Nerys Williams – författare

'A tour de force of oral poetry' Guardian'I could get drunk just on the sound of the words' Sylvia PlathA definitive new edition of Dylan Thomas's beloved radio playIt is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent...In the Welsh seaside town of Llareggub, night is moving in the streets. Its inhabitants are lost in the land of dreams: old Captain Cat catches up with his drowned shipmates, Mog Edwards the draper is consumed by mad love for Miss Price the dressmaker, and Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard whips the ghosts of her two late husbands into shape. As the sun rises, the ‘dismays and rainbows’ of each character are played out within the cycle of one day, intertwining voices and lives, dreams and reality. By turns tender, hilarious and beautifully lyrical, Dylan Thomas's ‘play for voices’ is his most beloved work and a landmark of Welsh literature.

The first guide to cover aspects of voice loss from an occupational health perspective, this reference covers procedures to detect, assess, and prevent voice loss in schools, industrial facilities, and other workplace environments, as well as covers occupational groups at risk and risk factors for developing voice loss-analyzing various chemical, environmental, psychological, and medical causes of this potentially work-related condition.

This sequence of 80 prose-poems, each constructed in 20 sentences, has arisen from the author’s need to tell a more intimate history, to commit an untold oral history to paper. Williams returns to the meaning of “republic” in its Latin origins which meant “wealth of the people”. The explosion of the arts and culture looms large, through bands from New Order to My Bloody Valentine, but it is explored specifically through Cŵl Cymru’, and the power of Welsh-language bands like Datblygu. This story is also about class, as we explore a family history of hard work in jobs from retail to caregiving. There are stories told, overheard, handed down, sometimes translated from Welsh. Together, they create an expansive portrait of the era, including the challenges for women, Welsh-speakers, and other marginalized groups. Ferocious remarks about the Welsh in the popular media are dissected with satirical humour and appalled fascination, while other poems describe being a token woman and political outsider on a TV current affairs show panel, tolerated but ostracized. Now, Williams poses the possibilities of a nation looking back at itself and its history from afar. Wales has not been allowed to be a republic, but is subject to a state that has military claims on its landscape and a second home explosion which has a severe impact on its communities. There is rebellion to be found in the older meaning of “republic”: since the wealth of the people is a wealth of sounded stories, culture, art, and history.

"Managing Obesity in the Workplace" comprehensively examines how obesity impacts business and provides examples of action that can be taken by employers to prevent weight gain and facilitate weight loss in their staff. A considered, evidence-based analysis of the extent of the obesity problem reveals how this public health epidemic affects all workplaces influencing fitness to work, sickness absence, discrimination and bullying.Case studies from around the world clearly illustrate the extent of the problem and offer practical, innovative and budget friendly solutions for all businesses, large and small. With a focus on nutrition, physical activity, motivation and education, this book is ideal for occupational health professionals, public health and primary care doctors and nurses, health and safety officers, and nutritionists and dieticians. Organisations promoting workplace health, including sports/exercise equipment suppliers, will find it enlightening reading, as will business owners and managers.

Nerys Williams deftly employs modernist techniques in her innovative new collection of poems, Sound Archives. The reader is enticed by hints and clues, by tone and rhythm, by fragment and exclamation through themes that run from a painting by Gwen John, to 'Conversations with Cocteau', from 'Methane Sonata' to 'Global Warriors'. Often a poem will evolve as a description of a landscape or setting such as Caldy Island, or 'Cater's Starstruck Diner, L.A.' or even as an argument as in 'The Pedagogical poet'. With her philosophical and critical cast of mind these poems are as much about perceptions and values as they are about their subjects, they build sounds-scapes of imagery, veering away from straight-forward narrative. They, as one poem says, 'murder the discursive', in order to eschew cliche. She also uses humour and satire to subvert our expectations of say, a piece ostensibly about heartbreak. She often uses the imperative to challenge our compliance as in 'How to MakeThings Disappear'. Williams confronts our preconceptions about what it might mean to be a woman writing against the background of two formidable traditions: that of Welsh-speaking Wales and of English literature. A thoughtful, subtle and fascinating first collection.

Self-help organizations have an increasingly important role in helping patients, so that doctors can concentrate on those who need their medical skills. This guide details the service provided by each self-help organization, and is designed so that local information can be added by the user. It is a valuable source of reference to GPs, practice managers, practice and community nurses, community health councils and health service managers.

Poets on Air: Producing Poetry at the BBC, 1950–1966  examines how three BBC radio producers, D.G. Bridson, Douglas Cleverdon and George MacBeth, collaborated with poets at the Third Programme (later Radio 3) to create new works which frequently pushed the limits and expectations of a more ‘traditional’ poetry reading audience. Nerys Williams argues that radio poets and their producers were attuned to radio’s potential as a disseminator of cultural commentary and narrative of potential political change to a mass audience. Williams considers how the institution sought to respond to and represent new poetic movements between 1950–1966, through the BBC’s Poetry Committee and major BBC Publications The Listener and BBC Yearbook. Using memos, scripts and sound archive material from the BBC, the book gives context to the reception of individual programmes as well as detailed correspondence, essays, lectures and notes from the producers’ archive holdings. Poets on Air reconstructs the collaborative relationship between poet and producer, offering a critical vocabulary that allows us to ‘listen in’ on the broadcast poem, or ‘sound’ work.