Republic

This sequence of 80 prose-poems, each constructed in 20 sentences, has arisen from the author’s need to tell a more intimate history, to commit an untold oral history to paper. Williams returns to the meaning of “republic” in its Latin origins which meant “wealth of the people”.

The explosion of the arts and culture looms large, through bands from New Order to My Bloody Valentine, but it is explored specifically through Cŵl Cymru’, and the power of Welsh-language bands like Datblygu. This story is also about class, as we explore a family history of hard work in jobs from retail to caregiving.

There are stories told, overheard, handed down, sometimes translated from Welsh. Together, they create an expansive portrait of the era, including the challenges for women, Welsh-speakers, and other marginalized groups. Ferocious remarks about the Welsh in the popular media are dissected with satirical humour and appalled fascination, while other poems describe being a token woman and political outsider on a TV current affairs show panel, tolerated but ostracized.

Now, Williams poses the possibilities of a nation looking back at itself and its history from afar. Wales has not been allowed to be a republic, but is subject to a state that has military claims on its landscape and a second home explosion which has a severe impact on its communities. There is rebellion to be found in the older meaning of “republic”: since the wealth of the people is a wealth of sounded stories, culture, art, and history.

“Nerys Williams's Republic is a tour de force, a masterful account of the intellectual, political and personal development of a young woman from Welsh-speaking rural Wales and out in the world. Pitched against nostalgia, Nerys Williams's prose poems are tough-minded, shrewd and hugely evocative of the times she chronicles. She deploys details so vividly and with such a light a touch that she's created a new music all of her own. This book, like a waistcoat belt she describes, is a 'steel buckle, once harnessed to silk'.” —Gwyneth Lewis. "The poetry of Nerys Williams is both playful and sharply preceptive, drawing on a wide range of often unexpected influences. She brings a unique set of interests to bear not just poetry in Wales, but on poetry generally." —Zoë Skoulding. "Nerys Williams brings precision, scrutiny, and synaesthesia to her terse, contemplative poems.” -Ben Wilkinson, The Guardian. “A strong imagism and an engaging ‘I’ voice that sometimes subverts expectations, allowing for a shift into more collective concerns. In addition, her deft handling of soundplay (especially the use of alliteration and assonance) greatly add to the experience of the poem as art.” -Michael S. Bengal  Poetry Ireland . “Williams’s language is punchy, a deft mixture of the erudite and the vernacular and sometimes achingly beautiful. Dense with references to art, design, film, popular music, culture and performance it darts fire-fly-like, left, right and centre. A polymath of the first order, Williams clearly knows her stuff." -Ellen Bell for Poetry Wales.

Nerys Williams was born and raised in Carmarthenshire, and now lives in Ireland. Her first volume of poetry Sound Archive (Seren, 2011), was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Forward prize and won the Strong first volume prize. Her second collection Cabaret was published in 2017 by New Dublin Press. She is an Associate Professor of Poetry and Poetics at University College Dublin and a Fulbright Alumnus (UC Berkeley).

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