A Failed Recluse

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Menna Elfyn begins
Syntax! You're thinking of grammar, correctness, and I myself have liked to overturn syntax and be a bit of an anarchist on it and, you know, play around.

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Hannah Lowe
Welcome to The Glimpse. I'm your host, Hannah Lowe.

Menna Elfyn is an award-winning Welsh language poet and playwright who has published fifteen collections of poetry, novels for children, radio, stage, and television plays. Her latest collection, Parch, is a hybrid of Welsh and English poems. Her work has been translated into over twenty languages. Menna Elfyn is our guest today on The Glimpse.

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Hannah
Menna Elfyn’s poems are luminous, political, and deeply rooted in language and place. Writing in Welsh, her work carries the histories and urgencies of a living culture, alive to questions of identity, resistance, and belonging. There is both lyric beauty and quiet defiance in her voice, a way of holding the personal alongside the collective, the intimate alongside the national. Menna’s poems move with clarity and grace, yet they never turn away from the complexities of history, conflict, and the struggle to speak. These are poems that honour language, as inheritance, as an act, full of music, conviction, and care. I’m so glad to have her here on The Glimpse with us.

Menna Elfyn, welcome so much to series three of The Glimpse.

Menna
Thank you.

Hannah
I'm so delighted that you can be here, and I thought I would tell you a little story about how I know your work, which is from many, many years ago, when I came across a poem of yours in a Bloodaxe anthology. It was called “Double Bed.” And I remember there was a book that was accompanied by a DVD, and I watched it and heard and saw you reading. And I remember hearing you read the poem in Welsh, and I was just so beguiled by it, not speaking Welsh or understanding Welsh.

I think it was one of the first times I realized that you can listen to poetry and not know the language but still really relish and enjoy the beauty of the cadence and the music. And I've followed your work since then. And I wanted to begin with talking about writing in Welsh. You've written so many books. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about Welsh as the language of your imagination.

Menna
Well, yes, I do tend to say lots of things about why I write in Welsh. I must say, to start with, that although Welsh is the language of the heart and the imagination, my schooling was totally through the English language. Because it was the time of the 50s–60s, before the language was kind of recognized, and Welsh really was frowned upon in school.

I remember that one had to choose in the secondary school between Welsh and French because, of course, the English system thought both were foreign languages. Of course, it wasn't a foreign language to me or my friends, which is why we missed out on learning French.

But Welsh was my language at home. My father was a minister of religion, of a chapel, which was entirely in Welsh. And of course, everything around the chapel really was through the Welsh language, you know, plays, eisteddfodau, which means reciting and everything. Everything, really!

With my friends, we spoke in Welsh, but then in school, in class, we were expected to speak English. So Welsh was my kind of, it was kind of my comfort blanket, in a way. It was the language that I loved. But I also loved English, I should say that, that I remember sitting in a classroom and coming across, you know, Robert Frost for the first time and realizing that there was an English outside of the very confines of “Englishness.”

Hannah
Things are so different in terms of language now in Wales, and English no longer dominates in the way that it did. But I did mean to ask you, yeah, how did you feel about English during your upbringing?

Menna
Well, in school—I remember we moved because my father was a minister—we moved to a very Welsh part of Wales, in west Wales, and I remember my mother writing a note to the teacher saying that I'd been ill in Welsh. And then I was told, “Tell your mother not to write in that language again.” And I never told her, because I knew she would have complied and given in. And so it was a battle, you know, it was battled right up during the 70s even.

And now, of course, it is kind of equal status with the English language, and a lot of the writers, Welsh-language writers, also are producing books in English. So, I mean, the bilingualism has, in a way, enhanced their ability to write in Welsh and in English.

And that's why my last book—my latest, shall I say, not last, I hope—my latest book, Parch, is in English, entirely in English. And it's taken me decades to be able to feel comfortable in doing that, because I've always depended on other people to translate my work. But somehow it's been exciting. Perhaps it's my age and my seventies, feeling a sense of excitement in writing in English for the first time.

Hannah
Yeah, I've been reading that book today, in fact, and we'll come back and talk about that—you know, what it's like to finally write poems in English, and also some of the self-translation that you've been doing. But because, like, the theme of the poem that you're going to read today is so centered around language, perhaps we could hear that now. I think you're going to read it in Welsh first and then in English. Is that right?

Menna
Yeah, that's fine, yes. And I, the title of the poem is “Bloedd…” in one Bloodaxe book, and then it's “Caned Pobl Y Byd” now in the new three-language book.

Bloedd i bobloedd byd
By Menna Elfyn

A sylwoch mor ddiamser
yw dyn wrth ddod at iaith newydd?
Bydd, fe fydd yn baglu dros gytseiniaid,
yn gohirio llafariaid,
yn gwisgo holl arfogaeth ei ddyhead
am fuddugoliaeth dros fynegiant.
A bydd, fe fydd ei dafod
fel baban ar ei ben ôl.
Felly, bydded i bob un o genhedloedd byd
ddysgu iaith esgymun ei gymydog.
Ie, cropian a chwrian mewn corneli,
colli cwsg wrth ei thrwsglo;
cans fel hyn y daw dileu yr amserau.
Ni ddaw’r gorffennol yn rhwydd ar dafod.
Erys iaith heddiw. Bydd yn ddeiseb hedd–
gan dynnu i lawr yr holl ferfau pigog;
ni fydd yr amherffaith mor berffaith
â phan nad yw.
A bydd agen, hollt a rhwyg
yn cael eu cyfannu’n y geg agored.
Pob newydd ddysgwr â chof
am gyweirio cystrawennau,
‘cyfod o’i wely, unioni llef.
Ni fydd amser i ledu llid,
cans bydd llwythau wedi eu llethu
â chyfoeth yr holl gerrig arloesi.
A thrwy’r babanod yn Babel bydd iau
wedi ei chodi a’r Uniaith yn iachau
wrth ymryddhau, rhyddhau wrth hau.


And now the English, but I want to note that the translation is by Joseph Clancy, a remarkable person. He died in 2017. He translated Dafydd ap Gwilym, a classical medieval poet, and fell in love with Wales and retired to Wales after leaving his post. He was Professor Emeritus of Marymount Manhattan College in English and theater studies and loved to translate and translated a lot of my work. And it was just a joy to receive his translation. So this is his translation.


Let the world’s people shout. Let the world’s people sing.
By Menna Elfyn (translated by Joseph Clancy)

Have you noticed how time-free a person is
When approaching a new language?
Yes, you stumble over consonants,
Postpone vowels,
Encumbered with all the armour of your longing
For the conquest of expression.
And yes, your tongue is like
A baby bumping along on its bottom.

Well then, let each of the world’s peoples learn
The excommunicated language of its neighbour,
Yes, creep and crouch in corners,
Lose sleep in messing it up,
Since this is how tenses will be deleted
The past will not come fluently on the tongue.
The language of today will stay. It will sue for peace,
Pull down all the barbed-wire verbs,
The imperfect will never be so perfect
As when it ceases to exist.

And cleft, split and rupture will be
Made whole in the open mouth.
Each new learner will have the memory
Of correcting constructions,
Picking up one’s bed, rectifying speech.

There will be no time for spreading hatred,
Since the tribes will be overcome
By the riches of all the founding stones—

And through the babies in Babel
A yoke will be raised, a United Languages heal
In freeing oneself, freeing in sowing the seed.

From Perfect Blemish: New & Selected Poems 1995-2007 / Perffaith Nam: Dau Ddetholiad & Cherddi Newydd 1995-2007 (Bloodaxe Books, 2007).

Hannah
Thank you so much for reading both in the Welsh and the English. I was interested in what you just said about Joseph Clancy's translation. I was reading about him earlier and his love of the Welsh language, and I think you just said “it was a joy to receive his translation.” And it made me think about how the art of translation, the idea that it is an art form, and that each person or poet that translated a poem of yours might do it in a different way. So is it always a surprise to receive a translation of one of your own poems?

Menna
Oh, yes! Well, there was a time when I had about six translators. Joseph Clancy was one, and Tony Conran, those are the two. I had an array. And in fact, Joseph Clancy once said after a reading, and I was reading somebody else's translation, he said, “Oh, I would have done it differently. But why do you give all the sexy poems to the women? (They laugh.) I want to have a go.”

And I tended at that time to give political—sort of light political poems—to Nigel Jenkins or Tony Conran, and Gillian Clarke would have womanist poems, you know. And perhaps that was an incorrect way of dealing with things, but I just loved the friendship. And we argued a lot, Tony Conran and I, and at that time there was no, you know, there's no emails. I would write to him and post it and then await his tirade against, “No, no, no, no, I want this,” and then in the end, he would always say, “Well, tell me where to get off. You know, it's your poem.” So.

Hannah
It's really fascinating, because the idea that translation then, well, you just mentioned kind of arguing, but it also sounds like it's a deep process of collaboration…

Menna
Oh yes.

Hannah
…where, as you said, you enter into a kind of community of people that you've been working with.

Menna
Yes, you know, for example, Gillian Clarke. At the end of the last couple of poems, a couple of years ago, I said to her, she would say, “but I've only changed a few words, and you still attributed to me,” but I felt they deserved to be recognized, and translation deserved to be seen as an art form. So I do believe in translators, although Yevtushenko said something about, “if translation is a relationship, I want to be single.” (They laugh.) And I don't want to be single. I like to be, you know, I like to be loose.

Hannah
Yeah, so funny. The poem itself, “Let the World's People Shout.” It seems, it feels to me like a real—not a call to arms, but a call to action. It's an entreaty poem for people to embrace each other's languages and to embrace translation as well.

I really loved that the opening of this poem, the question, “Have you noticed how time-free a person is / When approaching a new language?” I felt you were saying something both about how when you learn a new language, you know, tense immediately presents a challenge, so you might just be able to communicate in one tense, but also that there was a freedom in learning a new language and moving away from perhaps your mother tongue. Have I got that right, that reading?

Menna
Yes, yes. In a way, you have to learn to be, in a way, dumb again. You have to learn to be without language, learning a new language, almost. But it gives a sense of… you need humility, to be able to take a back seat and say, you know, “I can't, I can't express myself.” And we are so used to thinking as writers, that we are so articulate, you know, that we have a word for everything. And then when you approach a new language you become that baby, babbling but not being able to speak properly. And I was thinking, if every country learned the language of their neighbor, then perhaps there could be more unity, more understanding. So I think poetry is a way of trying to build bridges, and that bridge—through language and through translation—is an important one.

Hannah
Yeah, and it's certainly there. That idea in the poem from the lines, “The language of today will stay. It will sue for peace, / pull down all the barbed-wire verbs, / The imperfect will never be so perfect / As when it ceases to exist.”

I loved those lines, thinking about the things you're saying about how conflict is often articulated through language—opposition, difficulty, war, et cetera—and that there's an idea that language could, in some way… learning each other's language, there'd be no time for spreading hatred.

Menna
Yeah, yeah. Because people would be able to sort of understand their neighbor, you know, the neighboring country, as it were, yeah.

Hannah
And therefore maybe recognize some kind of common humanity.

Menna
Yes, a common, common ground through language.

Hannah
And this book, certainly the book that the poem comes from, Let the World’s People Sing, which is comprised of both the poems in Welsh and then with English and Arabic translations… It makes me think that your poems, I don't think that, instability isn't the right word, but I was thinking about my own poems, like, once I write them and they're, you know, I write in English, and, you know, you draft them, and you draft them, and then they're finished. And that's kind of it. It's a bit like the gospel version, although, of course, I've gone back and changed poems. And also sometimes I've published a poem and then wanted to change it afterwards. But your poem, because of this translation issue—but also they seemed sort of be a little less fixed in meaning, I don't know if I've got that right—just the idea of translation means there's a kind of instability to them, which is nice.

Menna
Yes! And sometimes things that become errors become a gift. Because my Chinese book title, the title they chose, was a poem I wrote about a place in Wales called [Mynydd] Epynt, which was taken over by the Army during the Second World War as a place for, you know, practicing war.

And of course, when I went out to Hong Kong to launch the book, 15 years ago, the title of the book was A Door in Egypt. And I thought, “Oh, well okay.” So, sometimes mistakes become something else. And I think sometimes that happens with translation, which is a little add-on, in a way.

Hannah
It makes me think about just the nature of slippages, you know, in language and the different meanings of words. And I was just thinking, when you pronounce the title of your new collection with Bloodaxe, which I've been reading all day as Parch, but you pronounce it as… can you just say it again?

Menna
Parch [with “ch” pronounced as a uvular fricative].

Hannah
Parch.

Menna
Parch. Yeah, parch.

Hannah
I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about that word, which I know Dylan Thomas also used, but it has a different meaning.

Menna
Yes. Well, in Welsh and in Wales, “reverence” in English, it's the Rev, reverend, or vicar, whatever. But in Welsh, it's “parch.” So it's “respect.” The meaning of the word is “respect” as well as “reverence.” And it seemed to be a kind of title for everything. In the book, of course, there's a poem about “parch [English]” as much as “parch [Welsh]” in one poem. But we are parched for respect in this world, and we are parched of so much decency and respect.

Hannah
That probably leads us nicely into a break, as we're going to talk about R. S. Thomas afterwards, who is also a preacher. So join us back in a moment for the continuation of the conversation with Menna Elfyn on The Glimpse.

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Hannah
Welcome back to The Glimpse. Today I'm talking to Menna Elfyn, and, Menna, I'd love to ask you to read the poem that you've chosen as a poem that inspires you, which is a poem by R. S. Thomas.

Menna
Well, this is an interesting poem, because it appears in his final collection. After his death, Professor M. Wynn Thomas was tasked in bringing out his final collection, because they were finding poems in various books all over the place, and this was one of them. And there was a file, and the file by R. S. was called “Residues,” and that's the title of his final collection. And also it's a penultimate poem in the collection, which is interesting as well. So I'll just read it as it is.

“Don’t Ask Me”
By R. S. Thomas

Don’t ask me;
I have no recipe
for a poem. You
know the language,

know where prose ends
and poetry begins.
There should be no
introit into a poem.

The listener should come
to and realise
verse has been going on
for some time. Let

there be no coughing,
no sighing. Poetry
is a spell woven
by consonants and vowels

in the absence of logic.
Ask no rhyme
of a poem, only
that it keep faith

with life’s rhythm.
Language will trick
you if it can.
Syntax is words’

way of shackling
the spirit. Poetry is that
which arrives at the intellect
by way of the heart.

From Collected Later Poems 1988-2000 (Bloodaxe Books, 2004)

Hannah
Thank you so much. So tell us, Menna, why this poem inspires you, why you've chosen to read it today, and perhaps you might want to tell us a little bit about R. S. Thomas, for those listening that may not be familiar.

Menna
Well, I'd say that bit about R. S. to start with—because he became a kind of friend, as much as a friend as you could be to R. S., who was quite a solitary person, a bit like myself, really. I was—somebody said in a launch recently that I was—“a failed recluse.” (Hannah laughs.) Well, I think R. S. had more of the recluse than me. But he was a very special person in the sense that he learned Welsh when he was an adult and felt really annoyed that he had not been given the Welsh language with his parents. And he was, of course, a vicar and a parch, in many ways. But he was also so much more than that, and widely regarded, I think, as one of the great poets of the 20th century. And he wrote about nature. He was against technology.

I'm lucky that I'm the only living poet he has ever translated. Although he berated me for translating my poetry into English, he did, in fact, translate two of them.

He was always searching for God, and he would often make jokes about waiting. He's waiting for birds. He would wait for birds for four hours. He would wait for God for that long. Or he'd say things like, “A rare bird is only rare if you're not there,” rather like that. But he was always… he had humor, but it was very… he was also, could be quite critical of the Welsh actually, because I think the last time we were together at a protest against a bunker, nuclear bunker being set up in west Wales, and he and I were marching, and then we had to lie on the ground, pretend we were dead. So I wrote a poem about that, and he moans that, you know, “the Welsh, where are they,” that they weren't coming out to protest, and he'd driven all the way from north Wales down to west Wales, and insisted on driving back straight after the protest.

Hannah
His poems are very beautiful, and they strike me as being… there's a kind of directness to them, a simplicity, almost, a starkness.

Menna
Yes.

Hannah
They're not, they're not flowery in any way.

Menna
No, no.

Hannah
And yet there is a sense of wonder in them, which I think is there in this poem. “Don't Ask Me” when he talks about “poetry / is a spell woven / by consonants and vowels // in the absence of logic,” some sort of belief in the mystical value of poetry.

Menna
Yes. There was a mystery, wasn't there? I mean, he asks questions. And I think all poetry is about asking questions which you can't really answer, and he's responding also to that metaphysical question, you know, full of contradictions, also about the way people always want to know, “How would you write?”

It's a typical R. S. poem of being flippant in one way and being dismissive: “Don't Ask Me.” I remember him at a reading saying, “What do they teach in school these days?”, after somebody had asked a bit of a silly question, “What do they teach in school these days?” So he could be quite dismissive of all the paraphernalia of poetry, I suppose. And I think we can kind of sympathize with that. You know, we've been there, people wanting to know “how do you write,” you know, “how do you know it's a poem after you finish?” And that kind of thing, and, and you get it here, don't you? When he goes through the list. “I don't have a recipe,” he says, so simple language, but so profound in a way.

Hannah
Yes, there’s definitely an implied addressee in the poem. I was thinking that, in comparison to your poem, “Let the World’s People Shout,” which is so kind of generous and, yes, a call to action, “Don't Ask Me”—it's a little bit, a little bit grumpy, I was thinking.

Menna
He could be very grumpy, waspish. (Hannah laughs.)

Hannah
It's a bit of a grumpy poem (they laugh), but it's also full of sort of the magic and the mystery. I think the poem changes, you know, as you read it, but there's certainly the opening, it’s a bit of a, yeah, “I don’t want to talk about this.”

Menna
I think it's interesting, I think it’s interesting what you said, that it changes, his tone, and he brings in a little humor: “no coughing,” you know, “no sighing,” you know. He's kind of gently being aware of his own, you know.

Hannah
I wondered if those were also kind of references to churchgoing, you know, no coughing inside, in the pews. And he uses that word. I was really intrigued by the word “introit” in this poem, “There should be no / introit into a poem.” And I didn't know that word. I looked it up, actually, and it says, you know, it's a psalm or a song.

Menna
Yes, like introit. Yeah, again, it's a church or a…

Hannah
A church term.

Menna
Yeah, where you sing something before the service begins. We have it in our chapel here, whereby we recite, half-singing almost. So that word, it fits in somehow. Again, he's kind of bringing his spiritual life into the poem.

Hannah
And it also reminds me of that bit of editing advice that you always get, you know, in a poetry workshop, when someone tells you to cut off the beginning of your poem. I think it was… there's both the spiritual resonances, but I think there's also something about when does the poem begin, which is a question I think I've, you know, asked myself and asked other people a thousand times. But there's definitely, I think, contradiction is, I think you said the contradictions in this poem, the idea there's no introduction, but then in the next stanza, “The listener should come / to and realise / verse has been going on / for some time.” I think that's absolutely lovely.

Menna
Yeah. Oh, it is, and it's so simple and yet so profound, and I love the fact, you know, “Ask no rhyme / of a poem, only / that it keep faith // with life's rhythm.” Again, rhythm is, you know, far outweighs any, any rhyme. And of course, in Welsh, rhyme and poetry is very… you've heard of strict meter, probably, in Welsh. People are obsessive about writing in a particular way. But you know, that's why I love this poem, because it's also so unlike Welsh language poetry in many ways.

And I love the words “Syntax is words’ // way of shackling / the spirit.” You know, because syntax, you're thinking of grammar, correctness, and I myself like to overturn syntax and be a bit of an anarchist on it, and, you know, play around.

Hannah
Yeah, I think when he says that, he's talking about sort of strict syntax, or formal grammar…

Menna
Yes, yes.

Hannah
…is a “way of shackling / the spirit.” Because I know that when I'm looking at my own poems, or in teaching, I'm often saying to students, you know, like, “blow up the syntax, do something, do something different, to surprise.”

Menna
Overturn! It's a kind of… you have the right to revolutionize language with poetry. You can't do it so well with prose. But, yeah, I think it's lovely.

Hannah
It's a really beautiful poem, this. I'm glad that you shared it today. And it reminded me of R. S. Thomas, whose work I knew a little bit about, but have enjoyed rereading. And also it's amazing that you are sort of a living link to R. S. Thomas through his translations of your poems, even if they were done with a sense of chastisement at the same time. (They laugh.) So I wanted to know what you're working on, or what you're thinking about?

Menna
I am putting together… all my Welsh language books are out of print, and in August this year, I will be celebrating—or they wish to celebrate me—having been publishing for 50 years.

Hannah
Wow.

Menna
I published my first book in 1976.

So I have to choose, and I have 180 pages to put work that is from 1976 to 2022 in a way, because that book is still in print. So yes, what to choose, what to leave out, what to how to put it together. It's a kind of another problem, I suppose. But I've always felt that writing is a kind of vocation. It's a way of living and breathing. You know, I write every day, a page-a-day diary since 1968, and also I write a column for the national newspaper of Wales every fortnight, and I do plays and other stuff. But with poetry, it's you, really, and a good editor, and a good publisher. But yeah.

Hannah
It allows you to be, yeah, that little bit reclusive.

Menna
Yes, exactly.

Hannah
If that's what you're seeking. It's a whole life lived in, in poetry. It's really been my honor to talk to you, Menna. I wanted to meet you and speak for many years. So thanks so much.

Menna
It's been lovely. And I've loved, you know, your work, and I think oh, The Kids, it's just, just marvelous.

Hannah
Thanks so much, Menna Elfyn, thank you for joining us on The Glimpse.

Menna
Diolch yn fawr. Thank you.

Hannah
Thanks for joining us today. I’m your host, Hannah Lowe.

Menna’s poem "Let the World's People Sing" is most recently from Let the World’s People Sing, a collection published in 2025, and was used with permission from Bloodaxe Books. [Ed. note: Caned Pobl Y Byd | Let the World’s People Sing (The Hmm Foundation, 2025) is a Welsh-Arabic-English edition with Arabic translations by Rawan Sukkar and Lara Matta. "Let the World's People Sing" was first published in Perfect Blemish: New & Selected Poems 1995-2007 / Perffaith Nam: Dau Ddetholiad & Cherddi Newydd 1995-2007 (Bloodaxe Books, 2007).]

The R. S. Thomas poem "Don't Ask Me" appears in Collected Later Poems 1988–2000 published in 2004 and was used with permission from Bloodaxe Books.

Coming up next week, Joelle Taylor talks about her efforts to preserve butch history, the politics of prize culture, and how spoken word was her gateway into the world of poetry.

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