Euros Bowen
Euros Bowen (12 September 1904 – 2 April 1988) was a Welsh language poet.
Born in Treorchy, and a brother of the poet Geraint Bowen, he was educated in the Presbyterian College, Carmarthen, and later at the University of Wales (initially at University College, Aberystwyth before transferring to University College, Swansea]]), Mansfield College, Oxford and St Catherine's College, Oxford. Although initially he intended to become a Nonconformist minister, he converted to Anglicanism as a student and was ordained as a priest of the Church in Wales, serving from 1934-38 as curate of Wrexham, then as rector of Llanuwchllyn with Llangywer on the shores of Lake Bala in Merionethshire from which parishes he retired in 1973.[1] He spent the remainder of his life in Wrexham.
Euros Bowen began writing poetry in earnest in 1947 during the heavy winter which left him snowbound in his rectory. In many ways a "late starter", for he did not publish his first volume of poetry until he was in his early 50s, he at once became notable for the way in which he developed the traditional metres of Welsh poetry. Compared by some to T. Gwynn Jones who was also seen as a modernizer of Welsh prosody,[2] Bowen's early work (collected in "Cerddi" - Poems - 1957) is dense with layered imagery, and whilst later on he moved into free verse it is actually difficult to chart his development in a linear way.[3] Although the work in his first book is rich with form and form experiment, his second; "Cerddi Rhydd" (Free Verses, published 1961) dispenses with all formal devices and is made up of prose proems in the manner ofRimbaud. Not only was Bowen responsible for bringing into Welsh poetry influences from mainland Europe which effectively revolutionized the medium - in this he is in many ways to Welsh literature what TS Eliot and Ezra Pound were to English, he is also of considerable interest in British poetry because his work with prose poems anticipates that of Geoffrey Hill (in "Mercian Hymns" by a clear decade.[4] Although there are some skeins in his work which are reminiscent of Symbolism (he translated a selection of French Symbolist poets into Welsh) and of a kind of Imagism, Bowen always thought of himself as a Sacramentalist and believed the images in his poems communicated as signs. Comparable in stature to his fellow priest-poet RS Thomas, Bowen's tone is, however considerably more celebratory, and the transformations in nature as he sees them often appear as communicating a personal revelation.
In the year after he retired, Bowen published a selection of his poems which included not only the Welsh-language originals but parallel English versions in verse[5] His poems have also been translated by R. Gerallt Jones and the American Joseph P. Clancy among others.[6][7]
Euros Bowen won the bardic Crown at the National Eisteddfod of Wales in 1948 for O'r Dwyrain and again in 1950 for Difodiant.[8]
He edited the literary journal, Y Fflam, 1946-1952.[9]
Works
- Oes y Medwsa (1987)
- Lleidr Tân
- Buarth Bywyd
- Trin Cerddi
References
- ^ Crockford's Clerical Directory, 1973-74, Oxford University Press
- ^ Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales, 1986, OUP.
- ^ Jones, G. and Rowlands J, 1980. Profiles: an Account of Welsh and English Language Writers in Wales Today, Llandyssul, Gomer.
- ^ Hill, G. 1985, Collected Poems. London, Viking
- ^ Bowen, E. 1974. Poems, Llandyssul, Gomer.
- ^ Jones R. Gerallt, 1975. Poetry of Wales, 1930-70, Llandyssul, Gomer.
- ^ Clancy, Joseph P. 1982. Twentieth Century Welsh Poems, Llandyssul, Gomer.
- ^ The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales. John Davies, Nigel Jenkins, Menna Baines and Peredur Lynch (2008) pg77 ISBN 978-0-7083-1953-6
- ^ Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales (1986), p. 199.
Sources
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry: Patrick Thomas, ‘Bowen, Euros (1904–1988)’, first published Sept 2004, 690 words
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