Ifor ap Glyn

Ifor ap Glyn Poems

Ifor ap Glyn Biography

Born in 1961, Ifor ap Glyn is a poet, playwright, historian, producer and current national poet of Wales. He has published four volumes of poetry and has contributed to many anthologies. An active performer, he has taken part on many poetry tours including Cicio’r Ciwcymbars, Dal Clêr, Lliwiau Rhyddid, and Dal Tafod. He is also a member of the Caernarfon team which has twice won the annual poetry knockout competition on BBC Radio Cymru, Talwrn y Beirdd. He has represented Wales twice at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in the USA and has won the Crown at the National Eisteddfod twice, in 1999 and 2013. He was the Children’s Laureate for Wales in 2008-9. His first novel, Tra Bo Dau, was published by Gwasg Carreg Gwalch in 2016. He is based in Caernarfon, north Wales.)

The Best Poem Of Ifor ap Glyn

Quarry Supper

The archaeology of eating's a strange thing;
our lunching in London
was fishfinger modern
like the plates on the placemats
but by just clearing the topsoil,
exposing the rock, and firing a fissure
through the layers of history,
we found we were still working
the same old "bargen"...
at mealtimes at least

Mam would summon us
for our suburban fare at five,
for that was expected of the wife
of a man for whom the rock was his life,

and some habits are as resilient
as those purple "dychis" and "ladis"
that were ferried formerly from Dinorwig

(although our family
had long since been driven
from their famine kitchen "bargen"
a and decamped to London
where stones of another ilk
could be split like silk...)

* * * * *
The archaeology of eating's a strange thing;
It's five once more, in Caernarfon this time,
and the spoons keenly sing
as they scrape the bowls...
"Hey!" I say, "you're not in the quarry now!"

-my mother's words in the London of my youth,
my grandmother's words in Llanrwst before that,
and my great grandmother's words
in the Fachwen of yore
relic-like words that have outlasted
my forefathers who once blasted
hewn rock from rough rock
and in the shed,
dressed slate into bread...

* * * * *
The archaeology of eating's
a strange thing...
tonight in London
though knowing nothing of dirt clearing
and tramway - making,
I still cleave my ideas,
and dress them on my imagination's edge,
because part of me
is still purple slate at heart
even tonight with my middle class haircut
and my Beaujolais teeth;

as I scratch new customs on an old slate
I know full well
I'm just a spit-and-hanky-wipe
away from a much harder kind of life;

seventy years
and two hundred miles down the line,
the sound of a closed quarry's hooter
still calls us to table to dine

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