2008>Newyddion : News

MENNA ELFYN>Author of over 20 books of poetry, prose, academic & educational works. Also playwright of over 8stage plays, 5 for radio and two television plays. She has also produced short films and has presented programmes for the BBC, HTV and S4C. She was made Poet Laureate for the Children of Wales in 2002 and has recently won a Creative Arts Award to write a prose book on the subject of sleep. She has travelled the world to read her work at Festivals and has held residencies and workshops in college in the US, Canada, and in over 15 countries for the British Council.

Her latest poetry collection Perffaith Nam/Perfect Blemish is published by Bloodaxe Books and she will appear in a new book (with DVD) IN PERSON, by Bloodaxe, in May2008, which showcases 30 of their most widely read and travelled poets.

> mwy o luniau : view more images

Menna Elfyn: Hay Festival, Alhambra, Granada, April/Ebrill 2008

British Council: BritLit Update - April 2008
Menna Elfyn in Spain

"Listen here little masters if Christ came back today he'd definitely be making His own cup of tea." Not that all her writing reflects her Welsh background. She has travelled to 25 countries under the umbrella of the Welsh Arts Council in the last decade or so to do readings of her work and run creative writing workshops... [Darllen mwy | View article]

DYFARNIADAU CYMRU GREADIGOL 2008
CREATIVE WALES AWARDS 2008

Neithiwr, (nos Iau, 6 Mawrth), cafodd 16 o artistiaid proffesiynol ar draws y ffurfiau gwahanol ar gelfyddyd Ddyfarniad Cymru Greadigol gan Gyngor Celfyddydau Cymru (CCC), mewn derbynwest a gynhaliwyd yn The Point ym Mae Caerdydd. Mae Dyfarniadau Cymru Greadigol yn cydnabod y dalent orau a photensial artistiaid unigol Cymru.
Caiff Dyfarniadau Cymru Greadigol eu hariannu gan CCC ac maent yn cynnig hyd at £25,000 bob blwyddyn, ac yn 2007/08, dyfarnwyd bron i £300,000 i 16 o artistiaid. Mae'r dyfarniadau yn sicrhau bywoliaeth i artistiaid am gyfnod, gan roi'r cyfle iddynt arbrofi, torri tir newydd, a datblygu eu gwaith. Dyma gyfle i fyfyrio, arallgyfeirio, mentro - a chael eich gwynt atoch.

PRIF WOBRAU CYMRU GREADIGOL:
Celfyddydau Cymhwysol a Chrefft: Walter Keeler
Celfyddydau Gweledol: Tim Davies, Anthony Shapland, André Stitt
Dawns: Darius James
Drama: Tim Baker, Kaite O’Reilly
Llenyddiaeth: Menna Elfyn, Robert Minhinnick

“Cwsg am dro” Menna is the author of over 20 books: from collections of poetry to educational books and children’s novels. She has also edited a number of anthologies, including Bloodaxe Modern Welsh Poetry (co-editor John Rowlands). As a playwright, over eight of her plays have been staged, including Y Forwyn Goch in Theatr Clwyd, 1992. She has been writing an annual drama for Radio Cymru since 2002 and in 2007, Er dy Fod (Gomer) and Perffaith Nam/Perfect Blemish (Bloodaxe) were published. Menna has been a columnist in the Western Mail since 1995. She is regularly invited overseas to perform readings and run workshops and in 2002, she was named the National Children’s poet. Menna’s Creative Wales project will examine the different ideas about sleep and the 80 methods science currently uses to explore it. By writing about it, she will be adding to a subject that is complex and mysterious, already the subject of folklore and literature. From Breuddwyd Macsen (‘Macsen’s Dream’), Breuddwyd Rhonabwy (‘Rhonabwy’s Dream’), Kafka’s absurd dream through to Plato's ideas, this is a theme that has endowed the world and crossed disciplinary boundaries. ‘Where do our dreams go?’ This question feeds the imagination and is the inspiration for this project. Menna intends to cast new light on the subject by holding workshops with adults and children and by researching and discussing it with medical professionals. She will develop her findings through prose and poetry, sometimes combining the genres as one – as sleep itself bridges the gap between darkness and light. [ Darllen mwy | View article]

Carmarthenshire Life > Profile of a Poet (Ionawr | January 2008)
Menna Elfyn. A line about this and that.

Llandysul-based Menna Elfyn's new bilingual collection of poems was recently published by Bloodaxe Books. Walk down Wind Street in Llandysul and you might see Menna Elfyn rushing to the shop to buy a pint of milk just as the doors are closing for the day. Nothing unusual about that, you think, but the week before you might have seen her doing the same thing in New York or Orporto in Portugal or maybe you saw her making a mad dash for the Babell Len at the National Eisteddfod... [Darllen mwy | Read article]

Menna's the mum and has got a new book out, while daughter Fflur has launched a CD. Both write of their mutual admiration for each other's work. Menna on Fflur>My daughter took me to school for the first time a few weeks ago. Admittedly, it was the school of English at Swansea University where she is a lecturer and where I'm a fellow with the Royal Literary Fund this year... [Darllen mwy | Read article]

2007

Newyddion | News

Herald Poets: Jackie Kay/Menna Elfyn
MENNA ELFYN: PERFECT BLEMISH: New & Selected Poems
1995- 2007
Bloodaxe Books £12.00 (p.b.)

Menna Elfyn confines her retrospective to two previous bilingual Bloodaxe volumes Cell Angel (1996), Blind Man’s Kiss (2001) and Perffaith Nam (Gomar2005) translated as Perfect Blemish . This means she excludes poems in Eucalyptus (Selected Poems 1978-1994) which included many “poems in transition” translated to English by among others R.S. Thomas.( Thomas is affectionately remembered in two later poems). She is generous in her praise for the six Welsh writers who “render” her poems into English in this book.. Of these interpreters/translators I would particularly commend Elin Ap Hywel, her “co-fellow” in Aberystwyth, “whose poems became siblings, confident to face the world as proud bilinguals”For new readers this substantial (pp304) publication will be a wonderful introduction to one of the few great voices to emerge from Wales at the end of the 20th century.Menna Elfyn was born in 1951 “ a first language Welsh speaker”. Before Eucalyptus she published five volumes of poetry in Welsh, An inspired pairing with Glasgow born Irish poet Pearse Hutchinson in a Fringe event in 1992 introduced her work to Scotland. Another memorable reading with Ciaran Carson at Edinburgh Book Festival 2005 consolidated the international reputation she had gained in the intervening years.Early in Perfect Blemish we meet prisoner “No 257863 H.M.P” who states “I’m here for a cause/ but found new causes”. This relates to Elfyn’s imprisonment in 1993 for refusing to pay a fine as part of the Welsh non-violent campaign for a New Language Act.She emerged indignant at prison conditions. In later years, travelling across Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Mexico and the USA, she found a universality where lack of empathy led to inhumanity. All is recorded, powerfully, in her poems.In Welsh ‘waiting’ has at “least three different meanings and depends on the exact kind of waiting involved”. There is a still-life moment in Mother Tongue when “the old language between mother and daughter” takes precedence over message or media massage. There is the welcomed moment when a “hotel receptionist’s smile” transforms tiredness. It evokes visions where the poet “climbed up again on the slippery slope. Towards the mouth/which opens and closes. Like the kiss of life.” Then there is the moment all real poets await when independent thought comes “declaring me free/ to launch sounds in the throat/ from the squeeze-box of the soul/ paroled at last.”.Elfyn releases her soul as song. As often with poets it is clearest when paying reverent but not deferential homage to another poet. In the case of hearing of the death of R.S.Thomas she recalls a time they had together in Barcelona. It opens “To wash the world new every morning, /that’s the poet’s work”. She remarks mischievously to the elder man “surely it’s right…that prickles grow// on the chin of a man who’s a thorn in our side? He “half smiled” and years later she “remembered what I wanted to say”. “Haven’t you, bit by bit ,/close shaved the nation within a hair’s breath,/scraped close to the vein till the skin gasped/and we felt the blade’s breath before the balm?/Two thing at odds, the balm and the blade,/like the men in you, one needling our minds, the other with a still steady hand on our souls, in the end.”.

Again in a new poem, Ten Words for Love and Longing, this stitching sorceress reveals another aspect of a singing soul. She writes “at the end of the day/ Cariad is the word/ that wakes us from sleeping”. “Cariad”, Welsh for Love, “ the knock on the heart’s door, the door’s opening.”, it is the impulse that makes her fury and her poems, understandable, welcome and necessary.

Hayden Murphy

EBRILL | April 2007

Er Dy Fod
Menna Elfyn yn chwarae 'da geiriau

Adolygiad Linda Edwards o Er Dy Fod, antholeg gan Menna Elfyn.
Gomer. £6.99.

Mae Menna Elfyn yn un o lenorion amlycaf y Gymru gyfoes - wedi cyhoeddi wyth casgliad o farddoniaeth yn ogystal â nofelau a dramâu.

Ymysg ei chyfrolau mae'r antholegau dwyieithog Cell Angel a Cusan Dyn Dall/ Blind Man's Kiss a'r gyfrol Perffaith Nam.

Mae hi hefyd wedi sgwennu cyfrol i blant Rana Rebel ac wedi golygu'r antholeg Eingl-Gymreig The Bloodaxe Book of Modern Welsh Poetry.

Caiff wahoddiadau cyson i ddarllen ei barddoniaeth dros y byd i gyd yn ogystal â phob rhan o Gymru.

Hi oedd Bardd Plant Cymru S4C 2002-2003.

Yn fam i ddau o blant, mae hi bellach yn byw yn Llandysul.

Ar dudalen flaen y gyfrol hon gwelir y geiriau:
Cerddi gan Menna Elfyn
I ddathlu dysgu iaith
Profiadau dysgwyr
A phrofiadau dysgwyr wrth ddysgu Cymraeg oedd y sbardun iddi fynd ati i greu'r gyfrol.

Meddai: "Fe sylweddoles i un diwrnod fod gen i fwy o ffrindiau sy'n ddysgwyr neu sydd ddim yn medru'r Gymraeg, nag sydd gen i o Gymry Cymraeg.

"Ac yn aml iawn mae ffrindiau'n gyrru e-byst ata i'n gofyn beth yw ystyr gair penodol....ac o hynny dechreues i feddwl am y pontio yna, y ddeialog honno sy'n mynd ymlaen rhwng rhywun sy'n siarad un iaith a rhywun sy'n siarad iaith arall."

Mae'r rhelyw o'r cerddi felly yn gerddi ysgafn a doniol wedi eu hysbrydoli gan ffrindiau sy'n dysgu'r iaith- er enghraifft mae'r gerdd Chutzpa wedi dod i fod ar ôl i ffrind ddweud wrthi:

"I want to be outrageous in Welsh."
ac eisiau dweud pethau mwy heriol na'r hyn a ddysgid iddi ar gwrs Wlpan fel "Dwi'n hoffi coffi".

Beth am Dwi'n hoffi Wisgi Gyda tecila A'i yfed ym Manila

Un arall wedyn yn trin a thrafod sawl ffordd sydd yna o ddweud 'Yes' a 'No' yn y Gymraeg ar ôl i ddysgwr yn Noc Penfro ofyn "How many ways do you need to say 'yes' and 'no' in Welsh?"

Un arall eto - Tyddyn wedi codi o'r ffaith na allai'r bardd Gillian Clarke ddweud 'Tyddyn' ac yn dweud yn hytrach 'Ty Dyn', a'r hwyl gododd o hynny.

Hwyl eto yn y gerdd Oergell wrth i ddysgwr ddweud ei fod yn cadw llyfrau yn yr 'oergell' yn lle 'llyfrgell'.

Nid gwneud hwyl
Ond nid gwneud hwyl am ben dysgwyr mae Menna ond, yn hytrach, uniaethu â hwy- fel y dywed ei hun:
"Dwi'n cael gwahoddiad i fynd i ymweld â sawl gwlad, naill ai i ddysgu neu i ddarllen fy marddoniaeth, ac yn aml yn canfod fy hun mewn gwlad dramor ble nad ydwi'n deall yr iaith, felly rwyf yn gallu uniaethu â phrofiadau dysgwyr."

Nid profiadau dysgwyr yw'r unig symbyliad yn y gyfrol chwaith gan fod hoffter Menna ei hun o drin geiriau yma hefyd fel y gwelir yn Geiriannu, Er Dy Fod, 38 Gair Am Gariad, ac mae'n gallu cyfleu'r hoffter hwnnw i'r darllenydd yn gelfydd o syml a'i sbarduno yntau i gael yr un hoffter.

Mae rhai cerddi hefyd yn ymdrin â materion mwy dwys, rhai am Gymru a thynged yr iaith. Hoffaf yn fawr ei cherdd i Gaerdydd:
Lle yw hwn, i'r lliaws o bob llais.

ac mae'r bwrlwm a'r miri yma i'r dim.

Hefyd, hoffais Rhad ac am Ddim, Cymro Amddifad, Tynged yr Iaith, Rhowch imi Wlad, a Gwybod y Treiglad heb Adnabod y Gair.

Y byd
Mae eraill o'r cerddi yn ymdrin â sefyllfa'r byd cyfoes- Pen yn ymdrin ag unbeniaid amlwg ac yn diweddu:
Boed ben mawr neu'n ben bach
Boed yn unben neu'n anniben;
Daw'r lli a daw penllanw.

Libanus, Y Pwll 2006, wedyn, wedi eu llunio yn anterth y brwydro yn haf 2006; a Golau yn Olauwedi dod i fod wrth feddwl am y byd yn cynhesu. Tair cerdd sy'n pigo cydwybod ac yn aros yn y cof.

Celfydd a syml
Beth bynnag fo 'r symbyliad tu ôl i'r cerddi maent i gyd wedi eu sgwennu'n gelfydd o syml, yn hawdd i'w deall, yn gafael yn y dychymyg, yn rhoi golwg newydd ar, ac yn dathlu iaith.

Fel y dywed Gwyneth Lewis:
"Mae ein dyled yn fawr i Menna Elfyn gan ei bod hi wrthi adnewyddu ein Cymraeg trwy ei defnyddio fel offeryn sy'n llwyr atebol i gymhlethdodau bywyd yr unfed ganrif ar hugain."

Ewch ati i ddarllen y gyfrol- fe ail fagwch gariad at eiriau, mi chwarddwch gyda rhai, cael eich pigo gan rai, a meddwl yn ddwys am eraill.

Fe fwynhewch y cyfan, ac fe erys rhai cwpledau yn y cof am byth.

[Darllen mwy | Read article]

‘PETHE’ LLENORION Y ‘PETHE’

Yn ystod yr Eisteddfod Genedlaethol yn Abertawe ym mis Awst eleni bwriedir cynnal arwerthiant o wrthrychau a roddwyd gan awduron Cymru i godi arian i helpu awdur ifanc o Simbabwe. Bydd y swm a godir yn ei alluogi i fynychu cwrs MA Ysgrifennu Creadigol, yng Ngholeg y Drindod yn ystod 2006-2007. Y mae’r awdur ifanc hwn (23 mlwydd oed), yn dalentog dros ben ac eisoes wedi llwyddo i gyhoeddi llyfr o storiau byrion yn ogystal ag ennill gwobrau rhyddiaith Arvon a’r Cyngor Prydeinig. Ond heb nawdd digonol, ni fydd hi’n bosib iddo deithio yma a dyna’r rheswm dros yr ‘apêl’ anarferol hwn.

Er mwyn codi arian felly, yr wyf wedi gofyn i wahanol awduron i roi rhywbeth nad ydynt hwy yn ei ystyried o werth materol ond y bydd eraill efallai yn ei ystyried yn ‘ drysor’ gwerth chweil . Eisoes yr wyf wedi derbyn rhoddion oddi wrth Gillian Clarke, Stevie Davies ac ymysg y ‘trysorau’ a dderbyniais y mae hen bibell gan Dic Jones ( ac englyn amdano yn y câs); het wellt Nigel Jenkins a brynodd ar daith i Khasia; darn o wallt Paul Henry mewn blwch pert ; dolennau llewys Grahame Davies, a llyfrau wedi eu harwyddo gan Gwyneth Lewis.

Byddwn yn ddiolchgar felly pe byddech yn barod i ystyried anfon ‘gwrthrych’ ataf – y math o beth na fyddwch yn hiraethu ar ei ôl! Os na allwch feddwl am drugareddau o’r fath, fe fyddai rhyw ddarn (newydd efallai), yn eich llawysgrifen ar gerdyn neu ar bapur cyffredin hyd yn oed, yn dderbyniol dros ben.

Cewch wybod yn fuan pryd y bydd yr arwerthiant yn cael ei gynnal; rwyf eisoes yn trafod y posibilrwydd o’i gynnal yn y Babell Lên ar brynhawn Sadwrn ola’r Eisteddfod am 3 o’r gloch. Cewch y manylion terfynol cyn bo hir a byddaf yn rhoi cyhoeddusrwydd i hyn, yn nes ymlaen .

Bydd yr awdur pan ddaw i Gymru yn cael y cyfle i ddarllen ei waith ar hyd a lled y wlad ac felly, gobeithiaf y bydd modd iddo ddiolch ichi yn bersonol bryd hynny am eich caredigrwydd.

Gan ddiolch ichi ymlaen llaw am ba ‘beth’ bynnag a ddaw i law.

MENNA ELFYN

[Cyfarwyddydd Ysgrifennu MA Coleg y Drindod]

12-28th August, 2006

Peppers Theatre 8.30pm

Ciaran Carson & Menna Elfyn

….Menna Elfyn is an inspirational presence in Welsh literature and language.

The Bookcase : a showcase of contemporary writing in Association with the British Council and Scottish Arts Council