Library News. Newyddion y Llyfrgell

Os ydych chi’n chwilio am ffotograffau o’r 1930au tan y 1950au, gall Picture Post Historical Archive, 1938–1957 fod yn ddefnyddiol i chi. Yn ystod y cyfnod cyn y teledu, Picture Post oedd ffenestr y byd ar gyfer y mwyafrif o bobl. Mae’n cynnwys miloedd o ffotograffau o bobl gyffredin yn gwneud pethau cyffredin ac, felly, mae’n rhoi ciplun diddorol iawn o fywyd ym Mhrydain rhwng y 1930au a’r 1950au. 

I’w gyrchu, chwiliwch am Picture Post ar iFind neu dilynwch y dolenni yng Nghanllawiau’r Llyfrgell. Os bydd angen cymorth arnoch chi i chwilio’r archif, e-bostiwch artslib@abertawe.ac.uk  

If you are looking for photos from the 1930s to 1950s, you may find the Picture Post Historical Archive, 1938–1957 useful.  In the era before television, Picture Post became the window on the world for most people.  It contains thousands of photos of ordinary people doing ordinary things and as such provides a fascinating snapshot of British life from the 1930s to the 1950s. 
 

To access, simply search in iFind for Picture Post or follow the links from the Library Guides.  If you need help searching the archive, email  artslib@swansea.ac.uk.

The library will close for Easter at 7pm on Thursday 1 April, and will re-open at 8am on Tuesday 6 April. The Customer Service Team will be providing online support as usual over the Easter weekend.

Please check our webpages for details of library building open hours.

Bydd y Llyfrgell yn cau ar gyfer y Pasg am 7pm ddydd Iau 1af Ebrill ac yn ailagor am 8am ddydd Mawrth 6ed Ebrill. Bydd y Tîm Gwasanaethau Cwsmeriaid yn rhoi cymorth ar-lein fel arfer dros benwythnos y Pasg.

Gwiriwch ein tudalennau we ar gyfer manylion oriau agor adeiladau'r llyfrgell.

Mix and Match (via Zoom) aims to bring you up to date on new library resources and policies, give you some tips for your research and let you know how we can support you . As we know you are all busy, think of it as a menu where you can just select the sessions that will be useful to you. We will make recordings available later. 

9.30  Reading lists   - iFind Reading and the new reading list policy 

10.15 What does the library do for my students? 

11 Copyright literacy 

11.45 Introduction to EndNote 

1.30 Box of Broadcasts 

2.15 Online newspaper archives 

3  Using the Scopus database 

To find more details and book your choice go to https://libguides.swansea.ac.uk/academicstaff/training 

Some feedback from our last Mix and Match 

"Although some topics were less relevant for me I am glad I attended them as I learned something useful from each section. Letting attendees to ask questions during presentations worked well. "

"Clear explanations of topics Pacing was great Willingness to answer questions"

"More sessions like this throughout the year would be good "

 Nod Dewis a Dethol (drwy Zoom) yw rhoi’r holl wybodaeth ddiweddaraf i chi am adnoddau a pholisïau newydd y Llyfrgell, rhoi cyngor i chi ar eich ymchwil a rhoi gwybod i chi sut y gallwn ni eich cefnogi chi. Rydym yn ymwybodol eich bod chi i gyd yn brysur felly meddyliwch am hyn fel dewislen lle y gallwch chi ddewis y sesiynau a fydd yn ddefnyddiol i chi. Bydd y recordiadau ar gael maes o law.  

 9.30 Rhestrau darllen - iFind Reading a’r polisi rhestr ddarllen newydd  

10.15 Beth mae'r Llyfrgell yn ei wneud i'm myfyrwyr

11 Llythrennedd Hawlfraint

11.45 Cyflwyniad i EndNote

1.30 Box of Broadcasts (BoB)

2.15 Archifau papurau newydd ar-lein

3 Defnyddio cronfa ddata Scopus

 I dderbyn rhagor o fanylion ac i gadw eich lle, ewch i: https://libguides.swansea.ac.uk/academicstaff/training 

Adborth o'n olaf Mix and Match 

"Although some topics were less relevant for me I am glad I attended them as I learned something useful from each section. Letting attendees to ask questions during presentations worked well. "

"Clear explanations of topics Pacing was great Willingness to answer questions"

"More sessions like this throughout the year would be good "

By Dr Adrian Osbourne

As World Poetry Day 2021 arrives, Dylan Thomas endures as one of the most famous names in the world of poetry. His position in the cultural consciousness of the general public is firmly entrenched, largely on the back of a small number of extremely popular poems and a ‘play for voices’, Under Milk Wood. This was the British public’s most popular non-musical choice in a special Desert Island Discs episode in 2011, when the selections were voted for by listeners.  Thomas is also the writer most requested by the invited guests in the history of the show, with his poem ‘Fern Hill’ running a close second in popularity to Under Milk Wood. 

Beyond the demographic of the BBC Radio 4 audience, Thomas’s work has featured on numerous mainstream television programmes, such as the Welsh-made Dr Who, as well as American series, including the animated show Family Guy and the supernatural drama The Vampire Diaries. These three television examples quote ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’, as does Michael Caine in the film Interstellar. Hollywood heavyweights Sean Penn and George Clooney provided some literary gravitas respectively to The Weight of Water and Solaris by intoning ‘And death shall have no dominion’. As a result, you might think that three or four pieces by Thomas constitute his body of work.

The contemporary cultural focus on such a slight representation of Thomas’s writing threatens to overshadow the rest of his varied output. Thomas wrote hundreds of poems, around fifty short stories, over twenty film scripts, and half a novel. In addition to his writing, he was also an experienced broadcaster and a seminal figure in the birth of spoken-word recordings, thanks to the success of his albums with Caedmon. But what propelled Thomas into the position he now holds in the literary firmament, orbiting and affecting by his gravitational pull both the progress of Welsh Writing in English and poetry across the world, was his incredible, powerful,  and striking appearance on the scene as a young man of 18 when “And death shall have no dominion” was published in The New English Weekly. The publication of “And death” in 1933 and “Do not go gentle” in 1951 provide two milestones between which the vast majority of Thomas’s work was created and published, but the years 1934-36 provided the bedrock for his career with the publication of his first two collections, the inspiringly titled 18 Poems and Twenty-five Poems. From these 43 poems emerged a unique voice that described and enacted a “process poetic”, in which all the universe from microcosm to macrocosm, from human to star, are simultaneously engaged in the same processes of life and death, destruction and creation, that form the endless dance of life. It is in this vein, he wrote:

Where no seed stirs,

The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars,

Bright as a fig

                                                (“Light breaks where no sun shines”)

These lines go from the infertility of “no seed” to the fecundity of a fruit that “unwrinkles” and is “Bright as a fig”, and all the while this process is happening at galactic level, as if pre-empting the Star Child of Kubrick and Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Did I mention that Thomas was also a sci-fi poet? For all his reputation as a pastoral writer of poems that evoke idyllic childhood days, thanks largely to the popularity of “Fern Hill”, Thomas also gave us poetry such as:

            My fuses are timed to charge his heart,

He blew like powder to the light

And held a little sabbath with the sun,

But when the stars, assuming shape,

Drew in his eyes the straws of sleep

                                                (“When once the twilight locks no longer”)

As this poem also mentions the “galactic sea”, it is clear that its image clusters and vocabulary attempt to bridge any gap between us down here and the great big up there. And after all, as we consider what one day in the year dedicated to poetry means to us, and what response it might have garnered from Thomas who dedicated every day of his life to finding the right words to put in the right order, is that not what poetry sets out to do – to bring a little bit of cosmic grandeur down to the human level of the heart? It is through and thanks to poetry that Thomas endeavoured to engage with the varied experiences of existence, to combine apparent opposites and universal extremes, to show how the “earth and sky were as one airy hill. / The sun and moon shed one white light.” What Thomas the poet sought to achieve was an assimilation, a synthesis between the heavens and the earth, between finite, mortal human and infinite, never-ending space, and that is worth considering the next time a Hollywood A-lister recites his poetry over a slow panning shot of a ship gliding through space. Happy World Poetry Day, and beyond.

Gan Dr Adrian Osbourne

Wrth i Ddiwrnod Barddoniaeth y Byd nesáu, mae Dylan Thomas yn parhau i fod yn un o enwau enwocaf byd barddoniaeth. Mae ei bwysigrwydd yn ymwybyddiaeth ddiwylliannol y cyhoedd wedi’i wreiddio’n ddwfn, yn bennaf ar sail nifer fechan o gerddi hynod boblogaidd a ‘drama lleisiau’, Under Milk Wood (Dan y Wenallt). Dyma oedd dewis  mwyaf poblogaidd nad oedd yn sioe gerdd gan y cyhoedd Prydeinig mewn rhaglen arbennig yn y gyfres Desert Island Discs yn 2011, pan bleidleisiodd y gwrandawyr dros eu dewisiadau nhw.  Thomas oedd hefyd yr ysgrifennwr y gofynnwyd amdano amlaf gan westeion yn hanes y sioe, a daeth ei gerdd ‘Fern Hill’ yn ail agos o ran poblogrwydd i Under Milk Wood. 

Y tu hwnt i ddemograffig cynulleidfa Radio 4 y BBC, mae gwaith Thomas wedi ymddangos ar sawl rhaglen deledu brif ffrwd, fel y rhaglen Dr Who a wnaed yng Nghymru, yn osgytal â chyfresi Americanaidd, gan gynnwys Family Guy a’r ddrama oruchnaturiol The Vampire Diaries.  Mae’r tair enghraifft deledu hon yn dyfynnu ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’, yn yr un modd â Michael Caine yn y ffilm Interstellar. Yn eu tro, rhoddodd sêr Hollywood Sean Penn a George Clooney urddas llenyddol i The Weight of Water a Solaris drwy lafarganu ‘And death shall have no dominion’. O ganlyniad, efallai y byddwch chi’n meddwl bod tri neu bedwar darn gan Thomas yn cyfrif fel corff ei waith.

Mae’r ffocws diwylliannol cyfoes ar gynrychiolaeth gul o waith Thomas yn bygwth cysgodi gweddill ei allbwn amrywiol iawn. Roedd Thomas yn awdur cannoedd o gerddi, tua hanner cant o straeon byrion a mwy nag ugain o sgriptiau ffilm, a hanner nofel. Yn ogystal â’i ysgrifennu, roedd hefyd yn ddarlledwr profiadol ac yn ffigwr o bwys mawr i ddyfodiad recordiadau gair llafar, diolch i lwyddiant ei albymau ar y cyd â Caedmon. Ond yr hyn a lansiodd Thomas i’r statws sydd ganddo erbyn hyn yn y ffurfafen lenyddol, sy’n cylchdroi o amgylch ei atyniad disgyrchol yntau ac yn dylanwadu arno o ran datblygiad Ysgrifennu Saesneg yng Nghymru a barddoniaeth ar draws y byd oedd ei ymddangosiad anhygoel, pwerus a thrawiadol yn ddyn ifanc 18 oed pan gyhoeddwyd “And death shall have no dominion” yn The New English Weekly. Mae cyhoeddiad “And death” ym 1933 a “Do not go gentle” ym 1951 yn cynnig dwy garreg filltir y naill ben a’r llall i’r rhan fwyaf o’r gwaith a grëwyd ac a gyhoeddwyd gan Thomas, ond y blynyddoedd 1934-36 a gynigodd seiliau ei yrfa wrth i’w ddau gasgliad cyntaf gael eu cyhoeddi, sef y gweithiau â theitlau ysbrydoledig 18 Poems a Twenty-five Poems. O’r 43 cerdd hwn daeth llais unigryw a oedd yn disgrifio “proses farddonol” ac yn ei rhoi ar waith, lle mae’r bydysawd yn ei gyfanrwydd, o’r microcosm i’r macrocosm, o’r dynol i’r seryddol, yn rhan o’r un prosesau o fyw a marw, o ddinistrio a chreu sy’n creu dawns ddiddiwedd bywyd. Yn y cywair hwn, ysgrifennodd:

Where no seed stirs,

The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars,

Bright as a fig

                                     (“Light breaks where no sun shines”)

Mae’r llinellau hyn yn mynd o’r anffrwythlondeb a geir yn “no seed” i ffrwythlondeb ffrwyth sy’n dadrychu (“unwrinkles”) ac sy’n ddisglair (“Bright as a fig”), a’r holl amser, mae’r broses hon yn digwydd ar lefel galaethol, fel bron iddo ragweld y Seren Blentyn yn 2001: A Space Odyssey gan Kubrick a Clarke.

A soniais i fod Thomas hefyd yn fardd ffuglen wyddonol? Er ei enw fel awdur bugeiliol cerddi sy’n dwyn diwrnodau eidylaidd plentyndod i gof, yn bennaf o ganlyniad poblogrwydd “Fern Hill”, rhoddodd Thomas farddoniaeth hefyd i ni fel y canlynol:

            My fuses are timed to charge his heart,

He blew like powder to the light

And held a little sabbath with the sun,

But when the stars, assuming shape,

Drew in his eyes the straws of sleep

                                                (“When once the twilight locks no longer”)

Gan fod y gerdd hon hefyd yn sôn am “fôr galaethol” (“galactic sea”), mae’n glir bod ei glystyrau o ddelweddau a’i eirfa yn ymgais i bontio unrhyw fwlch rhyngom ni lawr yma a’r anferthedd mawr i fyny uwch ein pennau. Ac wedi’r cwbl, wrth i ni ystyried yr hyn mae un diwrnod yn y flwyddyn sy’n ymroddedig i farddoniaeth yn ei olygu i ni, a pha ymateb y gallai fod wedi’i dderbyn gan Thomas, a ymrwymodd pob dydd o’i fywyd i ddod o hyd i’r geiriau iawn a’u rhoi yn y drefn iawn, ai hyn yw nod barddoniaeth - dod ag ychydig o ogoniant galaethol i lawr i lefel ddynol y galon? Drwy ei farddoniaeth, ac o ganlyniad iddi, ceisiodd Thomas drin a thrafod profiadau amrywiol bodolaeth, i gyfuno’r hyn sydd â golwg gwrthgyferbyniol a phenau eithaf y bydysawd, i ddangos y canlynol: “earth and sky were as one airy hill. / The sun and moon shed one white light.” Yr hyn y ceisiodd Thomas y bardd ei gyflawni oedd cymathiad, sef synthesis rhwng y nefoedd a’r ddaear, rhwng bywyd dynol a fyddai’n dod i ben adeg marwolaeth a’r gofod anferth, diderfyn, ac mae’n werth ystyried hynny y tro nesaf y bydd un o gewri Hollywood yn adrodd un o’i gerddi dros olygfa sy’n saethiad panio araf dros long yn hwylo drwy’r gofod. Diwrnod Barddoniaeth y Byd hapus, heddiw ac yn y dyfodol i chi.

Canolbarth Rwsia, 1919, a sanatoriwm a ynyswyd gan anhrefn rhyfel sifil Rwsia.
Mae llofruddiaeth y prif feddyg yn dechrau cyfres o ddigwyddiadau…

Gan fod yn Uwch-ddarlithydd mewn Ysgrifennu Creadigol, mae Dr Alan Bilton wedi cyhoeddi ei drydedd nofel,

The End of the Yellow House (Gwasg Watermark, 2020).

Mae Alan yn trafod y nofel gyda Jon Gower yma https://alanbilton.co.uk/interview-alan-bilton-and-jon-gower/

Dysgwch fwy am waith Alan yma https://alanbilton.co.uk/about/

Central Russia, 1919, a sanatorium cut off by the chaos of

the Russian civil war.  The murder of the chief doctor sets in

motion a nightmarish series of events...

Senior lecturer in Creative Writing, Dr Alan Bilton, has released his third novel

The End of the Yellow House (Watermark Press, 2020).

Alan discusses the novel with Jon Gower here https://alanbilton.co.uk/interview-alan-bilton-and-jon-gower/

Find out more about Alan’s work here https://alanbilton.co.uk/about/

I ddathlu Diwrnod Rhyngwladol y Menywod eleni rydyn ni wedi llunio rhestr ddarllen sy’n tynnu sylw at eitemau yn ein casgliadau ynghyd ag adnoddau ar-lein. Mae’n cynnwys eitemau ac adnoddau am neu gan Fenywod yng Nghymru, y Celfyddydau, Busnes a Rheoli, Gwleidyddiaeth a’r Gyfraith, Chwaraeon, STEM, a Ffuglen. 

Cliciwch yma i gyrchu’r rhestr. 

Gobeithiwn y byddwch chi’n mwynhau ein detholiad. 

Darllen hapus ar Ddiwrnod Rhyngwladol y Menywod! 

To celebrate International Women’s Day this year we have put together a reading list that highlights items in our collections along with some online resources.  It includes items and resources by or about women in Wales, the Arts, Business and Management, Politics and Law, Sport, STEM and Fiction.  

Click here to access the list. 

We hope that you enjoy our selection. 

Happy reading on IWD! 

This week is Eating Disorders Awareness Week. Eating disorders can affect people of any gender, age, ethnicity or background and are serious mental illnesses. If you are worried about yourself or someone else, you can find information and support on the Beat website including Types of eating disorders, Recovery, Support services and Supporting someone. There is also a section on eating disorders in our Wellbeing Collection of self-help books. If you are finding things difficult, please check the university’s Wellbeing Service pages for advice and support.

Mae’r wythnos hon yn Wythnos Ymwybyddiaeth o Anhwylderau Bwyta. Gall anhwylderau bwyta effeithio ar bobl o bob rhywedd, oed, ethnigrwydd, neu gefndir, ac maent yn salwch meddwl difrifol. Os ydych chi’n pryderu am eich hun neu am rywun arall, gallwch chi dderbyn gwybodaeth a chefnogaeth ar wefan Beat gan gynnwys Mathau o anhwylderau bwyta, Adfer, Gwasanaethau Cymorth, a Chefnogi Rhywun. Hefyd, mae adran sy’n sôn am anhwylderau bwyta yn ein Casgliad Lles o lyfrau hunan-gymorth. Os yw pethau’n anodd i chi ar hyn o bryd, darllenwch dudalennau Gwasanaeth Lles y Brifysgol ar gyfer cyngor a chymorth.