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.
A propos de l’auteur
Robert Minhinnick is a poet, novelist and essayist. His many books include the essay collections Watching the Fire Eater, winner of Wales Book of the Year in 1993, and To Babel and Back, Wales Book of the Year in 2006. In 2004, his translations of Menna Elfyn’s poems were included in his anthology The Adulterer’s Tongue: Six Welsh Poets from Carcanet. His latest poetry collection is Diary of the Last Man (Carcanet, 2017).