Loud Silences

Loud Silences (1980) – Edited by Mogg Williams
Mogg Williams | ISBN: None
Condition: Good | 36 Pages | Sold by Crappy Old Books

Silence. That wonderfully elusive phenomenon which everyone claims to appreciate but which very few people seem capable of maintaining for more than thirty seconds. In poetry, however, silence is an altogether more complicated affair. It can express grief, longing, anger, affection, loneliness or the profound frustration of living in a world where everybody insists on talking but remarkably few have anything worth saying.

Welcome to Loud Silences, a slim and intriguing compilation of Welsh poetry edited by Mogg Williams, published in 1980 and extending to just 36 pages. A modest little volume in physical terms, although poetry has never been particularly interested in measuring its importance by the number of pages required to contain it.

The title itself is a splendid contradiction. How can silence be loud? Quite easily, apparently, particularly when it contains everything that people cannot, will not or dare not express. A silence can be more revealing than an elaborate speech, more uncomfortable than an argument and considerably more memorable than the average politician’s attempt to explain why something unfortunate has happened.

Wales, of course, possesses a rich and distinguished poetic tradition, one in which language, landscape, history and identity have long occupied central places. From the ancient Welsh bards to the modern literary imagination, poetry has provided a means of expressing both personal experience and collective memory, often with an intensity that makes ordinary conversation seem hopelessly inadequate.

Within this tradition, a small poetry collection can offer an intimate encounter with the concerns and perspectives of its contributors, without requiring the reader to negotiate several hundred pages of literary theory before discovering what anybody actually feels.

There is also something appealingly independent about Loud Silences. Published under the name of its editor, rather than bearing the familiar imprint of a major commercial publisher, it belongs to that valuable world of smaller literary publications whose existence demonstrates that poetry does not always require a large marketing department, a celebrity endorsement or an expensive launch party involving miniature sandwiches.

Indeed, poetry has a long and honourable history of being written, published and circulated by people whose enthusiasm for literature considerably exceeds their expectations of becoming wealthy from it. A tradition that, one suspects, has survived almost entirely unchanged.

Dating from 1980, this little volume is also an interesting artefact of Welsh literary culture at the beginning of a decade in which questions of language, community and cultural identity remained particularly significant.

This 36-page edition, offered in Good condition by Crappy Old Books, will appeal to collectors of Welsh poetry, enthusiasts of small-press publishing and readers who appreciate unusual literary discoveries that have escaped the relentless machinery of mainstream commercial publishing.

A compact, characterful collection with a wonderfully evocative title, reminding us that words are not always necessary to communicate something important.

And, rather appropriately, at just 36 pages, it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Which is more than can be said for most people who insist upon breaking the silence.

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