Professor Mererid Hopwood takes part in this year’s Hay Festival Digital

21.05.2020

Professor Mererid Hopwood from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) will deliver the Anthea Bell lecture at this year’sHay Festival Digital.

Due to Covid-19, the annual literature and arts festival has gone online with organisers curating an impressive line-up of over 100 award-winning writers, global policy makers, historians, pioneers and innovators.

Celebrating the best new fiction and non-fiction works and interrogating some of the biggest issues of our time, festival goers can enjoy a programme of free live broadcasts and interactive events between May 22nd and 31st, with Mererid’s session taking place on Monday, May 25th.

An eminent academic and poet, Mererid Hopwood writes mainly in Welsh and has degrees in Spanish and German language and literature. Having taught in the field of language and literature for most of the last thirty years, she is now Professor of Languages and Welsh Curriculum at UWTSD.

Mererid’s lecture –What’s Wales in Welsh?– will take place between 1pm and 1.40pm on Monday, May 25th on the Hay Festival’s Wales Digital Stage. The event is free and will include a Question and Answer session following the lecture.

Chaired by Guto Harri, Mererid will explore ‘what is Language?’ It’s not just words. That much we know. It’s grammar. It’s context. It’s meaning. It’s communication. It transacts. It conveys. It imagines. It thinks ... Is it an external frame or an internal engine? And what is it then to live in a bilingual mind and a multilingual world?

As she looks forward to taking part in this year’s reimagined festival, Mererid Hopwood said: “No grouping together, no green-room, no grass … nevertheless, I’m looking forward to taking part in the ‘Hay from home’, for this year making time for sharing considered thoughts is perhaps more important than ever.”

“In my talk I shall be considering what it is to think in a bi (-and multi) lingual mind.”

The only woman to have won the three main prizes for poetry and prose at the National Eisteddfod, Mererid has also been the Welsh language Children’s Laureate for Wales and was awarded the Glyndwr prize for her contribution to literature. Her collection Nes Draw won the poetry section of the Welsh language Book of the Year Awards, 2016.

Hay Festival Digital will be hosted on the crowdcast platform to enable questions and comments and will remain on the crowdcast platform for 24 hours and will then be available on Hay Player.

Book your place on Professor Mererid Hopwood’s session here.

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