Bondo

By Menna Elfyn, Gillian Clarke and Robert Minhinnick

Bondo is Menna Elfyn’s latest collection in Welsh and English. Her title means eaves in Welsh, referring to poems about getting close to language as sanctuary. Other poems were written episodically over a number of years. These meditative poems began simply as a personal engagement with the grief of Aberfan, expressing solidarity with a nation’s wound. Bondo is also the voice which echoes the role of the Welsh bard as remembrancer. Menna Elfyn is the best-known, most travelled and most translated of all Welsh-language poets. The extraordinary international range of her subjects, breathtaking inventiveness and generosity of vision place her among Europe’s leading poets. Like her previous Bloodaxe titles, Bondo is a bilingual Welsh-English edition. Again, the facing English translations are by leading Welsh poets, in this case Elin ap Hywel, Gillian Clarke, Damian Walford Davies and Robert Minhinnick. It is her first new book since Perfect Blemish: New & Selected Poems / Perffaith Nam: Dau Ddetholiad & Cherddi Newydd 1995-2007 and the later collection Murmur (2012), a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Nov 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781780373898

Menna Elfyn

Menna Elfyn is a poet and playwright who writes with passion of the Welsh language and identity. Her bilingual selections, Eucalyptus: Detholiad o Gerddi / Selected Poems 1978-1994 from Gomer and Perfect Blemish: New & Selected Poems / Perffaith Nam: Dau Ddetholiad & Cherddi Newydd 1995-2007 from Bloodaxe were followed by two bilingual collections, Murmur (2012) and Bondo (2017), also from Bloodaxe. She also 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.

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MENNA ELFYN

BONDO

Bondo is Menna Elfyn’s latest collection in Welsh and English. Her title means eaves in Welsh, referring to poems about getting close to language as sanctuary. Other poems were written episodically over a number of years. These meditative poems began simply as a personal engagement with the grief of Aberfan, expressing solidarity with a nation’s wound. Bondo is also the voice which echoes the role of the Welsh bard as remembrancer.

Menna Elfyn is the best-known, most travelled and most translated of all Welsh-language poets. The extraordinary international range of her subjects, breathtaking inventiveness and generosity of vision place her among Europe’s leading poets. Like her previous Bloodaxe titles, Bondo is a bilingual Welsh-English edition. Again, the facing English translations are by leading Welsh poets, in this case Elin ap Hywel, Gillian Clarke, Damian Walford Davies and Robert Minhinnick. Bondo is her first new book since Perfect Blemish: New & Selected Poems / Perffaith Nam: Dau Ddetholiad & Cherddi Newydd 1995-2007, and the later collection Murmur (2012), a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation.

‘Menna Elfyn is the firebird of the Welsh language, bright, indomitably modern and as undestructible as the phoenix. She gives hope to all writers in lesser spoken languages that great things can rise from the ashes’ – Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

‘Elfyn is a poet of healing…both compassionate and celebratory. Like a soul doctor she questions and probes, like St Teresa she endures the darkness, but in the end she sings a song which affirms that flawed humanity is indeed perfectible’ – Katie Gramich, Planet

Cover photograph by Marzena Pogorzaly

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.

Her books include two bilingual selections, Eucalyptus: Detholiad o Gerddi / Selected Poems 1978-1994 (Gomer Press, 1995), and Perfect Blemish: New & Selected Poems / Perffaith Nam: Dau Ddetholiad & Cherddi Newydd 1995-2007 (Bloodaxe Books, 2007), a Welsh-only selection Merch Perygl: Cerddi 1976-2011 (Gomer Press, 2011), and two later bilingual collections from Bloodaxe, Murmur (2012), a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation, and Bondo (2017). Optimist Absoliwt: Cofiant Eluned Phillips, her biography of the poet Eluned Phillips, was published (in Welsh) by Gomer Press in 2016.

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 2017, 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.

WEBSITE: www.mennaelfyn.co.uk

MENNA ELFYN

Bondo

with English translations by

ELIN AP HYWEL

GILLIAN CLARKE

DAMIAN WALFORD DAVIES

MENNA ELFYN

ROBERT MINHINNICK

In memory of

NIGEL JENKINS (1949–2014)

Poet, Welshman, wayfarer

Er cof am

NIGEL JENKINS (1949–2014)

Awdur, gwladgarwr, brogarwr

CYDNABYDDIAETH | ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following publications where some of these poems or translations first appeared: Poetry Wales, Taliesin, Barddas, H’mm Foundation, Hwaet! 20 Years of Ledbury Poetry Festival (Bloodaxe Books, 2016), POEM, New Humanist, Hay Festival Press, 2013. Many thanks also to Sgema for financial support for the translations.

The sequence of poems on the tragedy of Aberfan were written over a number of years in private journals and notebooks and reflect a deep and continuing connection with the mining communities in Wales. ‘The Gate’|‘Y Glwyd’, first published in Murmur (Bloodaxe Books, 2012), is reprinted here as a personal testimony of the loss of the poet’s grandfather in a mining accident.

Once again, my thanks to my