Gwyneth Denver Davies , FLSW (born 1959), known professionally as Gwyneth Lewis, is a Welsh poet, who was the inaugural National Poet of Wales in 2005. She, along with Menna Elfyn and Grahame Davies, wrote the text that appears over the Wales Millennium Centre.
Biography Gwyneth Lewis was born into a Welsh-speaking family in Cardiff. Her father started teaching her English when her mother went into hospital to give birth to her sister.The poet Gwyneth Lewis on how she learned English in secret with her father |By genre |Guardian Unlimited Books Her mother was abusive.
Lewis attended Ysgol Gyfun Rhydfelen, a bilingual school near Pontypridd, and then studied at Girton College, Cambridge, where she was a member of Cymdeithas Y Mabinogi. She was awarded a double first in English literature and the Laurie Hart Prize for outstanding intellectual work. Lewis then studied creative writing at Columbia and Harvard, before receiving a D.Phil. in English from Balliol College, Oxford, for a thesis on 18th-century literary forgery featuring the work of Iolo Morganwg.CREW Welsh Writers Online: Gwyneth Lewis
Lewis was made a Harkness Fellow and worked as a freelance journalist in New York for three years. She then returned to Cardiff as a documentary producer and director at BBC Wales. She left the BBC in 2001 after receiving a £75,000 grant from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts to carry out research and sail to ports linked historically with the inhabitants of her native Cardiff.
She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999.
Lewis later wrote the words which appear over the Wales Millennium Centre, which opened in November 2004. The same words form the title of Karl Jenkins's cantata In These Stones Horizons Sing, which is partly set to lyrics by Gwyneth Lewis. In 2005 she was elected Honorary Fellow of Cardiff University. The same year she was made the first National Poet of Wales.Intute: Arts and Humanities – Full record details for Gwyneth Lewis : Wales' first national poetBBC NEWS |Wales |Mid Wales |'Poet for ever' urges laureate
Lewis was a judge for the 2011 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. On 6 August 2012, Gwyneth Lewis won Y Goron (the Crown) at the National Eisteddfod at Llandow for a collection of poems on the set title of Ynys (Island).
In 2013, Lewis was elected as a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.
Lewis was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2022 Birthday Honours for services to literature. She returned to Balliol College to serve as Artist in Residence in 2023 and again in 2024.
Music Lewis entered the world of music in partnership with Richard Chew. Redflight/ Barcud was her first libretto, commissioned and presented by Welsh National Opera with pupils from Ysgol Capel y Cynfab, Cynghordy and Ysgol Cil-y-cwm. The Most Beautiful Man from the Sea is an oratorio for 600 voices, with music by Chew and Orlando Gough. It was given its world première at the Wales Millennium Centre by the Chorus of Welsh National Opera and 500 amateur singers.
Personal life Married to Leighton, a former boatswain with the Merchant Navy, Lewis has had a well documented battle in the past with clinical depression and alcoholism.BBC NEWS |Health |Celebrity health – Gwyneth LewisTwo in a Boat: The True Story of a Marital Rite of Passage by Gwyneth Lewis Her personal battles inspired her first book, Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book on Depression and also a collection of poems, Keeping Mum – Voices from Therapy.
Having agreed to change their lifestyles for their own good, Lewis and her husband bought the small yacht Jameeleh, taught themselves to sail, and set out to cross the Ocean to Africa. The journey inspired her 2005 book Two in a Boat – The True Story of a Marital Rite of Passage.
Bibliography
Llwybrau bywyd – Urdd Gobaith Cymru, 1977 Ar y groesffordd – Urdd Gobaith Cymru, 1978 Sonedau Redsa a Cherddi Eraill – Gomer, 1990 Parables and Faxes – Bloodaxe, 1995 Cyfrif Un Ac Un yn Dri – Barddas, 1996 Zero Gravity – Bloodaxe, 1998. Inspired by an astronaut cousin's voyage to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. The BBC later based a documentary on the poetry.Gwyneth Lewis – Biography Y Llofrudd Iaith – Barddas, 2000: won the Welsh Arts Council Book of the Year Prize. Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book on Depression – Flamingo, 2002 Keeping Mum (republished in 2005 as Chaotic Angels) – Bloodaxe, 2003 Two In A Boat: A Marital Voyage – Fourth Estate, 2005. Recounts a voyage with her husband on a small boat from Cardiff to North Africa, during which her husband was diagnosed with cancer. A Hospital Odyssey – Bloodaxe, 2010 The Meat Tree – Seren, 2010 Sparrow Tree – Bloodaxe, 2011 Y Storm, 2012. Lewis's translation of Shakespeare's The Tempest)Y Storm The Book of Taliesin (translation and introductions with Rowan Williams; Penguin, 2019) Nightshade Mother: A Disentangling, a memoir – Calon, 2024
Prizes and awards Current list of prizes and awards:Gwyneth Lewis 1977 – Literary Medal at the Urdd Gobaith Cymru 1978 – Literary Medal at the Urdd Gobaith Cymru 1988 – Eric Gregory Award 1995 – Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize Parables and Faxes 1995 – Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) (shortlist) Parables and Faxes 1998 – Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) (shortlist) Zero Gravity 2000 – Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year Award Y Llofrudd Iaith 2001 – National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) Award
References
External links Gwyneth Lewis personal website Bio at ContemporaryWriters.com Gwyneth Lewis profile at BBC Wales Listen to Gwyneth Lewis reading her poetry – a British Library recording, 12 July 2010.