News from Rob Mimpriss

18 Apr 2024: Inspirational

Today I whispered back, ‘I am the mist and the drizzle.’
 

28 Mar 2024: Behind the Walls: Dr Sarah Gallup Reads From ‘Dangerous Asylums’

Dr Sarah Gallup is a clinical psychologist at the California Department of State Hospitals. She also runs a podcast exploring the history of mental health care and the stories of people who lived or worked Behind the Walls of the World’s Psychiatric Hospitals. In six recent episodes she reads from Dangerous Asylums...

18 Mar 2024: Turns of the River, Turns of the Road

A parcel arrived yesterday containing reviewers’ copies of the latest titles from my publishing imprint, Cockatrice Books. The first is Gwyriad: Poems by Nigel Jarrett, sharp and striking in its poetic technique, reflecting on class, industrial heritage, and industrial decline, family and local history, and the history of the former Pen-y-Fal Psychiatric Hospital. The second is River of Hope by Roger Granelli, a novel...

6 Mar 2024: Land of Change׃ Stories of Struggle and Solidarity from Wales

A parcel containing two books reached me from Culture Matters the other day: the first, a copy of Land of Change, an anthology of Welsh writing edited by Gemma June Howell, and containing a short story of mine, ‘Industry in the Country of the Blind,’ among its eighty-odd entries...

6 May 2023: Reading for Republicans

As a response to the junketing taking place in the centre of London this weekend, Cockatrice Books quietly discounts two of its titles to rather less than the cost of the coronation for the average UK taxpayer. My translation of A Book of Three Birds by Morgan Llwyd, written by a roundhead and Fifth Monarchist during the early years of Cromwell’s dictatorship; and T. Gwynn Jones’s translation of The Sleeping Bard by Ellis Wynne, published just a few years before Scotland’s annexation by England, both reflect on the nature of power and authority, the relationship between religion and the state, the purpose of the British union, and the future of Wales...

13 Dec 2022: Pugnacious Little Trolls at the White Review

There are not many extrinsic rewards for Welsh writers. The reading population is small; there are significant financial hardships; we are saturated with material from England and the wider Anglosphere; and even the best of Welsh writing is perceived, with some reason, as unvaried and unexciting. Publishers regard Welsh writers at best with a kind of commercial suspicion, and at worst with political and cultural mistrust.

Even so, my recent short-story collection, Pugnacious Little Trolls, has just been listed as one of The White Review’s books of the year for 2023...

18 Jun 2022: Rivers of Wales by Jim Perrin

Jim Perrin’s Rivers of Wales, recently published by Carreg Gwalch, joins his earlier books, Snowdon and The Mountains of Wales in combining autobiography with reflections on Welsh heritage and landscape. Among the pleasures it offers the reader are the wealth of his descriptions of writers, naturalists, scholars and adventurers...

21 May 2022: ‘Industry in the Country of the Blind’ goes to Culture Matters

In a short story, ‘The Country of the Blind’ by H. G. Wells, a climber in the Andes separated from his party stumbles upon a highland valley cultivated by a forgotten community of the congenitally blind. These people, cut off in their isolated valley over centuries, have created a way of life so perfectly adapted to their blindness that they have forgotten that sight exists...

19 Feb 2022: Pugnacious Little Trolls goes to Nation Cymru

Almost a year after its publication, Pugnacious Little Trolls is reviewed by one of the kingmakers of Welsh writing, Jon Gower, for Nation Cymru....

7 Feb 2022: A British Triad?

Among the pleasures of reading Welsh literature is Ellis Wynne’s eighteenth-century prose classic, The Sleeping Bard (Y Bardd Cwsc). Written under the influence of Bunyan’s, Dante’s and Milton’s religious epics, and more especially of Francisco de Quevedo’s satirical visions, the book’s three visions of the world, death and hell express a distinctively Welsh perspective on the rise of capitalism and the British state...

10 May 2021: An Example to Follow

Following Richard Suchorzewski’s vow that the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party will ‘return to terrify’ the political parties of Wales, I would like to announce that I will return to terrify the Nobel Prize for Literature Committee.
 

24 Mar 2021: Close Ties: New Fiction by Rob Mimpriss and A L Reynolds

February 2021 saw the launch of my fourth short-story collection, Pugnacious Little Trolls, alongside Of the Ninth Verse, a novel by A. L. Reynolds. The virtual launch was attended by a small crowd of sixty people, supported by short-story writers Nigel Jarrett and John O’Donoghue, and by the poet Angela Topping...

30 Dec 2020: Traveller M in the Land of the Cynocephali

Newly published in Otherwise Engaged A Literature and Arts Journal, my short story, ‘Traveller M. in the Land of the Cynocephali’...

1 Dec 2019: Catching Up

According to a Brexiteer trolling Plaid Cymru’s Facebook page I ought to read the Lisbon Treaty, and then I won’t feel so clever. I already don’t feel so clever. I have a splitting headache, for one thing.
 

8 Sep 2019: Gorymdaith!

While UK politics was in uproar, while a former minister crossed the floor to sit in the opposition benches during the Prime Minister’s speech, and while the Prime Minister’s foul-mouthed adviser berated the leader of the opposition while apparently drunk...

1 Aug 2019: Reasoning׃ Twenty Stories

The contact form on my website does not produce much traffic, and what traffic it produces normally falls foul of my email account’s spam rules. But a little while ago, a stranger sent me the message which I quote in part below...

21 Jul 2019: Annibyniaeth!

‘To imagine this: / a people at grips / with genesis / not apocalypse’ Raymond Garlick, ‘Note on the Iliad’.

While the most worthless Prime Minister of modern times formed the most talentless cabinet of modern times, and the new home secretary was accused of breaking the ministerial code within two days of her appointment, All Under One Banner Cymru organised a march for Welsh independence in Caernarfon...

1 Jul 2019: The Books We Read

Tucked between the pages of my second-hand copy of Diane Williams’ selected stories, and in the handwriting of a previous owner, a reading list...

23 Apr 2019: Reflections on the Destiny of the British Race

Newly published in New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, a duo of short stories reflecting on Welsh nationhood and British nationalism...

23 Mar 2019: We Are Europe

Pictured above are some of the million or more good-natured moaners and remarkably patriotic traitors converging on London on 23rd March in an attempt to stop Brexit and precipitate a People’s Vote, free from corruption and foreign interference, and with an electorate better informed on the benefits of remaining in the EU. Protesters from every nation in the UK, and camera crews from the UK and beyond...

25 Nov 2018: Post mortem

Through the careful decapitation and evisceration of a mouse, my cat is able to establish the fact that it did not die of natural causes.
 

24 Sep 2018: The Cloak of Kings’ Beards: Three Tales for Europe

Published by New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, three folk tales taken from the manuscripts of Iolo Morgannwg...

27 Jun 2018: Art the Armed Forces Day

Art the Armed Forces Day, organised by Veteran for Peace, Steve Heaney, was held on a warm day in early summer in one of Llandudno’s historic buildings. Community arts activities were followed in the evening by a brief talk from Steve Heaney, explaining his own experience in the British armed forces and eventual rejection of militarism...

24 Feb 2018:

A cheap narrow room near the railway station, and my single-serving sachet of coffee bears the toothmarks of a previous guest.
 

31 Oct 2017: Hallowe’en in the Cwm

An appropriately-timed celebration of my translation from the folk tales and stories of Owen Wynne Jones (also known as Glasynys), Hallowe’en in the Cwm. Friends, relatives and other guests gathered for food and wine, and stories of ghosts and evil spirits, winged serpent monsters, fairy rings and the tylwyth teg...

4 Nov 2016: Dangerous Asylums at The Carriageworks in Denbigh

Tea and cake, two songs by Elaine Walker, readings by the contributors, and a supportive and deeply appreciative audience marked a celebration of Dangerous Asylums, an anthology of stories from Denbigh Mental Hospital...

10 Oct 2016: Dangerous Asylums at Bangor University

World Mental Health Day was chosen for the launch of Dangerous Asylums at Bangor University, 5-6pm. The launch was attended by contributors Anna Reynolds, Gee and David Williams, by Prof. David Healey of the North Wales Mental Health Research Project, and others...

5 Sep 2016: Parting Advice

I missed this story at the time. But apparently Theresa May advised George Osborne, as an older sister, to acquire a soul by starving a child to death in a silver cage.
 

20 Nov 2015: The Short Story: Compression and Resonance

The Short Story - Compression and Resonance

Led by Rob Mimpriss

Friday November 20th, 1-3pm Ucheldre Literary Society, Ucheldre Arts Centre, Holyhead.

The short story has a rather unusual niche in world literature. Its position seems equidistant between the novel and the poem, emphasising resonance, compression and shapeliness of form, and some critics see it as intentionally marginal, exploring the significance, even the cosmic and spiritual significance, of obscure and impoverished lives...

6 Jul 2015: Reasoning, For His Warriors, Prayer at the End go to Cockatrice Books

Feta, olives and salad, and wonderful company marked the launch of my third short-story collection, Prayer at the End.

The collection contains short stories dedicated to Charis Sewell, Graham Thomas and Cass Meurig, short stories published in Annexe Magazine, The Harbinger and Blue Tattoo, ‘Wolf,’ a Bronze-Age story commissioned by Dr Alistair Sims at the Meillionydd archaeological dig, and a passage from The King’s Mansions by D. Gwenally Jones, a seminal Welsh novel never previously translated...

6 May 2015:

My thoughts today are with the sick, homeless and the hungry of Great Britain. And my condemnation is on those who voted without compassion.
 

1 May 2014: #MyWritingProcess

The Writing Process Meme invites writers to answer four questions about their work, and nominate two or three other writers who will do the same, using the linking tag #MyWritingProcess. I am grateful to have been asked to take part by Elaine Walker, novelist, writing tutor and critic...

28 Apr 2014: Hamilton Park Goes to New Writing

My short story, ‘Hamilton Park,’ is published by New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, having been already shortlisted for the Rhys Davies Award...

12 Dec 2013: Brush with Fate: Voices From Wales

Hala Salah Eldin Hussein is a publisher and translator from English to Arabic. She has worked with Lorrie Moore, Edward P. Jones, Nadine Gordimer, Jhumpa Lahiri, Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, Doris Lessing, and others.

My own short story, ‘Hart’s Reach,’ was selected by Hala as part of a project representing Welsh writers in Arabic...

18 Oct 2013: Reading Wales: Revenant by Tristan Hughes

Three young adults converge on Beaumaris, where they were raised, in Revenant, a novel by Tristan Hughes published by Picador in 2008. As they wander round the town and nearby woods and beaches, revisiting their old haunts, they remember their friendship with each other and with Del, whose death as a teenage girl they have come home to commemorate. Each of Del’s three friends, Neil, Ricky, and Stephanie, narrates a chapter in turn, and the style moves between the poetic, the colloquial and the matter of fact, to match their viewpoints and voices...

27 Jan 2013: Climate Modelling

A cold, wet day in coastal Lincolnshire, and my hostess spills a glass of water over the household’s Local Flooding Plan.