Ann Griffiths - Poetry

Poetry

Ann's poems are an expression of her fervent evangelical Christian faith, and reflect her incisive intellect and thorough scriptural knowledge. She is the most prominent female hymn-writer in Welsh. Her work is regarded as a highlight of Welsh literature, and her longest poem was described by the dramatist and literary critic, Saunders Lewis, as 'one of the majestic songs in the religious poetry of Europe'.

Her hymn Wele'n sefyll rhwng y myrtwydd is commonly sung in Wales to the tune Cwm Rhondda.

The service of enthronement of Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury in February 2003 included Archbishop Rowan's own translation of one of her hymns: "Yr Arglwydd Iesu" ("The Lord Jesus").

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Famous quotes containing the word poetry:

    I cannot say what poetry is; I know that our sufferings and our concentrated joy, our states of plunging far and dark and turning to come back to the world—so that the moment of intense turning seems still and universal—all are here, in a music like the music of our time, like the hero and like the anonymous forgotten; and there is an exchange here in which our lives are met, and created.
    Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)

    Poetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in words: the most primitive nations have poetry, but only quite well developed civilizations can produce good prose. So don’t think of poetry as a perverse and unnatural way of distorting ordinary prose statements: prose is a much less natural way of speaking than poetry is. If you listen to small children, and to the amount of chanting and singsong in their speech, you’ll see what I mean.
    Northrop Frye (1912–1991)

    Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it.... Of all things of thought, poetry is the closest to thought, and a poem is less a thing than any other work of art ...
    Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)