One of the most accomplished poets of his generation, Iwan Llwyd explored all the media through which he might find a wider audience for his poetry, including radio and television, as well as public readings and musical performances in his native Wales and the Americas. He was particularly fond of marrying word and image, often in collaboration with artists such as Iwan Bala, Catrin Williams and Anthony Evans, the photographers Marian Delyth and Aled Rhys Hughes, and the television producer Michael Bayley Hughes, for whose programmes he wrote poems that were an integral part of the script. He was tired of television that was "merely wallpaper" and wanted to reclaim it as a medium for the creative writer.
One of his books, Rhyw Deid yn Dod Miwn ("A tide coming in", 2008), celebrates the coast of Wales, not the usual tourist spots, but those where man intrudes on the natural scene. All his books were meant to have visual appeal and to show how verse and illustrations can complement one another, and this one, with stunning photographs by Aled Rhys Hughes, is among the most elegant.
At his happiest in troubadour mode, with his trademark trilby and toting his guitar, he wandered all over Europe and ventured into some pretty out-of-the-way places in South America. The skyscrapers and bright lights of the Big Apple are featured in his book Hanner Cant ("Fifty", 2007), which has photographs by Marian Delyth, but the west coasts of Wales and Ireland are featured too, for he was as much a poet of place as one who sang about the people he loved.
Born in the village of Carno, Montgomeryshire in 1957, Iwan Lloyd Williams – like many creative people in Wales he dropped his anglicised surnames – was a son of the manse. He grew up in the Conwy Valley and in Bangor, later making his home in nearby Tal-y-bont; he began writing verse while at Friars School, Bangor. After taking a degree in Welsh at Aberystwyth, and in due course a master's for a thesis on the bardic patrons of north-west Wales, he worked with a theatre company and in public relations before resolving to live by his pen, which he did intermittently for the rest of his life.
He made his debut with Sonedau Nos Sadwrn ("Saturday night sonnets", 1981); the sonnet form, together with the rhyming couplets he learned from T H Parry-Williams, was a favourite of his and he returned to it in what was to be his last collection, Sonedau Pnawn Sul ("Sunday afternoon sonnets", 2009). There was nothing obscure in his work, and some of his poems have the plangent quality of folk song.
The most contemporary and freewheeling are to be found in Dan Anesthetig ("Under anaesthetic", 1987) and Dan Ddylanwad ("Under an influence", 1997), the latter volume the fruit of commissions from S4C, in which the full blast of the American experience is to be felt. Here are poems about Bob Dylan, Ellis Island, Woodstock, the Harley Davidson, Hiawatha, Memphis, Route 66, Native Americans, and Haight Ashbury. The collection, with artwork by Anthony Evans, was named Welsh Book of the Year in 1997.
The wide range of which he was capable is evident in Be 'di Blwyddyn rhwng Ffrindia? ("What's a year between friends?", 2003), which brings together a substantial collection of 117 poems written between 1990 and 1999. The image of the open road and a world without boundaries, particularly in the arts, is central in these richly ironic poems.
Iwan Llwyd also played bass guitar in various bands, alongside other poets and musicians such as Myrddin ap Dafydd, Steve Eaves, Ifor ap Glyn, Twm Morys, Meirion MacIntyre Huws and Geraint Løvgreen, thus reviving the ancient Welsh tradition of declaiming verse to musical accompaniment. The tour he made with Twm Morys (the son of travel-writer Jan Morris) in South America during the autumn of 1998, which produced the poems in Eldorado (1999), is the very stuff of legend among the poets of Wales.
He often visited schools, delighting pupils with his infectious love of the Welsh language and teaching them the rudiments of cynghanedd, the system of metrical prosody which has been the pride of Welsh poets down the ages. With Myrddin ap Dafydd he edited Mae'*Gêm o Ddau Fileniwm ("It's a game of two millennia", 2002), a handbook for use in schools about the Welsh literary tradition, in which 10 contemporary poets introduce their own work and discuss the influences on it. In May 2006 he read at the United Nations building in New York as part of the People's Poetry Gathering.
The title Prifardd ("Chief poet") became his in 1990, after he had won the Crown at the National Eisteddfod with a collection of poems entitled Gwreichion ("Sparks"). He was to have been one of the competition's three adjudicators at this year's festival, which is to be held at Ebbw Vale shortly, where his poetry will no doubt be given its full meed of praise.
Iwan Lloyd Williams (Iwan Llwyd), poet: born Carno, Montgomeryshire 15 November 1957; married 1985 Nia Lloyd (one daughter); died Bangor, Gwynedd 28 May 2010.
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