Welsh Poetry: Cynghanedd, Eisteddfods, and Dylan Thomas
Quick answer: Welsh poetry from Taliesin and cynghanedd's strict harmonies to the eisteddfod tradition, R. S. Thomas, and Dylan Thomas: a guide to the tradition.
Wales may be the only country where a strict-metre poetry competition makes the national television news. At the National Eisteddfod each August, a winning poet is ceremonially chaired before thousands, continuing a tradition of bardic contest documented since 1176. At its heart sits cynghanedd, a system of consonantal harmony and internal rhyme so intricate that Gerard Manley Hopkins, who studied it, called Welsh poetry's effects chiming.
The tradition runs in two languages. Welsh-language poetry stretches back fourteen centuries to the earliest British bards, while Welsh writing in English, from Dylan Thomas to R. S. Thomas, carries the old sound-hunger into another tongue. Few small nations have kept so much poetic machinery in working order.
The tradition: the oldest poetry in Britain
The earliest Welsh poets, Taliesin and Aneirin, worked in the sixth and seventh centuries; Aneirin's Y Gododdin elegises warriors who fell in battle at Catraeth, making it among the oldest surviving poetry composed in Britain. The medieval princes kept court poets, and after the conquest the gentry sustained a guild of professional bards whose training ran for years and whose craft was codified as Cerdd Dafod, the art of the tongue, with twenty-four canonical strict metres.
The greatest medieval master is Dafydd ap Gwilym, a fourteenth century contemporary of Chaucer, whose poems of love, birds, and comic misadventure move through the cywydd form with astonishing agility. Nonconformist hymn culture later made Wales a nation of metrical singers, which still shapes its readings and its rugby crowds.
The landmarks: chairs, crowns, and two Thomases
The eisteddfod tradition gives Welsh poetry its public rituals: the Chair for the best awdl in strict metre, the Crown for free-verse forms. The most haunting moment in its history came in 1917, when the Chair was awarded to Hedd Wyn, killed at Passchendaele weeks earlier; it was draped in black and carried to his farmhouse. In the twentieth century, Welsh-language poetry produced major figures such as T. H. Parry-Williams, Waldo Williams, and Gwenallt.
In English, Dylan Thomas made Swansea and Laugharne world-famous, packing his lines with the assonance and consonant-play of the older tradition; his villanelle urging defiance of death is among the best-known poems of the century, and Fern Hill remains a touchstone of remembered childhood. R. S. Thomas, priest and nationalist, wrote a sparer, flintier poetry of hill farms and an elusive God. Gillian Clarke and Menna Elfyn have since carried the two languages forward, and Owen Sheers represents a confident younger English-language line.
The craft: cynghanedd and the discipline of sound
Cynghanedd requires that consonants in the first part of a line repeat in order in the second, or that internal rhyme lock the line together, in several regulated combinations. You do not need Welsh to learn from it. Practising even a loose English cynghanedd forces you to hear consonants as structure rather than decoration, and it explains the texture of Hopkins, who imported its effects into sprung rhythm.
The eisteddfod system also teaches something institutional: poetry improves where there are regular contests with clear standards and public results. A culture that chairs its poets produces poets worth chairing. Writory's monthly contest, scored on creativity, emotion, structure, language, and theme, works on the same old principle that a visible standard sharpens craft.
The tradition today
The National Eisteddfod still draws six-figure crowds, and young poets compete in strict metre alongside rap and free verse. Wales appoints a National Poet, a role held by Gillian Clarke and later Ifor ap Glyn and Hanan Issa, and Literature Wales runs a busy programme of mentoring and events. Welsh-language poetry benefits from the language's revitalisation drive, while English-language Welsh poets publish with the major London and Welsh houses alike. The old machinery is not just preserved; it is in daily use.
What poets can take from this
- Learn one strict form, the englyn, as a window into the whole Welsh system.
- Treat consonants as musical notes: map them in your drafts as you would rhymes.
- Read R. S. Thomas for how austerity of language can carry spiritual weight.
- Study Y Gododdin in translation as a model for elegy in fragments.
- Enter competitions with defined criteria; the eisteddfod tradition shows they build discipline.
Try it yourself
Write an elegy for a place that still exists but has changed beyond recognition, using at least three lines in which the second half echoes the consonants of the first.
Questions
What is cynghanedd?
Cynghanedd is the Welsh system of strict sound-correspondence within a line, combining ordered consonant repetition and internal rhyme in regulated patterns. It has been central to Welsh strict-metre poetry since the Middle Ages.
What happens at an eisteddfod?
An eisteddfod is a competitive festival of poetry, music, and performance. At the National Eisteddfod the two chief poetry prizes are the Chair, for strict-metre verse, and the Crown, awarded in ceremonies conducted in Welsh.
Did Dylan Thomas write in Welsh?
No, he wrote in English, though he grew up surrounded by Welsh-speaking relatives. His dense sound-patterning is often read as the Welsh bardic ear working inside the English language.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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