After I read Diary of the Last Man, almost a year ago I so wanted to hear Robert Minhinnick read – I suggested to Cathy Knapp at Mid Wales Arts Centre that the poetry afternoon I was organising could be upgraded into a festival.
As 2018 is the tenth anniversary of Cathy setting up Mid Wales Arts she thought it a great idea.
Robert Minhinnick is as much an environmentalist as he is a poet. He is joint founder of Friends of the Earth Cymru, 1984, and the charity, Sustainable Wales, founded 1997, for which he is a special advisor.
Robert Minhinnick’s book was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize and made judge Ian McMillan miss his stop plus several more, he was so engrossed
His poetry is on Poetry Archive here
‘Robert Minhinnick’s Diary of the Last Man casts a ferocious eye on the natural world’s vulnerabilities – and our own – in the dysfunctional relationship we have created with that world. His is an apocalyptic vision which moves from isolated contemplation of the fragile beauties of place, most usually South Wales, through atrocity in Iraq, to a community of translations from the Turkish, Arabic and Welsh, achieving a bleakly affirming global regard.’ W.N Herbert (Chair of the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize Judging Panel)
Robert Minhinnick is the leading Welsh poet of his generation’ Sunday Times
‘Robert Minhinnick’s new collection confirms his status as one of the most important poets of these turbulent times. Bleakly elegiac, environmentally political, vital and visionary, his poems cast an extraordinary light over our darkening landscapes.’ Carol Ann Duffy
‘Minhinnick is one of the few poets who writes about a dockyard or a hedgerow with equal authority…A friend of mine once said that he liked to think of R.S.Thomas as “just being there”: outside the media hubbub, steadily producing wonderful poems. Although Minhinnick’s considerably younger, and more cosmopolitan in scope, I’d say the same about him.’ Poetry London
He recently sent me a stunning poem about Goldfinches he had found on an old computer and wished had been included in Diary of the Last Man – he has promised to read it at Caersws. Do join us! Nadia x
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