Menna Elfyn readings and events
'Elfyn writes about the intimate and every day, the natural world and about women’s experiences, always able to transform her awareness of the small, and the beautiful, to the affective and often, then, the political. Her voice is challenging and compassionate by turn, unafraid of joy, and full of the energies of community, offering through the power of language, truth, consolation, and possibility.' - Deryn Rees-Jones, co-judge of the Society of Authors' Cholmondeley Awards 2022
Menna Elfyn is one of the foremost Welsh-language writers. As well as being an award-winning poet, she has published plays, libretti and children’s novels, and co-edited The Bloodaxe Book of Modern Welsh Poetry (2003) with John Rowlands. When not travelling the world for readings and residencies, she lives in Carmarthen. She was Wales’s National Children’s Laureate in 2002, and was made President of Wales PEN Cymru in 2014. She was, until 2016, Creative Director in the School of Cultural Studies at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David; she is also Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing. She won a Cholmondeley Award in 2022, a prize which recognises a poet's body of work.
Describing herself as a ‘proud bilingual’, she has for the first time in a Bloodaxe collection translated or written many of the original poems in English in her new book Parch, due out in October 2025.
Menna Elfyn was a guest on Radio 3's The Verb on 1 February 2019. She was discussing the subjunctive in Welsh, and reading poems from her 2017 collection Bondo: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00028n4. Download the podcast to hear Menna reading an additional poem.
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
Wednesday 7 March 2025, 5.30pm
The Poet Laureate's Library Tour (L-M)
Morriston Hospital Library / Llyfrgell Ysbyty Treforys, Swansea / Abertawe SA6 6NL
Poet Laureate Simon Armitage embarks on the next leg of his ten-year tour of the UK’s libraries, visiting L to M Libraries. Each spring this decade, Simon Armitage will give readings in libraries across the UK, from the flagship libraries of big cities to the smaller ones that serve rural and remote communities. Using the alphabet as a compass, his journey will celebrate the library as one of the great and necessary institutions.
For the decade-long tour’s first celebration of NHS libraries with hospital staff, Simon visits Morriston Hospital Library, Swansea ‘where the care of all our people can be imagined’. Special guest Menna Elfyn, an award-winning poet, playwright and librettist, is one of the foremost Welsh-language writers. Her poetry features in some of the hospital’s art installations, including a bilingual stained glass memorial dedicated to organ donors. She was made Poet Laureate for the Children of Wales in 2002.
For further information on the Laureate’s Library Tour and how to book, visit www.simonarmitage.com. The events are free of charge but booking is essential.
[23 May 2019]
