proper full length work of fiction. It's been five years in the making because I had to keep putting it down to work on other things, the commission to write Dial M for Merthyr for example, so I'll be very happy to see it finally published in May next year. It's also a big two fingers in the face of one particular London agent, who after reading the plot summary seven years ago, told me to put it in a drawer and forget about it.

FD: Your new publisher for this novel is Blue Door, a new imprint of Harper Collins. As Welsh writers I think we always feel a little bit displaced or disorientated when our readership expands or when a bigger publisher takes an interest in us! Has this been your experience in moving from a smaller publisher to a much bigger one? And do you feel that writing about Wales to a global audience is important? Do you see yourself as carrying any cultural responsibility as a Welsh writer, or is the 'Welsh writer' tag sometimes a burden?

RT: Luckily much of my work has already been translated and In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl and Fresh Apples were particularly successful in Australia and New Zealand, so after reading a few rave reviews in The Sydney Herald, (I think the publishers hid the bad ones), moving from an independent publisher to a major doesn't seem to be the huge leap it would have been otherwise. I'm really excited about it because as a writer I think it's natural to want to reach the biggest audience possible. Blue Door is a small imprint. It only publishes twelve titles a year and I have a very good relationship with my publisher. Yet it has the full marketing power of HarperCollins behind it, so it is the best of both worlds. There's no guarantee that the book will be successful. Obviously the print run is enormous compared to what I'm used to but I'm looking forward to giving it a shot. What is very strange is having Leonard Cohen and Prince Charles as label mates. I couldn't have dreamt that one up. Wales as a nation is unfortunately quite inward-looking, which makes us very bad at presenting our talents to the outside world, which is a terrible shame, so I do think writing about Wales to a global audience is enormously important. While I've always tried to give my writing a proper sense of place, I've always been very careful not to alienate non-Welsh readers. Scottish and Irish writers are able to garner a global audience so why can't we? The village in Sixteen Shades of Crazy for example, could be a village anywhere in the world. The human condition always transcends nationality, so I do find the 'Welsh writer' tag a burden. All tags are burdens to writers. I think my responsibility as a writer lies in exploring as many different cultures as possible, rather than limiting my horizons. When you live in Wales there is a tendency to forget that it's a very small country. When you live in the UK there is a tendency to forget that it's a very small island.

FD: You've achieved quite a lot in a short time as a writer. Do you have books inside you that you're perhaps not ready to write yet, but would like to have a go at in the future?

RT: Of course I have many ideas in my head and I'm just waiting for them to trickle out. I'd prefer to call them ideas because they may well become plays or poems. I've already done some preliminary work on my next novel which is set in America. It's a love story between and told by an unlikely couple; a former prostitute from North Carolina and a young Jewish man from a Hasidic community in Brooklyn, New York. I know that on paper it sounds as though I'm just trying to write the most controversial novel imaginable but it's actually a very tender tale about love being able to conquer the tribulations caused by dysfunctional upbringings. Obviously, having spent most of my life in Wales, my knowledge about Hasidic communities, and prostitution for that matter, is very limited so I'm off to New York next year to do a substantial amount of research. Since studying Irish history and politics at Limerick University I've always wanted to write something about the Troubles, probably a novel and not politically charged in any way, just an account of how it effected and continues to effect the average family in Northern Ireland. And obviously being Welsh, and of Cornish descent, my history is steeped in mining, so at some point I'd like to write the antidote to 'How Green Is My Valley;' all very big ideas that will take decades probably to implement. So please don't expect too much, too soon.

Rachel Trezise on Patrick Jones

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel Trezise) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:56:00 +0000

A feature on poet and dramatist Patrick Jones, taken from New Welsh Review 79 (Spring 2008)

My affiliation with Patrick Jones began seven years ago, on an October evening in Treorchy Library, at the launch of my first book. Patrick's own book, Fuse, a collection of plays and poetry, was being published by the same company the following year and he came to say a few words about how In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl was bound to appeal to teenagers in the valleys, to get them reading, and hopefully in time, writing. I was enormously grateful that an established writer would come and advocate my work in that way because I was anything but established; a shy, anonymous Rhondda girl, turning scarlet as she read her first published paragraph to a few friends, family members and, unbeknownst to me at the time, Ron Berry's eldest daughter. Being a lifelong Manic Street Preachers fan, what I was most excited about was the fact that Patrick was bass player Nicky Wire's elder brother, and I spent the preceding week clinging to the vain hope that Patrick would bring Nicky to the launch. To my mind, The Manic Street Preachers and Patrick Jones were inseparable entities. Patrick was the band member who wasn't a band member, a sleeping partner: His voice had been immortalised on the bands debut Generation Terrorists album, reading snippets of his poetry over the introductions to Love's Sweet Exile and Crucifix Kiss. The tag line in the chorus from Motorcycle Emptiness had originally belonged to him, as had the album title Everything Must Go. But throughout the past seven years I've had many opportunities to watch Patrick perform his poetry live on stage, including a performance in a tiny cafeteria in the Bowery in New York, a few weeks after 9/11. His poetry erupts from him, a torrent of frenzied emotion, spilling out like magma. His work is powerful, memorable and immensely affecting. Very quickly I came to realise that he is very much his own man, and very much his own writer.

Patrick grew up listening to Canadian blues inspired heavy metal band, Rush, and describes himself as 'an old rocker.' As a child and a young teenager, he never read books and like me, was influenced by the lyrics of rock songs, the only form of culture available to him. He wasn't one of these kids, he says, who knew they wanted to be a writer by the age of fourteen. In fact, literature didn't make an appearance until he became interested in politics whilst studying Sociology at Swansea University. He began writing poetry in 1986, six years before Generation Terrorists was released. At least one of his most well known poems, The Eloquence in the Screaming was written during this period. Nicky Wire explains in the foreword to Fuse that he didn't realise his brother had become a poet until they were travelling home from a gig supporting The Levellers in Salisbury Arts Centre in 1990. "... Patrick, who had come along for moral support, began reciting, or better, ranting, a poem. Suddenly everything made sense, alienation felt comforting, the poem was 'the eloquence in the screaming' which still inspires me, the moment crystallised, froze and stayed with me ever since."

That is proof enough that Patrick doesn't write simply because his younger brother is in a band, which is what he claimed everybody thought, when I asked if I could interview him. (When I did get around to interviewing him, his first words, whilst standing at the till in the Chapter Arts Centre café waiting for tea and coffee, were, 'They [The New Welsh Review] couldn’t get the Manics, so they've opted for me instead?' Clearly anxious about public perception to his connection with the band.)

What Patrick and the Manic Street Preachers do have in common, obviously, is a background in the same area, the former mining town of Blackwood in the south Wales valleys. And their work therefore often encompasses the same themes; the demise of mining under Thatcher and the rise of consumerism. Empty adolescences spent in the ailing Gwent Valleys; 'Culture, alienation, boredom and despair.' The Manics' first three studio albums, on which Richey Edwards was the predominant lyricist, as well as the subsequent five, to varying degrees, are political manifestoes questioning racism, apathy, sexism, consumerism and war. Patrick's poetry and drama does much of the same. From The Eloquence in the Screaming, the poem that inspired Nicky Wire:

the belt the greed the maggot the money magic seed
of destruction and defraction
into us it comes
replacing our sad eloquence with the obscene apathy of
“have a nice day it could be you forget it all in an instant he was
killed by friendly fire of collateral damage and business relations”
a language of distraction
smothering the screaming with the businessed smile the teacher's
pen and the credit sale

The other attribute which both artists share is a burning desire to inspire and enable young and/or disadvantaged people to become artists, or at least to think about the world surrounding them. Much of Patrick's work has involved young writing groups and adult literacy classes in his community. When the local pit closed and the unemployed miners were told to retrain, part of their retraining concerned learning how to type. Having spent their lives doing hard physical labour, their fingers were too thick to use standard keyboards. Patrick initiated a weekly poetry class, giving them a means to vent their frustration. The Manic Street Preachers are renown for decorating their record sleeves with quotes from poets, philosophers and politicians in an attempt to alert their fans to the work of other thinkers. In fact, on that October evening in 2000 when I told Patrick I was a Manics fan, he asked me if those quotes had had anything to do with my becoming a novelist. They sent me out in search of the writing of Valerie Solanos and Sylvia Plath, which was at least a start. Patrick seemed overjoyed when I admitted this. 'I'll tell my brother,' he said. 'I'll lend him your book.'

A year earlier, following the premiere of Everything Must Go, a journalist had asked Patrick why he'd written the play, and he answered, 'Libraries gave us power,' echoing the famous first line of The Manics' Design for Life. 'Language is the best tool we have for articulating rage. I've got a lot of rage at what Wales has become. Richey had it too.' So the point it seems, in the existence of both Patrick and the Manics' work, is exactly that, the picking up of the pen, doing something to oppose the status quo, which is what The Eloquence in the Screaming is actually about:

BUT
between the billboard masturbation
across highways of metallic isolation
there
there lives the deafening screaming of you me us
wiping out the diseased pages of apathy
that bleed our eloquence

And as Patrick himself describes Generation Terrorists in a very early album review: '…we are conditioned to an oblivious mass, into a catatonic dead life of false desires and created needs, we are force taught to hate, be greedy, cheat and follow some false dream, the candle needed the flame and MSP lit the dying wick of all our secret revolutions…' Raging creatively against the Tory/New Labour machine is a kind of socialism in action, the closest to socialism we can now hope to get. As Patrick and Aneurin Bevan have said, 'the verb is more important than the noun.'

But that is where the similarities between Patrick Jones and The Manic Street Preachers end. Having been influenced by music so early on, Patrick has always been interested in using music to enhance literature. Commemoration and Amnesia from 1999 is a recorded collection of his poetry, set against music written and recorded around his words, by various artists including members of The Super Furry Animals and Catatonia. The music is a welcome second dimension that softens the often harsh content of the stanza, and which, along with Patrick's gentle voice lulls the listener into a position of calm, leaving them open-lugged and taking note. But this ploy would be utterly useless if Patrick's poetry was not superbly crafted and thoroughly engaging to start with. Nowhere is this more apparent than on Scalpel & Heart, where Ashley Cooke's placid guitar and Alison Gillies' delighting cello accompany Patrick as he talks of his child's five tiny fingers growing, making the juxtaposing conclusion of the poem appear even more severe:

So how can I tell you
That fingers pull a trigger
That hands make a fist smash jaws
Push buttons

What Commemoration and Amnesia adroitly demonstrates, is that Patrick's work has never been reliant on music, but that a large section of the audience he would like to attract are. He has never wanted to be a musician, despite having had a few guitar lessons much earlier on. 'Songs have a way of capturing a moment in time,' he says, 'an instant which relates to a certain period. But poetry and drama can transcend eras. Encapsulate whole stories, people's lives.'

Everything Must Go, perhaps Patrick's most well known work, a play dealing with drugs, unemployment, crime, self-mutilation and alienation in the Gwent Valley is interspersed with songs and lyrics from Catatonia, the Stereophonics and principally, The Manic Street Preachers. It is a revenge tragedy in which main character, A, avenges his father's sacking at the local Japanese manufacturing plant by shooting his father's former boss with a gun his grandfather used in the Spanish Civil War. Scenes often begin with a Manic Street Preachers song, and one character is so detached, he only communicates in song lyrics. The play was first performed in February 1999 at the Sherman Theatre before touring in early 2000. At that time, Welsh pop music was hugely successful throughout Britain. The 'Cool Cymru' phenomenon filled the pages of Melody Maker and the New Musical Express with photographs of Kelly Jones and Cerys Matthews flying the Welsh flag. Q Magazine, the most respected of the music publications even released a Welsh issue celebrating St David's Day. To all intents and purposes, Wales looked from the outside like a culturally identifiable nation, teeming with confidence. In fact in the south Wales valleys, the opposite still was true. In Caerphilly, where the play was set, the unemployment rate was 8.1%, and 29% of the population had no educational qualifications. The whole play seems to be an attempt to fill in the blanks between the lyrics, informing the audience that Wales was in fact still crippled by the departure of the mining industry and the low pay and anodyne employment of the fly-by-night Japanese factories; a reaction to the success of Welsh music, which Patrick says is true. This from the narrator at the beginning:

how green is my valley how grey is the sky - ooh lovely love - fucking daffodils dancing in the spring sun - fucking new deal employers fucking leeks and rugged scrum halves up to their bollocks in mud shouting numbers in the rain - the pubs puking souls out out out on Saturday nights the the the fucking joyriders burning the hillsides - the temazes stuck on tongues - the sulpher glow of orange lamps - the sound of factories at dawn - the karaoke queens in cymmer - green hills - choirs - male of course - come on taste it feel it come on down - lissen to this choir - cunts - lissen Welcome to your fears welcome to your dreams welcome to the welsh tourist board’s translation clinic - welcome to the real nuts and fucking bolts welcome to the burning eyes the torn torsos the gaping wounds - the - history - pistory - piss story - welcome welcome - to the psychiatric hospital we all live in...

Amazingly, at the time, none of the reviews from journalists based outside Wales pick up on what Patrick was trying to say, except maybe Toby O'Connor Morse, who, writing for The Independent, said, 'Everything must Go is not a feel good play... There are times when [it's] less Cool Cymru and more Whinging Wales. Either this play is a decade too late in its description of the Welsh zeitgeist, or the crust of newfound Cambrian confidence is still tremulously thin.' The other reviews only concern themselves with the Manic Street Preachers link, sometimes comparing Patrick and Nicky's styles, like Robin Bresnark of the Melody Maker who said, "Everything Must Go makes The Holy Bible look like 'Janet and John.'" And what of the critics who accuse him of being too dark? Patrick shrugs. 'Nobody likes it when you hold a mirror up to society and reflect what's really going on, do they?'

Much more recently, his latest play Sing to Me, commissioned and presented by Gwent Theatre in October 2006 to celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the writing of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, explores Nationalism and identity. 'Nationalism is a subject I'm very interested in,' Patrick says, 'because who decides when it's wrong or it's right? We find the patriotism of Iran offensive, but nobody objects to Scottish people wearing kilts.' The song is analysed by three GCSE students who are writing an essay about it, including Dafydd, a xenophobic Welsh speaker and Rena, an Eastern European immigrant. 'Writing about a National Anthem gave me an opportunity to explore nationalism and make people think about it. Personally, I don't think much of National Anthems. I hope Evan James was being sincere when he said he wrote it for the love of his country not for the hate of another.' It is an example of how Patrick shrewdly uses music to examine longstanding social wrongs.

As for the professional blessing and curse that is being Nicky Wire's brother, Patrick says, 'It's weird. I was interviewing some old age pensioners recently at an old people's home, doing some research for a forthcoming project, and an eighty year old woman said, "So you're one of those Manic Street's, are you?" There really isn't any getting away from it. And I haven't ruled out writing something involving The Manics again. Nicky and I have been trying to write something together for a few years. But we're both very different writers. I think The Manics material should be much more politically charged at the moment. They have an audience and they could do a lot of good with that. But they won't listen to me. I can't write for Nicky. Just like Nicky can't write for me.'

Patrick is currently listening to Elect the Dead, the leftist Iraq war inspired solo album of Serj Tankian, front man of metal band System of A Down.