Meaning of Apricot Sponge

Tony Curtis, editor of this collection, is Professor of Poetry at the University of Glamorgan where he founded and continues to teach on the M.Phil. in Writing. The author or editor of over thirty books of poetry, criticism and art commentary, he is an award-winning poet and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His most recent collections are Heaven's Gate and Crossing Over and his personal memoir and visitor guide, Real South Pembrokeshire will appear in 2011.

John Tripp was a journalist, short-story writer and poet who remained committed to the cause of Welsh independence throughout a career that lasted through the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. This anthology achieves a balanced representation of his work across the genres. Both Peter Finch’s foreword and Tony Curtis’s introduction enhance the reader’s awareness of Tripp’s character and the context in which his work was produced. Tripp’s work is autobiographical: he delivers observational snapshots of the world he encounters with a cynical yet comic tone and an impulsive style. His writing centres on Welsh culture, literature, women and sex, war, commercialism, the media and mortality. Tripp is especially concerned with what constitutes an authentic Welsh identity, both politically and personally. For anyone interested in the history of Welsh nationalism, this anthology provides valuable insight. Tripp’s perspective is at once honest and romantic, progressive and nostalgic, serious and sharp-witted. A non-Welsh speaker himself, Tripp found ‘the English-speaking Welshman’s vacuum of cultural disinheritance’ with its ‘underlay of self-contempt’ a problematic aspect to his sense of national identity. Contradictorily, he characterises the Welsh as ‘people coming out of a long sleep’, prone to belittling themselves, as well as ‘people who live with style, wear their ancient pride lightly, and keep their simmering patriotism like a revolver in the cupboard.’ Tripp’s simultaneous pride and frustration for his homeland are evident throughout this collection.Descriptions of the social landscape of different Welsh towns (together with a catalogue of their pubs) are interesting and often entertaining – being from Llanelli myself, I was amused by the town’s reputation for producing troublesome girls ‘like scarecrows’. Through his writing, Tripp also grants us insight into ‘the odd, unlikely, slightly seedy footnotes to Anglo-Welsh literary history.’ Having belonged to literary circles in London, where he felt an exile, Tripp returned to Wales where he contributed to a number of significant publications. While suffering the financial implications of freelance writing, Tripp indulged in the social opportunities it allowed him.Tripp’s attempts to capture a modern spirit of Wales are varied, spontaneous and attentive, and will be better received upon Tripp’s own advice that ‘a sense of humour helps’.