For over fifty years, Planet magazine has fostered new writers and new writing as part of its core mission.
We are always on the lookout for young voices and our annual Essay Competition invites entries from anyone under 30, with the winning piece published in the magazine. Harry Waveney and Mark S. Redfern are the most recent winners (links below).
Of course we also publish writers who are coming into their own later in life, or turning to journalism as a way to disseminate their research, experience or expertise.
In the past, we have been among the first outlets to publish many writers who are now well established: we are proud that these have included Charlotte Williams, Mike Parker and Peter Lord. In the last few years, writers who have contributed to Planet while coming to greater prominence have included Polly Manning and Eric Ngalle Charles.
In the links below, we pick out some of the new writing from the past few years that has stayed with us, from poems to polemic. We hope you will be inspired by these writers’ fresh ideas, their ways of engaging with the world, and the possibilities they present for social and environmental justice.
If you like what you read here, you can buy back issues of the magazine through our shop https://www.planetmagazine.org.uk/shop
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Planet issue 243
Kandace Siobhan Walker recounts what first sparked her consciousness about the situation in Palestine, and the long roots of solidarities between this struggle and the Black liberation movement, recommending resources for informed activism.
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Planet issue 243
Clare Davies details the resonance of Williams’ life and work in pandemic-era Wales. She highlights Williams’ exploration of how everyday personal tragedy can transform into a revitalised sense of humanity and drive for social change; and how Welsh intellectuals can commit to this struggle.
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Planet issue 243
Hanan Issa recounts the thrill of feeling more alive through sea-swimming, as experienced from Ogmore beach to Bali; but draws on mythology and present-day realities to convey what the dangers of this same body of water mean for the devalued lives of others.
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Planet issue 242
Collage artist Llinos Anwyl investigates the online subculture of ‘cottagecore’, which has become popularised during the pandemic, and argues that the class dynamics of this aesthetic threaten to exacerbate gentrification in her home village of Moelfre and beyond.
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Planet issue 242
In a series that proposes how society could change for the better in response to Covid-19, headteacher Rajvi Glasbrook Griffiths reflects on what has been learnt under lockdown about how to instil a distinct and pluralistic sense of Welsh identity, how to re-conceive of ‘wellbeing’ in relation to achievement, and a new way of understanding equality.
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Planet issue 241
Our Welsh Keywords series offers contemporary perspectives on the meaning of words in Welsh, inspired by Raymond Williams’ Keywords. In this issue, Sara Huws explores the fascinating history of how a word for ‘witch’ shape-shifted into one for ‘scientist’. What is the gender dimension of this etymological journey, and what does this mean in an era of pandemic and big data?
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Planet issue 240
Harry Waveney reflects, in his competition-winning article, on the values he’s discovered through Kurdish solidarity activism.
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Planet issue 240
Yasmin Begum reviews two recent artistic works springing from Cardiff’s multicultural history.
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Planet issue 239
Faith Rhiannon Clarke interviews Butetown human rights lawyer Hussein Said on why Black lives matter in environmental activism
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Planet issue 239
Peter Jingcheng Xu counters Western stereotypes of China with this insight into how Daoism might inform global struggles against pandemics and climate change.
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Planet issue 238
Hafren Evan traces the history of a third gender way back to the Iron Age.
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Planet issue 238
Kieron Smith writes about state support for the arts in Wales.
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Planet issue 237
Gareth Leaman details the reasons why Wales as a partially devolved polity barely existed in the 2019 UK general election campaign.
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Planet issue 236
Artist Paul Eastwood on the word ‘dadweirlled’ (metamorphosis, shape-shifting) and the use of Welsh for abstract ideas in the visual arts.
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Planet issue 236
Neetha Kunaratnam’s poem, ‘Brexit means Breakfast’, brings us britwurst and celtberries.
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Planet issue 236
Mark S. Redfern won our 2019 Young Writers’ Essay Competition with this piece about the sensationalising of Swansea’s heroin crisis.
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Planet issue 236
Eric Ngalle Charles has a close encounter on a train journey from Cardiff to Hay.
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Planet issue 233
Dan Evans celebrates Welsh football fan culture and how this contributes to national unity, internationalism and working-class self-organisation.
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Planet issue 232
Sophie McKeand examines what a libertarian leftist approach could bring to drug-law reform.
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Planet issue 232
Rebecca Brown won our 2018 essay competition with this piece about narratives of hope and the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act.
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Planet issue 231
Daryl Leeworthy asks ‘What Would Nye Do?’ in respect to the future of Welsh Labour.
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Planet issue 231
Catrin Ashton recounts how a Marxist pamphlet helped her to see mothering as essential and productive labour.
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Planet issue 230
Lisa Sheppard, who acquired Welsh at school, explains what ‘mamiaith’ (‘mother tongue’) means to her.
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Planet issue 230
Rhian E. Jones writes about minority languages across Europe.
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Planet issue 229
Eluned Gramich looks at citizenship and displacement through the lens of her family’s experience.
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Planet issue 228
Ffion Jones draws on her experience as a sheep farmer and film-maker to offer proposals for safeguarding Welsh national interests post-Brexit.
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Planet issue 228
Polly Manning explains why Oxford University made her sick in this winning entry to the 2017 Planet Young Writers’ Essay Competition.
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Planet issue 228
Poet Emily Blewitt celebrates the postmen and pigeon-breeders who are ‘The Men in My Family'.
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Planet issue 227
Sara Peacock explores the similarities between prejudice against LGBT+ people and against Welsh speakers.
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