Planet (magazine)

Last updated
Planet: The Welsh Internationalist
Planet (magazine) cover.jpg
№230
EditorEmily Trahair (2012–present)
Former editors
CategoriesCulture, politics, literature
FrequencyQuarterly
Founder Ned Thomas
First issue1970 (relaunched 1985)
Country Wales
Based in Aberystwyth
LanguageEnglish
Website www.planetmagazine.org.uk
Planet (magazine) 232.jpg
Planet (magazine) 231.jpg
Planet (magazine) 229.jpg
A selection of covers of Planet Magazine

Planet (also known as Planet: The Welsh Internationalist) is a quarterly cultural and political magazine published in Aberystwyth, Wales. It looks at Wales from an international perspective, and at the world from the standpoint of Wales. The magazine enjoys a vibrant and diverse international readership, and is read by key figures in the Welsh political cultural scene.

Contents

History

Planet publishes high-quality writing, artwork and photography by established and emerging figures, and covers subjects across politics, the arts, literature, current events, social justice questions, minority language and culture, the environment and more. It was originally set up as a bi-monthly publication by Ned Thomas in 1970, and was published continually until 1979. This followed a decision in 1967 to devolve the function of The Arts Council of Great Britain in Wales to the Welsh Arts Council. Thomas explained that "The arts council's literature director, Meic Stephens, had a vision of creating a publishing base in Wales that hadn't existed before". [1] The magazine was renamed Planet: The Welsh Internationalist in 1977.

On the eve of the 1979 Welsh devolution referendum, predicting a "no" vote, Thomas decided to bring the magazine to an end as he believed "that a no vote would mean that Planet's stance and ideology had failed, and a yes vote would mean that Wales needed a magazine published more often than once every two months". [1] He was persuaded to relaunch the magazine in 1985, and with improved funding, John Barnie was employed as a full-time assistant before becoming editor in 1990. Barnie was succeeded by his wife Helle Michelsen, in 2006, and in 2010 by Jasmine Donahaye. In 2012, Emily Trahair became the current editor, with Dafydd Prys ap Morus as production editor and Helen Pendry as assistant editor. With Helen and Dafydd departing, Lowri Angharad Pearson joined in 2015 as Administrative and Marketing Assistant and Hywel Edwards in 2017 as Production Officer. The team also puts together the Planet Extra website.

In 2002, funding was moved from the Arts Council to the Welsh Books Council, and in 2009, the Welsh Books Council changed their magazine's funding remit to a quarterly. The first expanded quarterly issue was published in April of that year. The magazine celebrated its 40th anniversary with its 200th issue in November 2010.

Originally published in Llangeitho, the magazine's headquarters later moved to the publishing heartland of Aberystwyth. Planet also publishes a book imprint. [2]

Editors

Related Research Articles

Elin Jones Welsh Plaid Cymru politician, Llywydd of the Senedd

Elin Jones MS, is a Welsh politician who has served as the Llywydd of the Senedd since 2016. A member of Plaid Cymru, Jones has been the Member of the Senedd (MS) for Ceredigion since 1999

Christopher Meredith is a poet, novelist, short story writer, and translator from Tredegar, Wales.

David James Jones, commonly known by his bardic name Gwenallt, was a Welsh poet, critic, and scholar, and one of the most important figures of 20th-century Welsh-language literature. He created his bardic name by transposing Alltwen, the name of the village across the river from his birthplace.

Seren Books is the trading name of Poetry Wales Press, a small independent publisher based in Bridgend, Wales, specialising in English-language writing from Wales and also publishing other literary fiction, poetry and non-fiction. Seren's aim is to bring Welsh literature and culture to a wider audience. The press takes its name from the Welsh word for "star".

Media of Wales Overview of mass media in Wales

The media in Wales provide services in both English and Welsh, and play a role in modern Welsh culture. BBC Wales began broadcasting in 1923 have helped to promote a form of standardised spoken Welsh, and one historian has argued that the concept of Wales as a single national entity owes much to modern broadcasting. The national broadcasters are based in the capital, Cardiff.

Rachel Bromwich

Rachel Bromwich born Rachel Sheldon Amos, was a British scholar. Her focus was on medieval Welsh literature, and she taught Celtic Languages and Literature in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge, from 1945 to 1976. Among her most important contributions to the study of Welsh literature is Trioedd Ynys Prydein, her edition of the Welsh Triads.

Jeremy Hooker is an English poet, critic, teacher, and broadcaster. Central to his work are a concern with the relationship between personal identity and place.

New Welsh Review is a literary magazine published in Wales. Its primary language is English, with brief excerpts of texts indicated in the original Welsh.

Grahame Davies LVO is a poet, author, editor, librettist, literary critic and former journalist. He was brought up in the former coal mining village of Coedpoeth near Wrexham in north east Wales.

David Jenkins CBE was the Librarian of the National Library of Wales from 1969 to 1979 and author of an official history of the library.

Gwen Davies is a Welsh editor and translator. She currently edits the New Welsh Review.

<i>Poetry Wales</i> Welsh poetry magazine

Poetry Wales is a triannual poetry magazine published in Bridgend, Wales. Founded by Meic Stephens and now published by Seren, it is edited by Zoë Brigley. Since its first publication in 1965, the magazine has built an international reputation for excellent poems, features and reviews from Wales and beyond. The magazine is published in print and online.

Dafydd Trystan Davies is a Welsh academic and politician, who was chair of Plaid Cymru from 2013 until 2019, when he was replaced by Alun Ffred Jones. Trystan is currently the Senior Academic Manager and Registrar for Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol.

Lily Shepherd Tobias (1887–1984) was a Welsh writer and activist for suffrage, labour, peace, and a Jewish national home in Palestine. She wrote four novels, short stories, and plays.

Ned Thomas is a Welsh intellectual, editor and cultural commentator in the fields of politics, literature and language. His earlier works are in English while his more recent output is in Welsh. He writes from a background of familiarity with languages such as Russian, German, French, Italian and Spanish, as well as Welsh and English. He was a lecturer at the Universities of Moscow, Salamanca and Aberystwyth in the Department of English and has published studies of writers as diverse as the English writer George Orwell, the Caribbean poet Derek Walcott and the Welsh poet and activist Waldo Williams as well as a study of post-war Europe from an autobiographical perspective.

Christine Kinsey Welsh artist (born 1942)

Christine Kinsey is a Welsh painter, now based in Pembrokeshire. She was the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Chapter Workshops and Centre of the Arts, Cardiff, now called the Chapter Arts Centre.

Francesca Rhydderch Welsh novelist and academic

Francesca Rhydderch is a Welsh novelist and academic. In 2013, her debut novel, The Rice Paper Diaries, was longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and won the Wales Book of the Year Award 2014 for Fiction. Her short stories have been published in anthologies and magazines and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and Radio Wales.

Nation.Cymru Welsh political blog

Nation.Cymru (transl. Nation.Wales) is a Welsh news service established in 2017 with the aim of creating a national English-language news service for Wales. It receives £20,000 a year from the Books Council of Wales and the rest of its financial support comes from 1,000 monthly subscribers to the site.

Rhiannon Ifans is a Welsh academic specialising in English, Medieval and Welsh literature. She was an Anthony Dyson Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, in University of Wales Trinity St. David. She twice won a Tir na-n-Og prize for her work and won the literary medal competition at the Welsh Eisteddfod, for her 2019 debut novel, Ingrid, which was chosen for the Welsh Literature Exchange Bookshelf. In 2020, Ifans was elected as Fellow the Learned Society of Wales.


John Barnie is a poet, essayist and editor from Abergavenny in South Wales.

References

  1. 1 2 "Planet magazine's 200th edition goes into orbit". BBC Mid Wales. 11 November 2010.
  2. "National Library of Wales > Planet Papers". Archives Wales. Archived from the original on 8 October 2011. Retrieved 15 June 2011.