Menna Elfyn is an award-winning poet and playwright. She has published over twelve volumes of poetry including Aderyn Bach Mewn Llaw (Bird in Hand, 1990), winner of Welsh Arts Council Prize for best volume of the year. Four volumes have appeared bilingually by Bloodaxe Books: Cell Angel (1996), Blind Man's Kiss (2001), Perfect Blemish (2007), and her latest Murmur, which was chosen as Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation for autumn 2012. Her other works include libretti for various composers in Wales and America. She is co-librettist for Garden of Light, a choral symphony for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1999 and more recently an oratorio for the Welsh National Opera Gair ar Gnawd (Word on Flesh). She has also written numerous stage, radio and television plays and has a regular column in the national newspaper of Wales, The Western Mail, since 1995. She was made Poet Laureate for the Children of Wales in 2002-2003. She received the Foreign Poetry Prize in Sardinia in 2009 and was also nominated for the Evelyn Encelot Prize for European women poets. Her other awards include Honorary Fellow of Welsh Literature and Royal Literary Fellow at the Aberystwyth University. In 2009, she received an award from the Welsh Arts Council to write on "Sleep." She is the most travelled and translated of all Welsh language poets and her work has been translated into eighteen languages. She is Director of the Masters programme in creative writing at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David.
