Carwyn Eckley wins 2024 National Eisteddfod Chair

Carwyn Eckley has won this year’s National Eisteddfod Chair for a series of twelve deeply personal poems responding to the experience of losing his father as a young child.

The Chair is presented for a poem or collection of poems in strict metre, of no more than 250 lines, called ‘Cadwyn’ (chain).

The 28-year-old from Pen-y-groes, is one of the youngest poets ever to win the coveted Chair.

He lives in Cardiff with his partner Siân and their dog, Bleddyn and works as a journalist with ITV Cymru’s Welsh Department, which produces Y Byd ar Bedwar and Y Byd yn ei Le.

Harry Potter

Carwyn says his interest in literature was ignited when his mother gave him a copy of Harry Potter as a very young boy, before becoming interested in Welsh poetry under the guidance of Eleri Owen at Ysgol Dyffryn Nantlle.

He studied Welsh at Aberystwyth University and learnt cynghanedd with Eurig Salisbury and won the Eisteddfod Rhyng-golegol Chair during his third year, before winning the Urdd Chair in 2020-21.

The adjudicators Aneirin Karadog, Huw Meirion Edwards and Dylan Foster Evans said it was a very closely run competition, with one adjudicator favouring another poet, but the collection written by Carwyn, writing under the nom de plume of Brynmair, came out top in the end.

Moving

In his adjudication Huw Meirion Edwards said: “This is the poet’s response to the harrowing experience of losing his father following an illness during the summer of 2002, while he was a young child.

“Two decades of grief and trying to cope with the loss have been distilled into these subtle and moving poems. The style is deceptively simple, almost bare in places, and the collection gains power as it progresses.”

Dylan Foster Evans said: “Brynmair’s is a quiet but fascinating voice. Grief is the theme of this chain of poems and the poet traces his response to his father’s death, taking the reader from the summer of 2002 up to New Year’s Day 2024.

“He was a child in 2002, but this is not a child’s voice, but rather the voice of an individual looking back on past experiences and reflecting on the grieving process.”

Aneirin Karadog added: “The absence of the father is omnipresent throughout the course of these sweeping poems.

“The loss, and the rush to hold on to memories, trying to run away from them as they bring the pain of grief with them, is intensified by the bare style and the clear absence felt from poem to poem.

“And that’s where the poet’s talent lies. His words are direct, without waste but loaded with meaning.

Ironwork

This year’s Chair has been designed and created by Berian Daniel, with both the Chair and the financial prize donated by the pupils and community of Ysgol Llanhari, to celebrate the school and the Llanhari family’s contribution to 50 years of Welsh medium education in Rhondda Cynon Taf.

Oak from an ancient forest, ironwork reflecting the industry of the valleys and coal, the ‘Gold of the Rhondda’, are the features in the Chair this year.

The tree has been cut in half and in the middle is a ‘river’ of pieces of coal submerged in resin with everything held in place by iron bars.

The three parts represent the Rhondda, Cynon and Taf rivers which give their name to the county which is home to the Eisteddfod this year.