Pennod 27 – Llais Cymraes: Gwerful Mechain

It’s about time that we concentrate on literature by a Welsh woman. Since we have started discussing the period of the cywydd, we leap forward from the time of Dafydd ap Gwilym a century and more in order to consider the work of Gwerful Mechain, a female poet who lived and composed during the second half of the 15th century.
It is also a means of considering how Welsh literary ‘canon’s – like that influential volume, The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse – have ignored the work of female poets like Gwerful Mechain. We also note that Gwerful is remembered chiefly by some as an ‘indecent poet’ – an unfortunate stereotyping – because her work treats a range of themes, including religion. We look in some detail at her masterful cywydd describing the passion of Jesus. We have an opportunity to consider some very different poetry as well, work which discusses sex from a woman’s point of view and satirizes the love poetry of the male bards.