Gweno Williams is Academic Head
of C4C: Collaborating for
Creativity, York St John
University’s Centre for
Excellence in Teaching and
Learning, and a member of
YSJU’s Literature Department.
Early modern drama by women
is her major research interest.
A National Teaching Fellow
(2002), she is deeply committed
to working with literature beyond
the academy, for example
regularly chairing events at the
annual Ilkley Literature Festival
or through CETL partnerships.
She co-edited the report
Writing Matters: Student Writing
in Higher Education (2006) for
the Royal Literary Fund
(www.rlf.org).
I must admit that the idea of a desert island is an anxious one. To move from a reading life full of rich variety and new writing, to a fixed number of known texts would feel like considerable privation. Consequently, my choices, among drama, women’s writing, science fiction and poetry, are as expansive as I hope this WordPlay island will allow.
My list celebrates the capacity of early drama to be constantly new, different and thought-provoking. Working in York, I have greatly enjoyed involvement as performer, producer, audience member with several productions of the panoramic York Mystery Plays, stretching from Creation to the Last Judgement. I would take the Complete Works of Shakespeare, complemented by Renaissance Drama (2005) ed Arthur F. Kinney, which includes favourite plays by Kyd, Webster, Ford, Jonson (though alas no Revenger’s Tragedy).
Folio editions (widely circulated by the author to major libraries of her day) of Playes (1662) and Plays never before Published (1668) by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess o f Newcastle (1623-73) would b
e essential. There is still much exciting work to be done on Cavendish’s 19+ plays, which, like all her works in numerous genres, she wrote for ‘Future Ages’.
To feed my imagination and remember the possibility of multiple futures, I would take complete series of Dr Who (1964-) and Star Trek (1966-).
Ursula K. LeGuin’s science fiction novel The Telling (2001) is included for its remarkable destablising treatment of the reliability of narrative, and its searching insights into the complexities of cultural difference.
As a reminder of Britain’s multiple languages and many rich literary traditions, I would include texts from yr hen iaith (trans: the old tongue), Welsh. Since my parents named me after a poem by Welsh Second World War poet Alun Lewis (1915-1944), this should be poetry. From many possible options I choose the Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English (1977) ed. Gwyn Jones.
One of the greatest privileges of my English teaching career has been the opportunity to meet and work closely with many authors. Outstanding works by writers I have known include the thought-provoking post-apocalyptic eco-novel Into the Forest (1996) by Californian writer Jean Hegland, my colleague, friend and office-neighbour during a Fulbright year in the USA. I am equally inspired by the authoritative mythic feminist poem ‘I Was That Woman’ (1989) by Debjani Chatterjee MBE, YSJU’s most recent RLF Fellow and a passionate advocate for literature.
