Christine Evans (poet)
Christine Evans (* 1943 in West Riding, Yorkshire ) is an English poet. In 2012 she received the Cholmondeley Award for her complete work.
Life
In 1967 Christine Evans moved to Pwllheli in Wales , where her father and grandmother grew up, to work as a teacher. Since her grandmother spoke Welsh , she wanted to learn the language. Her husband, whom she married in 1969, comes from a traditional farming family on Bardsey Island (Ynys Enlli), a legendary island about three kilometers off the Lleyn Peninsula in the Irish Sea .
Evans gives writing classes in Ty Newydd and Ynys Enlli, where she spends the summer months with her son and her husband, a fisherman. During this time, Evans says, she captures impressions of light and water during physical work, which inspired her to write poems and prose at her desk in Uwchmynydd during the winter months.
plant
Evans began poetry writing when she was on maternity leave in 1976. Her first volume of poetry was published in 1983. Her band Cometary Phrases was named Welsh Book of the Year 1989 . In 2005 Evans was the first recipient of the Roland Mathias Prize , which she received for Selected Poems , for “her fresh look and bold metaphors as well as for a sensitivity to what it feels like to live on the threshold of other worlds”. In 2012 Evans received the Cholmondeley Award for her oeuvre .
To individual poems
In her early poems, the peasant surroundings are observed in a painfully moving tone: the hands of the peasants who come to visit are described in the poem “Callers” as gruff and nervous (“blunt, nervous hands”). "Falling Back" is a longer poem that tells of the phases in which the widow of a North Welsh shepherd slowly tries to come to terms with his death. The poems “Deep Under” and “Fodder” each begin on the outside and then move into the depths, with the landscape being used as a metaphor for feelings of an emotional or spiritual nature. "Island of Dark Horses" is also a longer poem. As in the other works in the volume of the same name, it sings about the mysterious island of Ynys Enlli, whose history and inhabitants inspire the author to reflect, which she puts into lyrical form. In “Second Language” the relationship between Kymrisch and English is discussed and a teacher reflects on the possible consequences of teaching.
Publications
- Looking Inland (Serums, 1983)
- Falling Back (Serums, 1986)
- Cometary Phases (Serums, 1989)
- Island of Dark Horses (Serums, 1995)
- Selected Poems (Serums, 2004)
- Growth Rings (Serums, 2006)
- Burning the Candle (Gomer, 2006)
- Bardsey (Gomer, 2008), essays by Christine Evans, photos by Wolf Marloh
- Interview with Alice Entwistle: "Christine Evans", in: In Her Own Words. Women Talking Poetry and Wales , edited by Alice Entwistle, Seren, 2014, ISBN 978-1-7817-2202-2 , pages 75-88.
Research literature
- Pippa Marland, Island of the Dead. Composting Twenty-Thousand Saints on Bardsey Island , in: Green Letters. Studies in Ecocriticism , 18.1 (2014; Special Issue: Junk / Composting), pp. 78–90. (Compare Brenda Chamberlain's (1912–1971) treatment of the subject of thousands of dead saints on Bardsey in Tide Race (1962) with Christine Evans' arrangement of the same subject in Island of Dark Horses from 1995)
- Matthew Jarvis, Christine Evans's Bardsey. Creating Sacred Space , in: Welsh Writing in English. A Yearbook of Critical Essays , 11 (2006-2007), pp. 188-209. (About Bardsey Island's Relationship to Sanctities in Evans' Island of Dark Horses (1995))
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Gomer, Authors, Christine Evans ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c d Selected Poems , description of the contents ( memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , British COPAC catalog
- ^ "Second Language" was first published in: The Anglo-Welsh Review , No 88 (1988), p. 25
- ↑ Review of the volume: Dafydd Roberts, in: Natur Cymru , 28 (Autumn / Hydref 2008), page 45.
- ↑ Brief description in the British COPAC
Web links
- Christine Evans , Gomer, publisher website
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Evans, Christine |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English poet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1943 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | West Riding, Yorkshire |