Our Bookshelf

Browse our Bookshelves, selected annually by the Exchange as a window to recent Welsh literary works which we recommend for translation.

Back
BAR25005 Yn Y Freuddwyd SAMPL009

Yn y Freuddwyd(In the Dream)

These poems move between dreaming and waking without ever quite announcing which is which. They are rooted in Cardiff, where Nia Morais was born and raised, and they give voice to strong women from history, mythology, and from of the city as it is now.

Running through them is the question of what it means to belong: to a place, to a language, to a body. Morais writes as a mixed-race, LGBTQ+ woman working in a minoritised language, and the collection is interested in what happens where those things meet — where belonging is never a single, settled thing but something argued over, inherited and claimed.

A first collection from a poet already known as a playwright and children’s writer, Yn y Freuddwyd found its readers quickly in Wales and has the reach to travel: the questions it asks about women, language and belonging are being asked in every minoritised culture in Europe.

Reviews

'Dyma fardd cyffrous newydd sy'n gwybod sut i leisio mewn cywair perffaith – weithiau cawn reiat o gerddi rhaeadrog, dro arall llynnoedd llonydd rhithiol – gan adael y darllenydd i oedi yn naws y cerddi. O, ac mae rhai cerddi wedi eu hoelio yn fy nghof – daw y rhain nid yn unig o'r galon ond o'r ymysgaroedd.'
Menna Elfyn