Menna Elfyn

Last updated

Menna Elfyn

Born1952 (age 7071)
NationalityWelsh
Genrepoetry

Menna Elfyn FRSL , FLSW (born 1952) is a Welsh poet, playwright, columnist, and editor who writes in Welsh. She has been widely commended and translated. She was imprisoned for her campaigning as a Welsh-language activist. [1]

Contents

Background

During the 1970s and 1980s, Menna Elfyn was a member and sometime official of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg. She was twice imprisoned for acts of civil disobedience. [2] She described the ordeal of being forced to speak in the English language to her parents when they visited her in prison. [1]

Elfyn has published ten volumes of poetry and a dozen more of children's books and anthologies. She has also written eight plays for the stage, six radio plays for the BBC, and two plays and several documentaries for television. She co-edited The Bloodaxe Book of Modern Welsh Poetry with John Rowlands, which won a Poetry Book Society recommendation. [3] She has won numerous prizes for her work, including a Creative Arts prize to write a book on sleep (Cwsg: am dro yn ôl).

When Elfyn issued her bilingual selected poems Eucalyptus, (Gwasg Gomer, 1995), Tony Conran described her as "the first Welsh poet in 1500 years to have her work known outside Wales." He gave similar praise to her second bilingual volume, Cell Angel (1996). [4]

Her work has been translated into 18 languages, including Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Lithuanian. She was Writing Director of the Masters Programme in Creative Writing at Trinity University College, Carmarthen, and a Literary Fellow at Swansea University. [5] [6]

Elfyn lives in Llandysul. Her daughter, Fflur Dafydd, is a writer and musician.

Published works

Poetry

Prose

Other works

Awards

Menna Elfyn became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2015. [7] . In 2018, she became a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kate Roberts (author)</span> Welsh author writing in Welsh

Kate Roberts was one of the foremost Welsh-language authors of the 20th century. Styled Brenhines ein llên, she is known mainly for her short stories, but also wrote novels. Roberts was a prominent Welsh nationalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pascale Petit (poet)</span> French-born British poet

Pascale Petit, is a French-born British poet of French, Welsh and Indian heritage. She was born in Paris and grew up in France and Wales. She trained as a sculptor at the Royal College of Art and was a visual artist for the first part of her life. She has travelled widely, particularly in the Peruvian and Venezuelan Amazon and India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Waldo Williams</span> Welsh poet and pacifist, 1904–1971

Waldo Goronwy Williams was one of the leading Welsh-language poets of the 20th century. He was also a notable Christian pacifist, anti-war campaigner, and Welsh nationalist. He is often referred to by his first name only.

Gillian Clarke is a Welsh poet and playwright, who also edits, broadcasts, lectures and translates from Welsh into English. She co-founded Tŷ Newydd, a writers' centre in North Wales.

Euros Bowen was a Welsh language poet and priest.

The Wales Book of the Year is a Welsh literary award given annually to the best Welsh and English language works in the fields of fiction and literary criticism by Welsh or Welsh interest authors. Established in 1992, the awards are currently administered by Literature Wales, and supported by the Arts Council of Wales, Welsh Government and the Welsh Books Council.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eluned Morgan (author)</span> Argentine writer

Eluned Morgan, was a Welsh-language author from Patagonia. She was raised in Y Wladfa, a Welsh colony in Patagonia, and was taught to speak both Welsh and Spanish. Her father eventually enrolled her in Dr Williams' School in Wales, where she had to learn the English language. She led student protests against the school's English-only policy, which prohibited the use of Welsh by its students.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nigel Jenkins</span> Anglo-Welsh poet

Nigel Jenkins was an Anglo-Welsh poet. He was an editor, journalist, psychogeographer, broadcaster and writer of creative non-fiction, as well as being a lecturer at Swansea University and director of the creative writing programme there.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gwyneth Lewis</span> Inaugural National Poet of Wales

Gwyneth Denver Davies, FLSW, known professionally as Gwyneth Lewis, is a Welsh poet, who was the inaugural National Poet of Wales in 2005. She wrote the text that appears over the Wales Millennium Centre.

The Tir na n-Og Awards are a set of annual children's literary awards in Wales from 1976. They are presented by the Books Council of Wales to the best books published during the preceding calendar year in each of three awards categories, one English-language and two Welsh-language. Their purpose is "[to raise] the standard of children's and young people's books and to encourage the buying and reading of good books." There is no restriction to fiction or prose. Each prize is £1,000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gwyneth Glyn</span> Welsh poet and musician

Gwyneth Glyn is a Welsh language poet and musician.

Emily Huws is a Welsh language children's author. She is a recipient of the Mary Vaughan Jones Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">R. S. Thomas</span> Welsh poet, 1913–2000

Ronald Stuart Thomas, published as R. S. Thomas, was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest noted for nationalism, spirituality and dislike of the anglicisation of Wales. John Betjeman, introducing Song at the Year's Turning (1955), the first collection of Thomas's poetry from a major publisher, predicted that Thomas would be remembered long after he himself was forgotten. M. Wynn Thomas said: "He was the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn of Wales because he was such a troubler of the Welsh conscience. He was one of the major English language and European poets of the 20th century."

Christine Evans is a poet of Welsh origin, born in the West Riding of Yorkshire and writing in English. She lives in North Wales. Her book Cometary Phrases was Welsh Book of the Year in 1989.

Irma Chilton, also known as I. M. Chilton, was a Welsh children's writer in the English and Welsh languages. She was a recipient of the Tir na n-Og Award presented by the Welsh Books Council, and of eisteddfod prizes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iwan Bala</span> Welsh artist

Iwan Bala is a Welsh artist, born May 1956 in Sarnau, Merionethshire, near Bala.

Greg Hill edited The Anglo-Welsh Review, taking over as Reviews Editor in 1980 and becoming the main editor in 1985 until the journal's demise in 1988. He has been involved in a number of other literary projects in Wales, including the journal Materion Dwyieithog/Bilingual Matters, published annually between 1989 and 1992, the results of work done with students at Coleg Ceredigion where he was Head of Humanities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trouble at a Tavern</span>

"Trouble at a Tavern", or "Trouble at an Inn", is a short poem by the 14th-century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, in which the poet comically narrates the mishaps which prevent him from keeping a midnight assignation with a girl. Dafydd is widely seen as the greatest of the Welsh poets, and this is one of his best-known poems. It has been described as "glorious farce", "one of Dafydd ap Gwilym's funniest and most celebrated cywyddau", and "the most vivid of [his] poems of incident".

Gareth Finlay Williams was a Welsh language author who wrote novels for children and adults, as well as creating many television drama series.

Rhiannon Ifans, FLSW 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 a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.

References

  1. 1 2 John Briggs (2012). 25/25 Vision: Welsh Horizons Across 50 Years. Institute of Welsh Affairs. p. 18. ISBN   978-1-904773-65-8.
  2. "Menna Elfyn". Poetry International Archives. 11 November 2020. Retrieved 11 March 2021.
  3. Bloodaxe Books Retrieved 8 August 2017
  4. Poetry International Rotterdam Retrieved 23 April 2017.
  5. British Council Retrieved 23 April 2017.
  6. University of Wales, Trinity St David Retrieved 23 April 2017.
  7. "Royal Society of Literature » Current RSL Fellows". Archived from the original on 1 March 2015.
  8. Wales, The Learned Society of. "Menna Elfyn". The Learned Society of Wales. Retrieved 22 August 2023.