{"id":181,"date":"2024-04-24T07:49:53","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T07:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gwynethlewis.com\/site\/?page_id=181"},"modified":"2025-04-28T11:20:16","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T11:20:16","slug":"keeping-mum","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/gwynethlewis.com\/site\/keeping-mum\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping Mum"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Gwyneth<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keeping Mum<\/em> a psychiatric detective story which explores the effect of a dying language on its speakers and looks at how abuses of language might lead to mental illness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gwyneth Lewis\u2019s investigation begins with a police interrogation, then broadens to take in a mental hospital, where the subject is questioned by a psychiatrist. Finally, she uncovers angels in a sequence of sonnets, finding messengers from another realm inside our everyday lives, speaking to us through depression and bereavement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Usually Gwyneth Lewis writes one book in Welsh, then a completely different one in English. Only Welsh-speakers get to see how both sides of her work express the dual personality of her country. Ruth McElroy has described how Lewis\u2019s books mark \u2018a shift into a different gear of Welsh poetry of both languages \u2013 she is one of very few poets to be equally probing and technically sophisticated in both languages. Intuitively sensitive to the peculiarities of each\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keeping Mum<\/em> started out as a translation of Gwyneth Lewis\u2019s last Welsh book, Y Llofrudd Iaith<\/em><\/a> or \u2018The Language Murderer\u2019, but took on a life of its own. The plot, characters and location have been completely recast in English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018The detective story is as much a structure as a requiem, and we may see that patterns and structures are themselves themes in her poetry. It is at once a religious and a scientific fascination, not with the structures and patterns that explain or console, but with those that mystify and make strange\u2019.<\/p>\nPatrick McGuinness, London Review of Books<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Publisher: Bloodaxe books<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Keeping Mum a psychiatric detective story which explores the effect of a dying language on its speakers and looks at how abuses of language might lead to mental illness. Gwyneth Lewis\u2019s investigation begins with a police interrogation, then broadens to take in a mental hospital, where the subject is questioned by a psychiatrist. Finally, she… Read More »Keeping Mum<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-181","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nKeeping Mum - Gwyneth Lewis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Keeping Mum\u00a0started out as a translation of Gwyneth Lewis\u2019s last Welsh book,\u00a0Y Llofrudd Iaith, but took on a life of its own.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/gwynethlewis.com\/site\/keeping-mum\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Keeping Mum - 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