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Learning to Love Dafydd

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21/10/2012

BBC Radio 4 - Learning to Love Dafydd

Gwyneth Lewis, the first Welsh Poet Laureate, goes in search of the Welsh language Chaucer

Gwyneth Lewis, the first Welsh Poet Laureate, has never liked the great Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym. She tries to come to terms with her heritage and writes her own poems to him.

Gwyneth Lewis, the first Welsh Poet Laureate whose giant words light up the front of the Wales Millennium Centre, has never been able to come to terms with the great Welsh language poet Dafydd ap Gwilym.

He's the Welsh equivalent of Chaucer or Shakespeare and has been hugely influential on contemporary Welsh poetry, from Dylan Thomas to the bardic competitions on Radio Cymru. But Gwyneth's teenage self found him sexist and laddish and a representative of a tradition she rebelled against. 

As a Welsh language poet Gwyneth feels she can't avoid Dafydd any longer and needs to face him head on. She visits the ruined abbey at Strata Florida in West Wales where he worked and was buried, meets songwriter and former lead singer of Catatonia Cerys Matthews and Welsh poet and language activist Menna Elfyn, and goes in search of him in the poetry competitions at the National Eisteddfod of Wales. Actor Steffan Rhodri brings Dafydd ap Gwilym's poetry to life.

Gwyneth tries to come to terms with her heritage and learn to love Dafydd - and see if she can write a poem directly to him.


Producer: Allegra McIlroy.

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