He was awarded a PhD on the French and Spanish poetry of Juan Larrea at the University of London under the supervision of Ian Gibson in 1975. Thesis title:  The Poetry of Juan Larrea , described as outstanding (“sobresaliente”) by the external examiner, Professor Arthur Terry, the Catalán poetry specialist.

He writes in English and Spanish. Read more here

ROBERT GURNEY ON THE WELSH AMERICAN BOOKSTORE

AmeriCymru: What can you tell us about your latest collection Dylan's Gower?

Robert: Hi Ceri. On the back cover of Dylan’s Gower, the publisher, Chris Jones of Cambria Books, has written:

“In this tribute to Dylan, his [Dylan’s] life on the Gower Peninsula in Wales is imagined poetically in the movement of a wave, the build-up, the swell, the rise, the disintegration, the spindrift, the crashing down. Then the relief, the calm before the next wave begins to form. Poems that start with poetic intensity, move towards those that have a painful or nightmarish quality and end with poems that have a lighter touch.”

I felt that the influence of the Gower peninsula in Dylan’s formation was being underplayed of late and sent this note in the South Wales Evening Post. It forms the Introduction to Dylan’s Gower:

“Talking to Dylan Thomas’s lovely granddaughter, Hannah Ellis, and to the inspiring Olivier Award-winning actor Guy Masterson last night at the RSA in John Street, London, on the occasion of their brilliant British Council seminar “Dylan Thomas: A Life in Words”, I was particularly struck by Hannah’s reference to Dylan’s notebooks which he wrote between the ages of fifteen (possibly earlier) and twenty. She mentioned how these had been lying mouldering in a box in Boulder, America, but are now available to the public in Swansea. Hannah argued that everything was there, in embryo, in those notebooks, that that period of poetic creativity, those five or more years of “cosseted” (Hannah’s word) creative activity, a veritable explosion that occurred within the young genius relieved to drop out early, at sixteen, from a school in which he was bored, were the foundations of his work to come. Dylan lived in Swansea, on the edge of Gower, during those years.

Hannah referred to a text in which he wrote that he “often” went down to Gower. The gist of this book, Dylan’s Gower, is that it is clearly time to re-evaluate the influence of the spectacular and quirky Gower Peninsula on his work. Hannah maintained that Newquay and Laugharne were key periods in the gestation of Under Milk Wood. I agreed but argued that to them must be added the beautiful bays and villages of his early ‘backyard’, the place to which he would escape during his formative years and to which he was tempted to ‘retire’ in the final year of his life. This book points, perhaps, to the need to re-evaluate the role Gower played in the formation of the creatures of the mysterious entity of Dylan’s literary imagination.”

The above was published on 25 October 2014. In Dylan’s Gower I explore a little possible links Dylan’s imagination had with the peninsula.

AmeriCymru: This is your second anthology on the theme of Dylan Thomas in this centenary year. How important a figure is Dylan in the history of Welsh literature?

Robert: I am not really the best person to judge this. My wife went to a grammar school near Swansea and told me that nobody mentioned Dylan at all when she was there. He wrote only in English, as you know. Personally I feel he is tremendously important for Welsh literature but it depends how you define the latter. Some say he was too “English” for the Welsh. I am not an expert on Dylan’s poetry although I read any book on him that I can lay my hands on.

I am simply somebody who has been inspired, gratefully,

by his work, by its music, its sound and by his voice.

AmeriCymru: What particular personal memories inspired these tributes?

Robert: The memories are numerous. Mark Rees of The Evening Post interviewed me this summer.

The interview was posted on September 14. (See http://verpress.com/to-dylan-2014/ ). The unabridged version can be read on http://verpress.com/dylans-gower-2014/ .

My memories of the area where Dylan grew up begin at an early age, while I was still at Primary/Junior School. I had an aunt and uncle in Baglan. My cousin, their daughter, to who I am close, lives in Mumbles.

I cycled around Mumbles and Gower on old broken down bike with no brakes when I was a child. Over the years my wife and I have spent a huge amount of time down there visiting her parents, sadly no longer with us, in Port Eynon. It’s a very special place to us, as it was to Dylan. My younger son, William, who did the covers for the two Dylan books, was born in Morriston Hospital, near Swansea.

My sons, James and William love being there, as do their sons Alban (3), Matthew (2) and Dylan (10 months).

AmeriCymru: In 2004 you set up an independent press. What can you tell us about this venture? What does the future hold for Verulamium Press?

Robert: I launched Verulamium Press in 2004 because local publishers were not interested in publishing poetry and national publishers were not interested in publishing local poetry (as if poetry is not rooted in an area!).

I began by publishing my translation of El río y otros poemas, The River and Other Poems, by the Patagonian poet Andrés Bohoslavsky and some my own poems of childhood - in Luton Poems. In all honesty the press has not been very active. I published with Verulamium Press this year a collection of approaching 200 short stories (many of them micro-stories) called A Night in Buganda. Tales from Post-Colonial Africa about my experiences on an aid program in Uganda in the sixties. The background is the collapse of democracy and the rise of Idi Amin. The thing is that once I had published my poetry on my own press, publishers in other countries, namely Argentina, Mexico and Spain, began to contact me. I write in Spanish and English.

Lord Byron Ediciones in Madrid is my main publisher outside the UK. (Go to the Home page on http://verpress.com for the list of my published work. Its future? Well, it’s there and it can be used again. At present my publisher is Cambria Books, in Wales.

AmeriCymru: Where can people find out more about your work online?

Robert: From my website: verpress.com .

As you know, I write a great deal in Spanish. My first Spanish teacher in the UK was Señor Enyr Jones (‘Jonah)’) from Gaiman in Patagonia. I owe him a great deal.

I was in Argentina in 1972 working with the exiled Spanish poet, Juan Larrea, at his home in Córdoba and at his Center for Research on César Vallejo (Peru).

I use quite a lot of Spanish and Latin American digital publications, such as Analía Pascaner’s Con Voz Propia –Revista Literaria (Argentina).

Analía and her husband Jorge came over to the UK last year and we met up. If you scroll down the right hand side of http://convozpropiaenlared.blogspot.co.uk to the list of poets she has published, you will see my contributions under Robert Gurney. My work featured in Ketty Lis’s poeticas.com.ar website in which I found myself next to the giant Dylan Thomas (in Spanish), in the UK section, but sadly that site, that was supported by major international institutions and Oxford University, seems to have been taken down. I publish short stories with Benma in Mexico City.

AmeriCymru: What are you working on at the moment?

Robert: At the moment I am writing a Spanish edition of my poems dedicated to Dylan. The provisional title is Para Dylan (For Dylan). I have been approached about it by more than one publisher. I also plan to publish Juan Larrea’s letters to me and a dual language book of short stories, in Spanish and English, called The Seven Deadly Sins. These have been appearing in anthologies launched by Benma.

AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?

Robert: Just that I am delighted to have found AmeriCymru. I have only just found it and am still exploring it. It looks great and I am hoping I’ll be able to make a contribution to it and I look forward to making contact with fellow poets and story writers through its pages.

My antepenultimate book this year, the one about Uganda and East Africa, reflected an American-British shared experience that I treasure a great deal . There is an openess about America that you don’t always find here, sadly. I am still in near daily contact with colleagues in America from that group, TEA, Teachers for East Africa. They helped me with A Night in Buganda. (The ‘Night’, by the way, is the encroaching night of Amin.)

Robert Edward Gurney

St Albans, UK

Click the image above or here for Amazon listings.

AmeriCymru: Hi Stephen and many thanks for agreeing to this interview. What was the first thing you wrote and what attracted you to crime fiction writing?

Stephen: My first thing attempt at writing seriously was a general fiction novel. And my second novel was a political thriller based in London and Wales in the pre-devolution era. Luckily neither ever generated any interest from agents or publishers.

AmeriCymru: We recently featured  Brass In Pocket on the Welsh American Bookstore. What can you tell us about the book?

Stephen: The book is the first in a series of police procedural/crime/ mystery novels featuring Inspector Ian Drake of the Wales Police Service. It is set in north Wales and assumes that policing powers have been devolved to Cardiff and that the police forces of Wales have all been unified into one. The second Worse Than Dead and the third Against The Tide have also been published.

AmeriCymru: Care to introduce your character, Inspector Drake, to our readers?

Stephen: Ian Drake is a detective inspector in the police. He was born and brought up in north Wales [near Caernarfon]. He comes from a rural background – his father and grandfather both ran small holdings. He suffers from OCD, feels guilty about the time he spends away from his family and resents the demands on his time. His wife is a doctor and he has two daughters. Drake can be dour, rude and often a misery but he gets the job done.

AmeriCymru: Can you take a moment to tell us all about the first of your Inspector Drake novels, Brass in Pocket.

Stephen: Brass in Pocket is the first inspector Drake novel and is in the tradition of British detective writing. The book is written in the third person so there are multiple points of view the principal character is Ian Drake. He is a nuanced character, facing challenges in his personal and professional life from his OCD. After the murder of two police officers on an isolated mountain pass the killer starts sending Drake messages in the form of lyrics from famous rock songs. Drake has to face the challenges of a high-profile enquiry as well as the investigation touching his life personally.

AmeriCymru: What can you tell us about Inspector Marco?

Stephen: John Marco is from Aberdare. His father is from an Italian family and his mother is from Lucca, near Florence. He is single although he has a son from a past relationship. He has a rebellious streak but he has a sense of humour.

AmeriCymru: What can you tell us about  Speechless the first Inspector Marco novel?

Stephen: Speechless was inspired by reading a report about human trafficking to South Wales. And also it is about how the open borders of Europe have attracted thousands of people from Poland and other countries to work in the cities of the United Kingdom. John Marco comes from an interesting background himself which is threaded throughout the plot. It is written in the first person and is more fast-paced and grittier than the Inspector Drake novels.

AmeriCymru: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Stephen: Keep on writing- join a group and get your work critiqued. And don’t be afraid of someone telling you how to improve. Perhaps consider going on a short course and above all read and read in your genre.

AmeriCymru: Who are your favorite crime writers?

Stephen: Ian Rankin and Val McDermid must be near the top of the list. As well as Harlan Coben, Raymond Chandler and Karin Slaughter. But there are so many great crime/mystery writers. And then of course the Scandi Noir authors too – Mankell, Nesbo.

AmeriCymru: Favorite TV crime series?

Stephen: This could be another long list. There’s a series on BBC at the moment called The Missing where the acting is exceptional and the script profoundly good. Hinterland from Wales was superb too – on Netflix in the US soon I understand. But then The Sopranos and The Killing must be high on my favourite list.

AmeriCymru: Where can our members and readers find details of your books?

Stephen: I have a website – www.stephenpuleston.co.uk and all the novels are available as e-books on Amazon.

AmeriCymru: What's next for Stephen Puleston? When can we expect your next book?

Stephen: The second Marco novel – A Good Killing has a target publication date of 8th May and the third Somebody Told Me of the 8th September. After that I hope to get an extended Drake short story finished before a full novel by the end of 2015 beginning of 2016.

AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?

Stephen: There are so few Welsh crime writers I hope that in the future crime writing from Wales - Dragon Noir maybe? - can be as successful as Tartan Noir is in Scotland.

In 1961, three years before Lake Billy Chinook was created, University of Oregon archaeologist Luther S. Cressman surveyed the three river canyons in this area. Of notable interest was this massive, engraved basalt boulder along the west bank of the Crooked River. Because of its perceived historical value, the Crooked River Petroglyph was extracted in the winter of 1963 and placed at this site, approximately one mile from its original location, as a reminder of the area's cultural history.

Similar ancient images and designs found worldwide are collectively known as "rock panels" by scientists. In this region, the appearance of these often-stylistic images varies among cultural groups, but the true meaning of the images is known only to those who originally made them.