Welsh War Poet Hedd Wyn

[Simon_Fielding]

Excellent thread and I wish I had a more profound contribution to make. I just wondered if an English language biography of Hedd Wynn that's worth reading? A deeply moving Story.

[MichaelBully]

Just found this link here by Welsh writer and social historian Phil Carradice about Hedd Wyn. Interesting further comments by Phil Carradice at foot of the page, responding to Deb Fisher from Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wales/posts/hedd_wyn_and_the_black_chair

Phil Carradice wrote a children's story inspired by Hedd Wyn in English titled 'The Black Chair', but to the best of my knowledge, there is no biography of Hedd Wyn.

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/phil+carradice/the+black+chair/6575922/

Regards

Michael Bully

Excellent thread and I wish I had a more profound contribution to make. I just wondered if an English language biography of Hedd Wynn that's worth reading? A deeply moving Story.

[Simon_Fielding]

Thanks for the suggestions / links...

[MichaelBully]

Hope that they are a help. This is one of my favourite GWF threads as got me totally revising my opinion of what constitutes a 'war poet' ! Regards, Michael Bully

Thanks for the suggestions / links...

[Huw Davies]

"Eisteddfod of the Black Chair"

(for Hedd Wyn, 1887-1917) by Gillian Clarke

Robert Graves met him once,
in the hills above Harlech,
the shepherd poet,
the awdl and the englyn in his blood
like the heft of the mountain
in the breeding of his flock.

In a letter from France, he writes
of poplars whispering, the sun going down
among the foliage like an angel of fire,
and flowers half hidden in leaves
growing in a spent shell.
'Beauty is stronger than war.'

Yet he heard sorrow in the wind, foretold
blood in the rain reddening the fields
under the shadow of crows,
till he fell to his knees at Passchendaele,
grasping two fists-full of earth, a shell to the stomach
opening its scarlet blossom.

At the Eisteddfod they called his name three times,
his audience waiting to rise, thrilled,
to crown him, chair him,
to sing the hymn of peace,
not 'the festival in tears and the poet in his grave',
a black sheet placed across the empty chair.

[MichaelBully]

That's fabulous thanks for posting. I hadn't heard of this poem before. Regards, Michael Bully

[Kevin O'Marah]

Geraint, I find myself in total agreement with the context of your posting, non more than the last but one paragraph, I like yourself and others are proud that the blood that flaws through my veins are the same colour as my Dragon, and that throughout history we have been deemed as second class, but like myself it is through geographical reasons that we are able to read and write in our chosen mother tongue. Had it not been for Offa we might not have existed as a principality and if it was not for the greed of our forefathers in that they believed that a Principality was more in their interest than a kingdom things might have been different one way or the other. I believe rightly or wrongly that had we become a Nation we could have lost all, our language and our identity but that debate is for a far, far cleverer and educated person than myself!

Believe me I am proud to be Welsh and having my own identity.

Recently returned from Upstate New York and after meeting distant relatives whose forefather's emigrated to Vermont circa 1850's to excape the political upheavals that were prominent in the north Wales slate mines during those periods in our history, and for their ancestors to request Welsh books that they can't read shows that in some way that they are still aware of their roots.

As to (war poets) my great great grand fathers brother Ionoron Glandwyryd (Rowland Walter) had a Penill published in his book Caniadau Ionoron (Bedd y Milwr Cymreig yn America) published in Utica N Y 1872, shows that the trend of Welsh War Poetry is nothing new.

Regards

Kevin