Bondo

Bondois Menna Elfyn's fifth poetry book from Bloodaxe. The title meanseavesin Welsh, referring to poems about getting close to language as sanctuary. Other poems were written episodically over a number of years. These meditative poems began simply as a personal engagement with the grief of Aberfan, expressing solidarity with a nations wound.Bondois also the voice which echoes the role of the Welsh bard as remembrancer.Like her previous Bloodaxe titles,Bondois a dual-language Welsh-English edition. Again, the facing English translations are by leading Welsh poets, in this case Elin ap Hywel, Gillian Clarke, Damian Walford Davies and Robert Minhinnick.Menna Elfyn is the best-known, most travelled and most translated of all Welsh-language poets. The extraordinary international range of her subjects, breathtaking inventiveness and generosity of vision place her among Europes leading poets.Her 2007 Bloodaxe Books retrospectivePerfect Blemish: New & Selected Poems / Perffaith Nam: Dau Ddetholiad & Cherddi Newydd 1995-2007was followed by two further Welsh-English collections,Murmur(2012), a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation; andBondo(2017). Her hybrid sixth poetry book from Bloodaxe,Parch(2025), combines translations and self-translations with poetry written direct into English for the first time.