Oxford’s Black Academic Futures programme has made two fully funded postgraduate scholarships available to Black British students.
Both course fees and living costs will be covered by the scholarship which will be available across all subject areas. The scholarships also come with on-course mentoring provision for students. The first scholars are expected to begin their studies in the 2023/2024 academic year.
The programme is supported by the philanthropist and fintech entrepreneur Valerie Moran, who moved to London from Zimbabwe in 2004 to pursue a career in financial technology. In 2019, she was listed in the Financial Times as one of the most influential BAME leaders in tech.
The university has relied upon Moran’s generous philanthropic support to finance Black Academic Futures, which aims to address the under-representation of Black students at Oxford. In the postgraduate sector, the representation of UK-domiciled Black students in Oxford was 3.3% below the average for UK higher education institutions.
Moran said: “ethnic minority students need support from people like myself to ensure that future generations are given every opportunity to apply and compete for the same job opportunities.”
The programme began in 2020 and has since grown to provide up to 30 full scholarships to Black British students annually. A 27% increase in applications from UK-domiciled Black applicants for full-time postgraduate research degrees in the year 2021/2022 followed the launch of the programme.
The University has said that “the programme builds on Oxford’s ongoing efforts to increase the number of postgraduate students from under-represented groups more broadly, and reaffirms the University’s commitment to addressing race equality, combatting discrimination and building an inclusive postgraduate community where all members feel welcome, valued and respected”.
Oxford students joined thousands of climate protestors by gathering outside the Houses of Parliament last weekend to demand the Government cease all new fossil fuels searches immediately. The mass demonstration dubbed “The Big One” involved over 200 different groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and has been led by Extinction Rebellion (XR).
It has been 4 years since the group brought the capital to a standstill by parking a pink boat in Oxford Circus and causing the UK Parliament to declare a “climate emergency”. It is also the first major demonstration since the group announced in January that it would no longer use disruption tactics in demonstrations (something it, and other climate groups, have been criticised for doing in the past).
The coalition had two demands from the government: the immediate halting of all new fossil fuel projects and the establishment of emergency citizens’ assemblies to “let the people decide how to end the fossil fuel era quickly and fairly”. The deadline for a response was set for Monday 5pm where protestors gathered in Parliament square. The failure of the government to respond led XR co-founder, Clare Farrel, to vow to step up campaigning and action across the country.
Student Rebellion Oxford, part of XR Oxford, hoped to have 100 students participate in the protest. They claim this was probably not met, especially with the demonstration coinciding with Collections weekend. Oliver Sworder, a spokesperson for Student Rebellion Oxford and biologist at Keble, told Cherwell: “Although we didn’t make the target, nearly 500 rebels went along from Oxfordshire and we hope mobilisation may make more students come next time.”
He continues: “I left genuinely hopeful. Not that that government would heed the demand, but hopeful that somewhere between 20,000-50,000 people showed up- all with a common goal.
“It felt almost like a festival; children played in the streets, music was performed, volunteers gave out free food, talks about proportional representation, as well as on the state of the climate, or veganism, or people’s experiences were given, by MPs, normal people, and even celebrities such as Carice van Houten from Game of Thrones.”
XR Oxford organised a coach to London and XR Youth went via train. Other individuals made their own way there but coincidentally caught many of the same trains or buses. Hertford’s Environment and Ethics rep, Beatrice McWilliams, echoed sentiments of hope and how protests can help cure eco-anxiety, telling Cherwell that “calling out [the lack of action] with thousands of others in the heart of London was a very valuable experience.”
Other students have criticised the protesters’ decision to make their way to London rather than staging protests in local areas. Some see this as hypocrisy as protesters will have inevitably caused emissions through fossil fuel-based transport. However, Sworder has rebutted these claims: “When we live in a society of no alternative, and when the government right now is extremely centralised, I think it is unfair in the absence of realistic alternatives that would still have the same impact.”
He notes that the protest was designed to “gather people together to foster conversation and connection, so doing so outside parliament is the best way of doing so, although there may be plans for more localised ones in the future.” Regarding Oxford-specific climate action, Student Rebellion Oxford welcomes the new traffic measures but argues that the University can do more, with continued acceptance of donations from dirty companies and the careers service promoting students down the career pipeline into “industries profiting off the destruction of our future”.
William Pouget is the man who just keeps on giving to the Oxford food scene. It all started with Alpha bar in the covered market 20 years ago before Vaults and Gardens and then last year, Chickpea came to King Edward Street. Now, Salsas del Sol is the Mediterranean spin on Pouget’s good-value slow food revolution.
The offering here is similar to the other places in Will’s repertoire but with key twists to differentiate itself. Bowls are again the base here but the contents are different.
For me, the rotisserie chicken is the star of the show. A quarter chicken with sauces on the side comes in at just £7.5 and you can even take away a whole bird for £15. There’s a plethora of salads on offer too including couscous, aubergines, mushrooms, cabbage, guacamole, broccoli, salsa, and more. On its own, the chicken can be slightly dry but the sauces that give this eatery its name rapidly change that — the green goddess is a great pairing with sriracha to really create a combo of smoky flavours in your mouth all at the same time.
Not a chicken man? Pulled pork is available too and pairs even better with the corn tortillas you can opt for on the side. At the moment, these are cooked from frozen which means they do crumble a bit more than Will would like — no doubt in time the plan is to change that.
Salad bowls are here too with the smoked tofu providing a vegan option with far more flavour than you might be accustomed to. Homemade aioli and pickled red cabbage would be my salad choices for this protein, again adding that balance to the dish in both flavour profiles and textures for a complete bite.
Alongside cakes from Tap Social’s Barefoot Bakery, Salsas del Sol also boasts a varied juice bar offering. You are able to blend your choice of fruits and roots with everything from ginger to carrots and pomegranate up for grabs. If you are a bit of an amateur like me then staff are on hand to suggest good pairings! Coffee is just as good value as Chickpea too with the matcha a standout yet again.
So, another opening from Will Pouget and yet again he has managed to reproduce everything that makes his model great with innovative twists that make all the difference. Chicken for me is the big highlight but juices will standout for others — that’s what makes Salsas del Sol so good, there really is something for everyone.
There’s something about Summertown that attracts restaurants and eateries from all around the world and something about this neighbourhood that accepts genuine authenticity in a way that you struggle to find elsewhere. Just in the last few months, I’ve paid trips to Pompette and El Rincón, French and Spanish restaurants where you really do feel like you have made the journey across the channel to their origins. Hervé Gatineau Patisserie, Boulangerie, and Chocolaterie is no different. Whether it is for a daily coffee and baguette, a work lunch, or to indulge in a luxury patisserie item, there is something distinctly French about the flavours, the service, and the setting.
The first items that we tried were from the savoury selection. As well as its signature cakes and pastries, Hervé Gatineau also offers a selection of baguettes and quiches at lunchtime that are predictably popular amongst office workers and students alike. Baguettes all come in at less than £7 and the quiches at around £6. Refreshingly, the flavours here are very different to what you normally find. I opted for a spinach, walnut, and stilton as well as a tomato, mustard, and goat’s cheese. The stilton comes through strongly in the first and the walnuts add a satisfying crunch. The star of the show though was the second. Director Débora explained how the Dijon mustard is lathered onto the pastry and it adds a punchy strong flavour alongside the goat’s cheese that is brought back down perfectly by the cherry tomatoes. Their sweetness compliments the other two flavours just as one would hope.
Quiches: Walnut, stilton, spinach and Tomato, goats cheese, mustard
Then it was onto the sweet selection and realistically this is what anyone is visiting for. Débora also talked us through the provenance of ingredients and techniques here in great detail and it is something that is clearly of massive importance to her. The flour is imported from France and completely free of any additives and sweeteners that are often found in UK wholesale options. Elsewhere, great care is taken to reduce any kind of artificial sweeteners — whole pistachios, almonds, and vanilla pods are what bring the flavour in place of any kind of essences.
The first place we saw this was in the vanilla brioche. You can actually see the black specks of vanilla in the crème here and the taste is distinctly less sweet and artificial than you might be expecting. The canelé is as authentic as you would expect with its signature spongy interior and the plant-based pain au chocolat a really pleasant surprise. There is also a plant-based croissant available, both made using almond flour. The team here have taken special training on the continent to ensure that these have the flaky exterior typical of the French classics but the soft and pleasing interiors that you would hope for.
All chocolate here is Valrhona, the premium French brand that is used across the top end of the industry. The Larieux patisserie was our first taste of this and it does have a noticeably high quality. This cake has been on the menu ever since opening in 2007 and combines milk and dark chocolate mousses atop a chocolate sponge base. The tastes work well and the layering is definitely aesthetically pleasing but at £9 it’s not the kind of indulgence that people would likely be opting for on a daily basis. The Pistachio Paris-Brest is a top pick for non-chocolate lovers and is much lighter with a flavour-packed praline topping.
Pistachio Paris-Brest
For a smaller and cheaper snack, look no further than the macarons. These are available for just £3 and the variety of novel and interesting flavours makes them stand out. The passionfruit was my favourite with the tart sweetness and the lightness of the high-quality meringue making for a good pairing with an afternoon coffee on a treat day.
Larieux patisserie and macarons (passionfruit and vanilla)
Varlhona also provides a wide variety of chocolate truffles on offer in the chocolatier counter and is used to create the chocolate bark with almonds and hazelnuts. Go for a small piece of the dark for a deep and rich indulgence.
Dark chocolate bark with almonds and hazelnuts
Now, I want to make clear that I basically don’t like carrot cake. Years of them being dry and bland have tainted my view of them overall. The plant-based offering here though might just have put me on the road to recovery. Nuts and dried fruits in the batter make for distinct moistness and coconut cream icing means that the sweetness isn’t artificial but fresh and light.
I did of course also have to grab a baguette to-go, a trip to a boulangerie feels worthless otherwise. In England it is very easy to become immune to the bland supermarket baguettes that carry no real flavour but do a job for sandwiches or dipping but that is completely different here. The multiseeded stick tastes so distinct on its own it doesn’t need filling or dipping. In fact, in my view any additions only take away from its flavours.
In recent years, Hervé Gatineau has rapidly expanded its wholesale business to such an extent that its revenue from that size matches if not surpasses that of the retail shop. Supplying over 30 sites across Oxford and also catering for large events, the bread and viennoiserie are now made in a production kitchen in Kidlington. Still though, there is a large bakery in Summertown and this is where all of the cakes are crafted. Luckily, this hasn’t taken the team’s attention away from the store and recent remodelling now means that there are tables back inside and bar seating in the window for coffee and lunch breaks.
All in all, Hervé Gatineau is yet another addition to the thriving Summertown food scene. Much like the rest of the area, price points are high but customers are rewarded with lovingly-created and high-quality results. Any Oxford lovers of diverse and friendly local businesses should wander down here on a weekend — I won’t stop shouting about it until they do!
Oxford City Council is adapting its response to housing those in need. Whilst the annual closure of the city’s emergency winter shelter is expected to lead to an increase in rough sleeping between now and July, the council will be able to offer six new affordable homes for refugees with its new £2.3m programme.
There is continual demand for secure housing. The City Council records that the Severe Weather Emergency Protocol (SWEP) was activated ten times since December including in April for the first time since 2013. Numbers show that the SWEP protocol proved vital for many over the winter months. During 2022-2023, 106 people took up beds when the SWEP protocol was activated with an average of 13 people per night. The Council worked with St Mungo’s, The Porch, Homeless Oxfordshire, Ark-T and Turning Point to provide beds over 33 nights and 446 separate stays in total.
Data from the winter months seem to suggest a decrease in numbers of rough-sleepers requiring immediate housing. The council recorded that the number of people seeking shelter in a month in Oxford reduced from 84 in September to 58 in February with the number of people new to rough sleeping falling from 36 to 16. However, these numbers are expected to rise moving into the summer as winter funding from central government ends and the Oxford Winter Night Shelter begins its annual closure.
The City Council is also addressing housing for refugees by pledging to offer six new affordable homes. The homes, reserved for five Ukranian families and an Afghan family from a bridging hotel, will be let at social rent.
The council expects that the Local Authority Housing Fund (LAHF) will provide up to £1,108,620 in grant funding from the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC). Alongside match funding from the Housing Revenue Account, this will enable the City Council to purchase six homes and offer them to six families. The Council says this move represents their “long term interest in affordable housing”.
A council spokesperson told Cherwell that they have already received 30% of the funding for the project and will receive the rest in July, provided the conditions of the DLUHC are met.
Councillor Linda Smith, cabinet member for housing, said that “Oxford is a proud city of sanctuary and we’re committed to doing what we can to support refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine”. The homes set aside for six refugee families will, once the initial tenancies end, become council homes for those on the general needs housing register.
Under the Homes for Ukraine Scheme, Oxford has housed 400 refugees out of 150,000 nationally and under the national Afghan Resettlement Scheme, the city supported 47 families. The national Afghan Resettlement Scheme provides support for Afghans who have worked alongside the British government and armed forces.
Teachers on strike took to Oxford’s streets on Thursday afternoon with drums, whistles and placards in hand.
This National Education Union (NEU) strike-day was the fifth since 1st February. The protest began with a rally in the Oxford Town Hall and proceeded through the centre to congregate with a second rally on Broad Street. Oxford was one of four organised NEU rally locations.
Alongside veteran protesters, ralliers included first-time strikers and another who is on strike for the fifth time in eighteen years. This teacher said that the greatest deficit was in the lack of funding for teaching assistants who work with children who have Special Educational Needs (SEN). The teacher, based in Banbury, told Cherwell that it was about time teachers received a response from the government that matched the educational workforce’s effort.
The NEU General Secretaries, Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, have criticised the Education Secretary: “Gillian Keegan is failing to address the multiple problems damaging our children’s education – around teacher recruitment and retention problems, and inadequate school funding. She has been told by the profession – and a significant majority of the profession – that her pay and funding offer is not good enough.”
A local primary school teacher said she had been to all five of the strike protests. She decried the lack of governmental interest in resolution: “She [Gillian Keegan, Secretary of State for Education] hasn’t even acknowledged the protests.”
She told Cherwell that her daughter left the teaching profession at around the time the first strikes started as a result of unmanageable teaching conditions, and intends to protest until there is a pay raise that is fully funded.
If there is “no fully-funded pay rise, of course we’ll keep striking”, another teacher on strike said, adding that “the only way the government will know [that their response is dissatisfactory] is if we set up picket lines”.
One of the speakers declared that “there is nothing you can pay me to make me cross a picket” which landed with a resounding cheer. The rally was also keen to emphasise its solidarity with striking nursing and communication services unions.
The NEU has stated that “this coming week, NEU members are acting to make the Government see sense and improve its offer to teachers.” The NEU will hold another national strike on Tuesday.
Thirty-five students received word that they had secured a place on Oxford’s Astrophoria Foundation Year for 2023/2024 entry. The Astrophoria Foundation Year is aimed at academically promising students who have experienced considerable setbacks in their education, preventing them from meeting the demands of an undergraduate offer.
The foundation year has been in place at Lady Margaret Hall since 2016 and has been described by one student as having been “beneficial for [their] self-growth, not just as a student but also as a person”. Notable alumni include Danial Hussain, the current President-Elect of the Student Union.
In the coming year, Exeter, Jesus, Mansfield, Somerville, St Anne’s, St Hugh’s, Trinity and Wadham will all welcome their first waves of foundation year students.
The Astrophoria Foundation Year constitutes a further expansion of the university’s attempts to improve access with eligibility for the scheme depending on a number of criteria.
According to the University, students should have experienced all three of; (1.) socio-economic difficulties (e.g. having a certain post code), (2.) school based difficulties (including attendance at a non-selective school where most students are eligible for free-school meals) and (3.) difficulties of individual experience, such as experience acting as a young carer.
Students who have spent time in the care system are also eligible for the foundation year, regardless of whether they are considered to have been disadvantaged in other areas.
In 2020, Oxford launched Opportunity Oxford, a university-wide summer bridging course designed to help disadvantaged students prepare for their first year of university studies.
When asked what distinguished Opportunity Oxford from the Astrophoria Foundation Year, the University told Cherwell: “The two programmes are aimed at different target groups of students.”
“Opportunity Oxford is suitable for students who are ready to start Oxford degrees with modest support”, while “the Astrophoria Foundation Year aims to give more substantial support to students who have experienced significant educational and/or personal disadvantage and so need a more sustained intervention”.
Fully funded by the University, Astrophoria students have the opportunity to continue on to an undergraduate degree without undergoing the same formal assessment process. To gain their places on the programme, however, all 35 offer-holders (along with approximately 500 other applicants) underwent an assessment process consisting of a questionnaire followed by interviews taking place in March 2023.
While the majority of teaching offered during the foundation year will resemble the format of an undergraduate degree, the University has recently confirmed that the Astrophoria programme also offers additional tuition not otherwise found in the standard degree structure.
This includes the ‘Preparation for Undergraduate Studies’ course, targeted at helping with students’ personal development through confidence building and help in the development of practical academic and communication skills.
Academically, students on the foundation year are offered the choice of one of four courses, including Humanities; Chemistry, Engineering and Material Science; Philosophy, Politics and Economics; and Law, before specialising in an undergraduate degree of their choice.
In time, the programme is expected by the University to expand to all undergraduate Oxford colleges.
The sounds of heavy breathing and rustling form the first few seconds of Pamfir, the debut feature film of Ukrainian director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk. These are sounds which become, as we watch, a soundtrack to the life to which the protagonist has bound himself; a life of sneaking hushedly through the woods, avoiding being seen, and inevitably being seen. Leonid, nicknamed Pamfir, is forced to face afresh the demons – quite literally – of his former life of smuggling, after an incident involving his son places the family into a position of economic desperation.
Set in a small village in rural Ukraine on the Romanian border, Pamfir explores a man’s battle with his conscience as he tries his very hardest to do the best he can for his family at the expense of his own morality. The pastoral Carpathian mountains transform into a landscape of nightmares for the entire family as Pamfir becomes ensnared in the terrifying matrix of organised crime. It is a stunning debut from Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, who wrote the film’s screenplay as well as directing it.
Oleksandr Yatsentyuk is suitably brooding as Pamfir, navigating the feelings of guilt which accompany his silent resolve to take on one final smuggling mission. At times, his stoic heroism tragically verges on reckless bravery.
At the core of the story is the relationship between Pamfir and his teenage son Nazar, and makes for some gut-wrenching scenes. Alongside Yatsentyuk, young actor Stanislav Potiak is a quiet tour de force as Nazar. His innocence rings especially poignantly against the merciless figures into whose hands his father falls. Solomiya Kyrylova as Pamfir’s wife Olena brilliantly handles the apprehension and heartbreak she feels on behalf of her husband and son, and, indeed, for herself.
Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk deploys symbolism with a knowing hand. The traditional masks and costumes of the pagan Malanka festival, for which the villagers in Pamfir are preparing, are an eerie addition to the film, and cast a fairytale uncanniness over the action. The recurring image of the snarling, animalistic mask worn atop a bristling costume of hay appears like an omen, of some inexplicable doom, as unidentifiable as the person within it. Interesting also is this contrast between the village’s preparations for a celebration, and the struggle at the forefront of the film, which highlights the importance of keeping spirits high even in the face of difficulty.
The film was in its post-production stage when Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year. Whilst it does not have the conflict as a central theme, it occasionally nods to the Russian aggression which was already rocking Ukraine following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Pamfir enjoyed a successful run in the festival circuit, earning a number of accolades, including the Raindance award for Best Cinematography. It’s not surprising; Mykyta Kuzmenko’s cinematography could be a textbook for arthouse filmmakers. Most scenes are shot in one continuous take, with characters coming in and out of frame, making for a dazzling, quasi-theatrical viewing experience which plunges the viewer intimately into the lives of the village’s inhabitants.
Wide-angle shots are frequently employed to showcase the splendour of the Carpathian mountains, from a foggy autumn afternoon when the trees are bathed in a thick soup of cloud, to a wintry day when snow has already coated the soil and the leaves in a delicate, untarnished sheen. The landscape, though sublime, serves to emphasise the isolation of this village – and the entrapment of its inhabitants under the titanium fist of the “boss”, Mr. Orest. There is simply no way out for Pamfir.
Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk delivers a raw and unpretentious thriller as his debut feature. It’s not easy viewing, but it is certainly hard-hitting and beautiful.
The Van Noorden Index, Oxford’s unique inflation index which is often used to inform annual college rent increases, is consistently higher than standard national inflation indices and has recently come under fire for its lack of transparency.
When compared to the national inflation indices calculated by the Office for National Statistics such as the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the Consumer Price Index including housing costs (CPIH), the VNI trends consistently higher. This holds true for 2022, with the VNI standing at 12.86% versus CPI and CPIH figures of 9.10% and 7.90% respectively. This term, as JCRs negotiate rents for the next academic year, the VNI sits at 13.60% .
Concerns about the VNI have been raised in the SU that there is not enough transparency about the data underlying the VNI. One JCR president expressed their concerns with using the Van Noorden Index to determine rent increases, telling Cherwell: “Using the VNI to calculate rent increases is outdated. It seems to have been consistently higher than other national inflation indexes and fails to consider how students will be able to afford these increases, considering student loan increases are capped at 7%, when over the past two years, the VNI has been 13.60% and 12.86% respectively.”
A Cherwell investigation into rent increases in Michaelmas 2022 found that they ranged between 1.8-12.9%, depending on which college a student attends. The 12.9% hike was from Christ Church, who were using the 2022 VNI figure of 12.86%.
The Van Noorden Index (VNI), a system created decades ago, is named after the late Roger Van Noorden, an economist, fellow, and domestic bursar at Hertford College in the 1970s who is remembered in The Timesas “acquiring a daunting reputation for prudence in the college and for financial expertise throughout the university”. The VNI is an inflationary measure unique to Oxford, created to reflect the costs faced by Oxford colleges. It is calculated annually for all colleges by the Estates Bursar Committee, using aggregated cost information and forward forecasts. The VNI is based on the inflation rate of items like utilities, maintenance, and staffing – a narrower set of goods than is used to calculate national inflation indices. In 2020, New College described “the local ‘Van Noorden Index’” as “collegiate inflation” or “in essence service-industry inflation”.
Not all colleges still use the VNI to inform the rents they set for students, with several colleges switching away from the index in the face of high inflation and the cost of living crisis. New College abandoned the VNI as a tool for setting student rent last year when their governing body deemed the 12.86% figure was “too hefty a hike”. Hertford College also stepped away from the VNI last year in favour of the CPI, although they still “recognise the VNI as a useful reference point, and a key local measure”.
Lincoln College has not used the VNI in recent years since they undertook “an analysis of our historic costs” and found a combination of CPI and the Retail Price Index (RPI) “best reflects the inflation in our accommodation costs”. Similarly, St Catherine’s uses its own ‘Full Economic Cost Attribution model’ in discussion with students, and St Hugh’s uses the CPIH. St Hilda’s told Cherwell they do not use VNI because “other indices, such as CPI … are considered to be more relevant”.
However, many other colleges still rely on the VNI to inform rent increases. St John’s College uses the VNI as a “reference point in annual discussions with students to inform the setting of rents and charges”, also taking into account “the balance between College income and expenditure” and available student funding. University College told Cherwell they do not use the VNI “assiduously”, but rather as a “broad-based figure to help guide the College’s budgetary provisioning”. St Anne’s take a more mixed approach, where they “no longer use [the VNI] as the single formal benchmark to set rents”, and instead also incorporate the CPI and other factors like the Real Living Wage, the Oxford Living Wage, and any increases in the maintenance loan levels available to students. Mansfield College simply confirmed that they still use the VNI.
New College bursar David Palfreyman told Cherwell that because the college was not going to use the VNI again this year, it “looks likely that to be another year in which we will under-recover against a further high VNI, costing College a chunky accumulating sum in partially shielding students from the full impact of inflation”.
He argued this would be “a sum most [colleges] will struggle to absorb when they are still recovering from a major hit to revenue streams [rent and conference earnings] during the Covid disruption” and as “they face a doubling of energy costs” amidst frozen tuition fees and market volatility impacting the “prudent draw-down rate from the Endowment”.
Rent negotiations between JCRs and college administrators are ongoing. Rates are expected to be finalised in the coming weeks.
Gwyneth Lewis is the former National Poet of Wales, the first writer to be given the Welsh laureateship and was recently appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2022 Birthday Honours for her services to literature. Her poetry has been proudly reproduced in six-foot-high letters on the Wales Millennium Centre’s façade in Cardiff Bay.
Natascha: You’ve been hosting poetry reading classes here during Hilary term as Balliol College’s writer-in-residence. What made you want to come back to Balliol and how have you found it now that you’re back?
Gwyneth: I was here as a graduate student doing my doctorate and it’s been very sweet to come back older, and not having to write a doctorate. It’s been just a delight. I’ve been given the opportunity to have serious talks with people who are serious writers here and it’s been a huge privilege to think through some of the issues with people who are committed to their writing. I’ve been, I shouldn’t have been but I am, surprised and delighted by the passion that people feel about their own writing. I mean, we, as students used to do it. I was active in the Poetry Society, and I knew a lot of writers, but to actually have the college provide the opportunity is a completely other thing. It’s very enlightened, I think, particularly because I don’t see the skills of good academic writing as all that different from good creative writing. In fact, I think they’re indistinguishable. It’s about clear thinking. It’s about having the courage to say what you mean, not what you think other people want you to say, that’s really key.
Natascha: Would you be willing to speak a bit about what you’ve been working on whilst in residence here at Balliol College?
Gwyneth: I’ve not worked on it as much as I would have liked but I have got a critical book in process about how to approach poetry without fear. I think, as a genre, it’s considered very inaccessible by a lot of people. People have been put off, I think, by feeling as if poetry was talking in a language that you don’t understand and that you’re excluded from it. Well, that’s not good poetry! I feel very strongly about that. So, I’m writing a critical book about that and how to really approach it with confidence and how not to be daunted by both writing and reading, which are very similar processes, because you can’t do the one without the other.
Natascha: I was looking at some of the work that you’ve done in the past and it’s not all just poetic works. You’ve worked in various genres, forms and mediums. Is there a specific medium that you felt was strongest out of all of the ones that you’ve tried? Or do you feel that they all have their own advantages?
Gwyneth: Well, my first love is poetry. I was writing before I knew really what it was – since the age of seven or so. It’s the closest to my brain wiring. But then I also liked writing television scripts, because of the discipline of having to push on the story visually rather than using words. I found writing plays very difficult. I have massive respect for playwrights. In an odd way, no matter what the form is, I find I have similar preoccupations in all of them. So, it’s great to be able to bring out different aspects in, let’s say, a novella or nonfiction book. I enjoy the variety because I get easily bored. I don’t like doing the same thing over and over again.
Natascha: I find it really interesting that you’ve written poetry in both Welsh and English. I was reading a Guardian piece that you wrote about your relationship with poetry in the past, and your Welsh identity. Do you feel that you can express yourself better in one language than in the other?
Gwyneth: Well, yes. I mean, I was bilingual from an early age, Welsh being the first language. I think there’s a way in which the first language you speak is more intimately wired into your brain so I noticed I write more quickly and well [in Welsh]. But because I have that split second [to think], in English, I can do things in my second language that I can’t do in Welsh. I do speak other languages too although I don’t write in them. I think it’s like having a camera with a different focal distance, or a different lens in it for every language. What fascinates me is that when I tried to translate a book of Welsh poems into English, I found I had to change more or less everything, to give a cultural equivalent because your audience is different in both languages, politically different, historically different in their experiences.
Gwyneth Lewis’ poetry on the façade of the Wales Millennium Centre. Image Credit: Lewis Clarke/CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Natascha: Your piece of poetry on the Wales Millennium Centre is said to be one of the biggest reproductions of the poetic word in the world. How was it seeing something that you conceptualised being reflected in the real world on such a grand scale?
Gwyneth: Amazing. Yeah, I mean, really amazing. And fortunately, I still like the words. You know, because if imagine if you thought, “Oh, that’s a weak bit of it”, that would irritate me enormously. But there was something about the spirit of that building, and what the aspirations were when it went up, that helped to write the poem. It was a very thrilling experience. Although I had an irrational fear when I first saw it, that there would be a spelling mistake. But there isn’t.
Natascha: How long did you spend working on that project?
Gwyneth: Well, the way you phrased it is interesting, because I wrote the words in a weekend. But I had been thinking about the building for a long time, because I applied for a job in it so I knew what the building was about very well. But I didn’t try to write any words until the very last minute, until the deadline was nearly up, so I just got lucky.
Natascha: What I also found really interesting was that you’d studied at Cambridge and then went to Harvard, to then come to Oxford to do your post-graduate in 18th century forgeries. How did you find studying in America and what made you want to come back to study that specific specialty here at Oxford?
Gwyneth: Well, I went to America because I was a bit stuck as to which language to write in. At the time when I was an undergraduate, English poetry was very much looking down on the Welsh language and culture and yet English poetry wasn’t terribly interesting. I mean, there were interesting poets, but as whole scene wasn’t that exciting. I thought there was more interesting work going on in America. It gave me a chance to take time to assess politically what I felt comfortable with and that’s when I made the switch to writing in English. Then I discovered, “Oh! I don’t have to stop writing in Welsh either. Why can’t I do both?” It seems obvious now looking back at it, but it was an agony at the time. The reason I wanted to do the forgery is because one of the foundational scholars of Welsh language culture was a forger himself, and he had a vast archive of writing in Welsh that hadn’t been explored when I came here. So, I put him in the context of other forgeries that were going on, which weren’t really forgeries. They were just politically contentious pieces of literature. I wanted to look at the politics of that.
Natascha: So, when you do get the chance to write your poetic works, or any kind of works, do you have a favourite writing spot or a favourite location? Or is it just where and when it grabs you?
Gwyneth: The main thing is to have a door that you can shut or a nest that you can build like a corner of a sofa. I make nests everywhere and I write a lot in bed because it’s unofficial time. You can be more daring.
Natascha: Do you have a favourite spot in Oxford that you just go to for inspiration?
Gwyneth: No, but I’m always on the lookout. Although, I went into the Bodleian for the first time in a long time and the air was thick with hysteria, in the same way as it was when I was a student, it was exactly the same.
Natascha: That’s the perfect way to describe it. Just to close off the interview, I was wondering if you had a favourite memory of your time here in Oxford?
Gwyneth: There’s plenty that I remember with shame. I can’t isolate one. I must say that handing in the doctorate and the degree ceremony for getting the doctorate was wonderful, really very dramatic. You file in in a black gown, and you go out in a scarlet and blue doctoral gown. I enjoyed it a lot simply because it was great to have it finished and to know that I never ever have to write another one.
Natascha: Yet you’re back in the same town.
Gwyneth: Yes. It is it is wonderful to have been allowed back in to see other people at the beginning of that period when I know what they’re going through because it isn’t an easy place Oxford. It has many, many wonders to it but it can be a tricky place to maintain your morale so it’s nice to be able to pass some things on to people that I thought helped, you know, and to say, just enjoy it as much as you can.
