Gwerful Mechain Biography

Gwerful Mechain (fl. 1462-1500), who lived in Mechain in Powys, is perhaps the most famous female Welsh-language poet. Little is known of her life.

Her work, composed in the traditional strict metres, including cywyddau and englynion, is often a celebration of religion and sex, sometimes within the same poem. Probably the most famous part of her work today is her erotic poetry, especially Cywydd y Cedor ("Ode to the Pubic Hair"), a poem praising the vulva. It is a work in which she upbraids male poets for celebrating so many parts of a woman's body, but not the genitals. "Let songs about the quim circulate," she adjures her readers. As to the pubic hair: "Lovely bush, God save it."

Her year of birth has also been said to have been 1460.