Wales Arts Review Podcast

WARpod #10: Gruffydd Wyn Owen

Gary Raymond — Mon, 18 May 2026 06:00:00 GMT

Indy music in Wales has a long and strong history — and I’m writing this in a week when the Super Furry Animals are getting everyone in a wooze with their first tour in ten years. Yes, you all know that we have, and have had, some of the best bands in the world, all with their own special Welsh flavour. But the industry is tough, and for so many of our musical acts, getting heard, maybe even craving out a bit of a career for yourself, can be near to impossible. That’s why people like Gruff Owen are so vitally important.

I’d wanted to interview Gruff for a long time, and largely because his perspective on indy music in Wales is unique, because the record label he set up (ten years ago, coincidentally) has been putting out some of the most important Welsh acts of all time. The big success story is probably Adwaith, but when you talk to him, you understand immediately that every act in his stable is just as important. You won’t meet anybody as passionate and prepared to put his money where his mouth is, as Gruff, when it comes to grass roots talent in Welsh music.

He is, quite simply, a legend.

Beyond the pod

Take some time to further explore some of the topics discussed:

Libertino Records

Gruff’s Instagram

The Velvet Underground & Nico

“if songs were lines in a conversation everything would be fine”, Hazey Jane II, Nick Drake

Bau Cat

Adwaith’s journey

Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci

Datblygu

Belle and Sebastian, Tiger Milk

Silent Forum, Domestic Majestic

Pitchfork

Boy George admits to using AI when writing songs

Because I’m a Woman, ANGHARAD

Find us elsewhere:

Assistant Editor: Ally-Joh Gowan-Day

Publisher: Dana Morris

Podcast theme tune by Tom Emlyn

The Wales Arts Review Podcast is brought to you by Wales Arts Review Publishing

Get full access to Wales Arts Review at walesartsreview.substack.com/subscribe

WARpod #9: Brad Evans

Gary Raymond — Tue, 12 May 2026 17:00:00 GMT

I could talk to Brad Evans for hours.

So, he was an obvious choice as guest for the podcast. The only question was what to talk to him about, as his intellectual reach into some of the most vital topics of the day is pretty vast. We decided to have a chat a few days after the Welsh Senedd elections — enough time to let the dust settle, but still pretty soon with so much yet undecided and nothing really taking form. I wanted to talk to him about the Welsh social landscape, as he sees it. His story of growing up in poverty in the south Wales valleys, pulling himself up and out all the way to Professor of Political Violence and Aesthetics as the University of Bath, gives him a unique perspective on the places he has left behind, but frequently revisits. His autobiography, How black Was My Valley, just one of twenty-odd books he has published, is a fascinating exploration of this.

Considering the tangents we might have gone off on, my conversation with Brad is quite focussed on the cultural future of Wales, the potential for Plaid Cymru to transform one election victory into a dominance of Welsh politics that could last a generation, and how art and culture, just like health and transport and economics, could be central to that dominance.

In other words, if you’re still a little spun around by the political events of the last week or so, this is the conversation for you.

Beyond the pod

Take some time to further explore some of the topics discussed:

How Black Was My Valley: Poverty and Abandonment in Post-Industrial Wales

Brad Evans on How Black Was My Valley

2026 Election Results in Wales

Plaid Cymru’s promise to invest in art culture in Wales

Ystradyfodwyd Art Society

From Despair to Where? The Valleys Then, Now and in the Future

Michael Sheen’s Owain and Henry

Michael Sheen Welsh National Opera Controversy

The Aberfan Disaster of 1966

Find us elsewhere:

Assistant Editor: Ally-Joh Gowan-Day

Publisher: Dana Morris

Podcast theme tune by Tom Emlyn

The Wales Arts Review Podcast is brought to you by Wales Arts Review Publishing

Get full access to Wales Arts Review at walesartsreview.substack.com/subscribe

WARpod #8: Dylan Thomas Prize Special

Gary Raymond — Tue, 05 May 2026 17:30:00 GMT

The Dylan Thomas Prize is 20 years old this year, and has been a megalithic fixture on the book prize calendar for mot of that time. That also means it is 20 years since Rachel Trezise won the inaugural prize, and burst onto the scene and with it seemed to burst a whole new raft of exciting Welsh writers. I guess that’s a generation ago now, and as is briefly discussed toward the end of this special podcast, a whole new generation of writers are emerging. I think the Dylan Thomas Prize, now run out of Swansea University, is perhaps the best prize for finding that emerging talent.

It is a prize for young writers — you have to be under 40 to be eligible, and past winners include Lucy Caldwell and Max Porter. I am really pleased that we managed to get DTP Director and novelist, Elaine Canning on to the podcast to talk about the prize and the shortlisted authors and their works, alongside the brilliant Eley Williams — one of my favourite writers working today. Eley is one of the judges of the 2026 prize, and was shortlisted herself last year, so she has a fascinating perspective on the process having now been both sides of it.

Beyond the pod

Take some time to further explore some of the topics discussed:

Max Porter, 2016 winner

Kayo Chingonyi, 2018 winner

Yasmin Zaher, 2025 winner

Shortlist Celebration

Jon Doyle

A Room Above a Shop, Anthony Shapland

Shortlisted:

Under the Blue, Suzannah V. Evans

To Rest Our Minds and Bodies: (Les Fugitives), Harriet Armstrong

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh, Colwill Brown

Open, Heaven, Seán Hewitt

Borderline Fiction, Derek Owusu

Joy is My Middle Name, Sasha Debevec-McKenney

Find us elsewhere:

Assistant Editor: Ally-Joh Gowan-Day

Publisher: Dana Morris

Podcast theme tune by Tom Emlyn

The Wales Arts Review Podcast is brought to you by Wales Arts Review Publishing

Get full access to Wales Arts Review at walesartsreview.substack.com/subscribe

WARpod #7: Mari Ellis Dunning

Gary Raymond — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 06:00:00 GMT

Mari Ellis Dunning shot into the spotlight with a Wales Book of the Year shortlisting for her debut poetry collection, Salacia, in 2019. As a poet, she has grown immensely (she talks about this in my conversation with her), and has recently published her first novel, Witsh, which came out last year with Honno. Throughout her writing career, Mari has remained a vital voice in the fight for women’s voices to be heard more clearly, and for that alone I was very keen to have her on the podcast and give her the abundant space we have on this format to explore some ideas.

But Mari has also seemed to me over the over years, one of the central figures in Wales’ vibrant poetry scene. I wanted to talk to her about that scene, find out what it’s like in there, and what it means to have a passionate support network of like-minded artists. As you’ll hear/see on the podcast, Mari is something of a figurehead (or part of a vanguard, at least) for Welsh poetry, and for a new generation of Welsh women writers. Her body of work is passionate and exacting and explorational, and it’s impossible not to see there is so much more to come from her.

Beyond the pod

Take some time to further explore some of the topics discussed:

The Wrong Side of the Looking Glass by Mari Ellis Dunning and Natalie Ann Holborrow

Gwen Ferch Ellis

Kids left to their own devices

‘They Call Us’

Serpent and Stone with Broken Sleep Books

Salacia

Boards of Canada

The Unfortunates by B S Johnson

Find us elsewhere:

Assistant Editor: Ally-Joh Gowan-Day

Publisher: Dana Morris

Podcast theme tune by Tom Emlyn

The Wales Arts Review Podcast is brought to you by Wales Arts Review Publishing

Get full access to Wales Arts Review at walesartsreview.substack.com/subscribe

WARpod #6: Lucy Wood

Gary Raymond — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 06:00:00 GMT

Gwen John was an artist who did not strike me in the way she had many others until I saw her work “in the flesh”. I knew her work a little, and new how distinctive it was, but not until I took my BBC Review Show guests to an exhibition of a selection of her sketches and a few paintings at the Martin Tinney Gallery in Cardiff that I fell in love with her. That was in 2022 (Google tells me), and both The Review Show and the Martin Tinney Gallery are no more, but Gwen John’s reputation and standing in the art world has continued to grow. The apotheosis of this is Strange Beauties, the major retrospective that is currently on at the National Museum in Cardiff and soon to be going to Scotland and America as part of a substantial international collaboration for the museum.

On my (current) BBC Radio Wales Arts Show, I had on as a guest to discuss the exhibition, the head curator, Lucy Wood, and it was immediately apparent in real time, that the six minutes that format naturally allows people to chat about their subject was only going to allow the briefest of glimpses into the world of Gwen John, and the world of the museum that has worked for several years to get this show up and running. Luckily, by that point I had this podcast to offer Lucy for a longer chat. The Wales Arts Review podcast is exactly the place for longer, looser, more relaxed conversations on rich and fascinating subjects. Since seeing Gwen John’s work at Martin Tinney in 2022, I had read many books about her, seen much more of her work, and had begun a journey to understanding her greatness, and the influence she has had. The chance to have a now world-leading expert come and talk to me at length about her was too good an opportunity to pass by.

And Lucy was extremely generous with her time and her knowledge. And yet still we only scratch the surface of this wonderful, ever-giving artist, her life and her work.

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Beyond the pod

Take some time to further explore some of the topics discussed:

Lucy’s Instagram

Gwen John: Strange Beauties

Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris by Alicia Foster

Gary Raymond’s review of Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris by Alicia Foster

The Precious Book

The Student

Find us elsewhere:

Assistant Editor: Ally-Joh Gowan-Day

Publisher: Dana Morris

Podcast theme tune by Tom Emlyn

The Wales Arts Review Podcast is brought to you by Wales Arts Review Publishing

Get full access to Wales Arts Review at walesartsreview.substack.com/subscribe

WARpod #5: Manon Steffan Ros

Gary Raymond — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 11:00:00 GMT

I’ve been a huge fan of the work of Manon Steffan Ros since I began getting my hands of the English translations of her Welsh language novels. Her books for young people are instilled with that great understanding that such tags are merely marketing terms. I haven’t read anything of hers and thought it anything other than a good story well-told. Her book The Blue Book of Nebo is a modern classic, and would fit in comfortably next to dystopic sci-fi stalwarts from the likes of John Wyndham or John Christopher. I could have talked to her for hours on that subject alone.

I have wanted to sit down with Manon and have a proper, undiluted, unexpurgated conversation about writing for some years, and I have to admit that when the opportunity came up to create this podcast, her name was the first down on the list of potential guests. In Welsh, she has been adorned with every accolade there is out there, and now in English too she has been conquering all before her (…Nebo was the first book in translation to win a Carnegie medal in the award’s 70-odd year history).

We also talk about her background in music and acting, and how that has influenced her writing and the creation of character and the worlds they move about in. And yet I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask her more details about the novel she’s been struggling with for some time now. I guess we’ll all just have to wait for that one to hit the shelves.

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Beyond the pod

Take some time to further explore some of the topics discussed:

Manon’s Instagram

Gary’s play, A Beautiful Rhythm of Life and Death

Llyfr Glas Nebo

Frân Wen | Llyfr Glas Nebo

Greta

The Blue Book of Nebo

Manon on translating Welsh to English

Welsh Literature Exchange

Roald Dahl’s Sweet Shop

John Wyndham

Find us elsewhere:

Assistant Editor: Ally-Joh Gowan-Day

Publisher: Dana Morris

Podcast theme tune by Tom Emlyn

The Wales Arts Review Podcast is brought to you by Wales Arts Review Publishing

Get full access to Wales Arts Review at walesartsreview.substack.com/subscribe

WARpod #4: Tomos Williams

Gary Raymond — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 06:00:00 GMT

If you’re into jazz music, and you’re into Welsh jazz music, and you have any interest in the live scene over the last couple of decades, chances are you’ve come under the influence of Tomos Williams. I came to his music from a shared — and very overt — love for Miles Davis. And Tomos’s oeuvre is just as dynamic and wide-ranging as Davis’s in some ways. There is no denying the deep-set impact American music had and continues to have on Williams’ music, but the way he has turned that influence into an interrogation of his Welshness, and by extension the Welshness of us all, has been a thrilling journey to witness.

I’ve wanted to sit down with Tomos for years for a proper long-form recorded conversation about his early influences, his relationship with Welsh roots/folk music, and the dazzling projects that have taken him across the world collaborating with musicians that include some of his American idols to heavyweights of the Indian folk/classical tradition. Tomos’s music has made him a player on the international stage.

He also spent a number of years playing in the Barry Horns, the Welsh international football team’s unofficial (and then sort-of official) fan-band, who did their bit for crowd enthusing across many dramatic evenings, including a trip to the Qatar World Cup in 2022.

We talk about all these things, as well as his formative hip hop education, seeing Miles Davis live in Cardiff in the 1980s, and the third volume of his epic Welsh jazz trilogy project, Cwmwl Tystion. This latest music surely marks Williams out as not just one of the leading composer-musicians of his generation, but as one of Wales’ leading auteur-artists.

Beyond the pod

Take some time to further explore some of the topics discussed:

Tomos Williams

The Barry Horns

1989 Miles Davis Setlist at Saint Davids Hall

3-D Lifestyles by Greg Osby

Kamasi Washington

Ten Freedom Summers

Cwmwl Tystion trilogy

Llio Rhydderch

Find us elsewhere:

Assistant Editor: Ally-Joh Gowan Day

Publisher: Dana Morris

Podcast theme tune by Tom Emlyn

The Wales Arts Review Podcast is brought to you by Wales Arts Review Publishing

Get full access to Wales Arts Review at walesartsreview.substack.com/subscribe

WARpod #3: with Sara Robinson

Gary Raymond — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 06:00:00 GMT

For a number of years now, Sara Robinson has been one of the most distinctive voices in Wales’ national newspaper, The Western Mail. In her monthly column she has approached subjects that, taken together, begin to build into something of a picture of a journey of national identity. Her willingness to go places that step outside the usual parameters of a light-hearted weekend commentary has marked her out as a writer of fearless integrity. On top of that, in 2022 she put her money where her mouth is — few writers would be brave enough to do that — and she stood in the local council elections in Cardiff’s Grangetown ward for the Welsh Labour Party. It was a tough campaign, and she won, only to find that the brutal demands of the public and, most tellingly, her party, amounted to more than she was prepared to absorb, and in 2024 she resigned her seat. In this podcast interview she explains that she will not be voting Labour in the upcoming Senedd elections.

That is no small thing, because when Sara stood for office she as treading in the footsteps of her dad, who had occupied the same seat in the same ward decades before. He died tragically young, and Sara’s story is full of moments of parallels and serendipity. And that’s why this is an interview full of moving insights and very powerful personal reflections. By the end of it, I think you’ll agree, we all look forward to seeing what Sara gets up to next.

Beyond the pod

Take some time to further explore some of the topics discussed:

Sara’s website

Google loses case over social media harm to children

Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell

Drop in investment in arts and culture in Wales

Professional Welsh Arts Could Disappear

Economic Impact Report

Cardiff Music City Festival

Find us elsewhere:

Assistant Editor: Ally-Joh Gowan Day

Publisher: Dana Morris

Podcast theme tune by Tom Emlyn

The Wales Arts Review Podcast is brought to you by Wales Arts Review Publishing

Get full access to Wales Arts Review at walesartsreview.substack.com/subscribe

#2 In Conversation with Anne Cakebread

Ally-Joh Gowan-Day and Gary Raymond — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 06:00:00 GMT

You may know the work of Anne Cakebread far better than you realise. She is the creator of the phenomenally successful Teach Your Dog Welsh book, and it’s numerous (and rapidly growing) number of spin-off iterations. There are now versions for Korean, Gaelic, Cornish, and BSL. And, most importantly, closer to my heart, there are books for cats, too. They are enormously entertaining, and very educative, and the origin story for the idea is fascinating, never mind that it’s made her probably the best-selling living Welsh author.

But Anne’s story is even more fascinating than this turn up for the books. She is an artist, designer, and illustrator, a career that once took her to the unlikely destination of the Nigerian national squad’s backroom staff of the 1998 World Cup as graphic illustrator of the strategy boards used in team talks. She now helps run a gallery in West Wales, where she lives.

Beyond those little orange books you see near the checkout of almost every bookshop and arts centre in Wales is an intriguing woman who proved one of my favourite interviewees in a long time.

Beyond the pod:

Take some time to further explore some of the topics discussed:

Anne’s art and design work

Oriel Canfas

Find us elsewhere:

Assistant Editor: Ally-Joh Gowan Day

Publisher: Dana Morris

The Wales Arts Review Podcast is brought to you by Wales Arts Review Publishing.

Get full access to Wales Arts Review at walesartsreview.substack.com/subscribe

The Wales Arts Review Podcast Ep1: Bedwyr Williams

Gary Raymond — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 07:00:00 GMT

I first met Bedwyr Williams in 2022, when I was invited to interview him at the St David’s Arts Festival, where he would talk about his latest commission, a trio of bee skeps marking the ancient connection between St David’s and its twin settlement in County Wexford, Ireland. We got on well, only shaking hands for the first time just before going on stage. I found him to be a thoughtful, witty, quiet, but not afraid to wander off on a lyrical flight of fancy during our conversation. And so, when the proposition of the the new Wales Arts Review Podcast came along, where I will engage in long form, free-form, conversations with some of the most interesting and excellent people in my contacts list, I knew Bedwyr would be top of my list for opening guests.

But apart from being that golden mix if extremely affable but with a bit of bite, I have always found Bedwyr to be one of the most interesting artists working today (not just out of Wales). If you’re looking at his larger commissioned installations, you never know what is going to come next; if you’re more interested in the hugely successful satirical cartoons he posts to his Instagram account (and his 30k+ followers) then you are rarely served up anything less than hilarious and acerbic.

It was great to carve out the time to talk with him for this inaugural episode of the new Wales Arts Review Podcast.

So, a huge thanks to Bedwyr for chatting. Huge thanks too to all the amazing guests we have lined up.

Thanks to the brilliant Tom Emlyn for permission to use his song “A Series of Misunderstandings” as our theme tune. It’s off his new album Passing Craze, which comes out in May. You’ll no doubt hear a lot more about that album closer to the release date.

Beyond the pod:

Take some time to further explore some of the topics discussed:

Gwen John: Strange Beauties

Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris

The BBC Radio Wales Arts Show (presented by Gary Raymond)

Get full access to Wales Arts Review at walesartsreview.substack.com/subscribe