Menna Elfyn


Menna Elfyn is a Welsh poet, playwright, columnist and editor writing in Welsh. She has been widely commended and translated.

Background

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. She has won numerous prizes for her work, including a Creative Arts prize to write a book on sleep.
When Elfyn issued her bilingual selected poems Eucalyptus,, 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.
Her work has been translated into 18 languages, including Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Lithuanian. She is Writing Director of the Masters Programme in Creative Writing at Trinity University College, Carmarthen, and a Literary Fellow at Swansea University.
Elfyn lives in Llandysul. Her daughter, Fflur Dafydd, is a writer and musician.

Published works

She became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2015.