NIGHTSHADE MOTHER - GWYNETH LEWIS
HYDREF 9 OCTOBER 2024
NOS MERCHER / WEDNESDAY
am 7.30
SIOP LYFRAU SENEDD-DY
OWAIN gLYNDWR PARLIAMENT HOUSE
machynlleth
author: Gwyneth Lewis
lansiad / LAUNCH
‘NIGHTSHADE MOTHER’
GWYNETH LEWIS
One of the UK’s most acclaimed writers, Gwyneth Lewis was brought up Welsh-speaking in Cardiff. She studied English and spent time in America. She was Wales’s first National Poet and composed the six-foot-high words on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre. Her other non-fiction books are Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book on Depression and Two in a Boat: A Marital Voyage.
Gwyneth was awarded an MBE in 2023 for services to literature and mental health.
Cafodd un o awduron mwyaf clodfawr y DU, Gwyneth Lewis ei magu yn Gymraeg yng Nghaerdydd. Astudiodd Saesneg a threuliodd amser yn America. Hi oedd Bardd Cenedlaethol cyntaf Cymru a chyfansoddodd y geiriau chwe throedfedd o uchder ar flaen Canolfan Mileniwm Cymru. Ei llyfrau ffeithiol eraill yw ‘Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book on Depression’ a ‘Two in a Boat: A Marital Voyage’.
Dyfarnwyd MBE i Gwyneth yn 2023 am wasanaethau i lenyddiaeth ac iechyd meddwl.
“It’s taken me a lifetime to muster the courage to face the full nature of my emotionally abusive upbringing. But I kept notes. Nobody breaks the taboo of speaking about cruelty within the family lightly but, compared to feeling suicidal and being chronically ill, looking at the truth has been exhilarating. I wrote this book for all those who have suffered in silence at the hands of a coercive parent. At times, I feared the experience would kill me but I now know that it’s possible to see the full shape of abuse and, with the utmost creativity, to survive.”
Gwyneth Lewis’s Nightshade Mother is a book that she has been preparing to write all her life, in diaries which she’s kept since childhood.
The result is a memoir co-written with her younger self, an unexpected and life-saving dialogue through time.
Metaphors of haunting intensity help her confront what happened to her; quotations from art and literature guide and steady her.
Nightshade Mother is a book about the power of art, about language, and about homecoming, after a lifetime of exile from herself. Profoundly moving, questing and loving in its approach, it is a book for anyone who has suffered at the hands of a coercive parent.
Mae ‘Nightshade Mother’ gan Gwyneth Lewis yn llyfr y mae hi wedi bod yn ei baratoi i ysgrifennu ar hyd ei hoes, mewn dyddiaduron y mae hi wedi'u cadw ers ei phlentyndod.
Y canlyniad yw cofiant a ysgrifennwyd ar y cyd â'i hunan iau, deialog annisgwyl ac achub bywyd trwy amser.
Mae trosiadau o ddwyster swynol yn ei helpu i wynebu'r hyn a ddigwyddodd iddi; mae dyfyniadau o Gelf a Llenyddiaeth yn ei harwain a’i sefydlogi hi.
Mae ‘Nightshade Mother’ yn llyfr am bŵer celf, am iaith, ac am ddychwelyd adref, ar ôl oes o alltudiaeth oddi wrth ei hun. Yn hynod o deimladwy, yn chwilgar ac yn gariadus yn ei ddull, mae'n llyfr i unrhyw un sydd wedi dioddef yn nwylo rhiant gorfodol.
Gwyneth Lewis’s tenth book of poetry, First Rain in Paradise, is forthcoming in March 2025.