Additional information
by Menna Elfyn (Author)
Bondo is Menna Elfyn's fifth poetry book from Bloodaxe. The 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.
Like her previous Bloodaxe titles, Bondo is a dual-language 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.
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. Her 2007 Bloodaxe Books retrospective Perfect Blemish: New & Selected Poems / Perffaith Nam: Dau Ddetholiad & Cherddi Newydd 1995-2007 was followed by two further Welsh-English collections, Murmur (2012), a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation; and Bondo (2017). Her hybrid sixth poetry book from Bloodaxe, Parch (2025), combines translations and self-translations with poetry written direct into English for the first time.
Author Biography
Menna Elfyn is one of the foremost Welsh-language writers. As well as being an award-winning poet, she has published plays, libretti and children's novels, and co-edited The Bloodaxe Book of Modern Welsh Poetry (2003) with John Rowlands.
Her poetry books include two dual-language selections, Eucalyptus: Detholiad o Gerddi / Selected Poems 1978-1994 (Gomer Press, 1995), and Perfect Blemish: New & Selected Poems / Perffaith Nam: Dau Ddetholiad & Cherddi Newydd 1995-2007 (Bloodaxe Books, 2007), a Welsh-only selection Merch Perygl: Cerddi 1976-2011 (Gomer Press, 2011), and two later dual-language collections from Bloodaxe, Murmur (2012), a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation, and Bondo (2017). Parch (2025) is Menna Elfyn's sixth poetry book from Bloodaxe. For the first time in this collection, she has written many of the poems direct into English, and translated some of them herself.
Optimist Absoliwt: Cofiant Eluned Phillips, her biography of the poet Eluned Phillips, was published (in Welsh) in 2016, and Cwsg: am dro yn ôl, a book about sleep illustrated by Sarah Williams, in 2019, both from Gomer Press. Her most recent Welsh language collection, Tosturi (Mercy), with illustrations by Meinir Mathias (Cyhoeddiadau Barddas, 2022), was shortlisted for the 2023 Welsh-language Wales Book of the Year Poetry Award.
When not travelling the world for readings and residencies, she lives in Carmarthen. She was Wales's National Children's Laureate in 2002, and was made President of Wales PEN Cymru in 2014. She was, until 2016, Creative Director in the School of Cultural Studies at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David; she is also Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing. She won a Cholmondeley Award in 2022, a prize which recognises a poet's body of work.
