Presteigne Festival: The Welsh Poets of the Great War

Nicholas Murray outside Norton Church,
Thursday 21 August

The Presteigne Festival is in full swing in the Welsh Marches this weekend and already there have been some excellent events.  I was very pleased to have been asked to talk on Thursday about the Welsh poets of the Great War and had a great stroke of luck when I asked if there was anyone in the audience who could read out Hedd Wyn's famous poem "War", compensating for my regrettable lack of Welsh.  In the audience was Wyn Hobson, an experienced public reciter of poetry and a fluent Welsh speaker.  He gave a wonderful rendition of this classic Welsh poem and I read Gillian Clarke's translation of it.  I am very grateful to Wyn and to the audience for their intelligent and interesting questions.

Rhyfel (War):

Bitter to live in times like these.
While God declines beyond the seas;
Instead, man, king or peasantry,
Raises his gross authority.

When he thinks God has gone away
Man takes up his sword to slay
His brother; we can hear death's roar.
It shadows the hovels of the poor.

Like the old songs they left behind,
We hung our harps in the willows again.
Ballads of boys blow on the wind,
Their blood is mingled with the rain.

Hedd Wyn [translated by Gillian Clarke]

Wyn Hobson