occupying new territory (1913–88) summed up Welsh-language poets’ reaction to the Second World War.^2
Amongthose who did respond to the War at the time, R. MeirionRoberts (1906–67)
provides a chaplain-poet’s perspective in an understated and subdued collection of
verse; Elwyn Evans (1912–2004) offers a Middle East soldier-poet’s response in a
limited but important body of work; and T. E. Nicholas (1878–1971) provides the
most prolific response as a communist prisoner of war in the most considered and
least agitprop poems he produced. However, for literary ambition and intellectual
depth, the only real contender to Alun Llywelyn-Williams himself is Waldo Williams
(1904–71): writing on the Home Front as a conscientious objector, he produced a
substantial body of work, both poetry and prose, containing a nationalist and pacifist
response to the war.^3 As confirmed by the belated anthology of Welsh poetry regard-
ing the Second World War,Gwaedd y Lleiddiad(1995), the study of Welsh poetry of
the Second World War is essentially a democratic and comprehensive assignment,
taking into account a variety of responses by combatants and civilians, men and
women who experienced the War and those responding as members of a post-war
generation.^4 Certainly as far as the combatants’ response to the War is concerned,
Alun Llywelyn-Williams reigns supreme and unchallenged among Welsh poets.^5
No other Welsh poet was better placed than Llywelyn-Williams, geographically
and culturally, to face the literal and figurative new territory represented by the
Second World War. In contrast to the cliched perception of Welsh men of letters, ́
he had not climbed from the semi-rural and underprivileged ranks of thegwerin,
but was brought up as a doctor’s son in a middle-class urban household in Cardiff.
As a university student in the city of his birth, from 1935 to 1939, he established and
edited the left-wing journalTir Newydd(‘New Territory’) which sought to counter
what he regarded as the ruralism and medievalism dominating much contemporary
Welsh literature. ‘The city and college of Cardiff is this journal’s birthplace,’ he
proudly announced in his first editorial; ‘this is where we saw that a new territory
(^2) For Wales and the Second World War, see John Davies,A History of Wales(Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1994), 597–611. 3
All four poets cited are discussed in my survey of Welsh literature and the Second World War:
Gerwyn Wiliams,Tir Newydd: Agweddau ar Lenyddiaeth Gymraeg a’r Ail Ryfel Byd(Caerdydd: Gwasg
Prifysgol Cymru, 2005), 100–28.
(^4) Alan Llwyd and Elwyn Edwards (eds.),Gwaedd y Lleiddiad: Blodeugerdd Barddas o Gerddi’r
Ail Ryfel Byd 1939–1945(Llandyb ̈ıe: Cyhoeddiadau Barddas, 1995), is a pioneering anthology that
includes more than 200 poems; it follows a similar anthology of First World War poems by the same
editorial partnership,Gwaedd y Bechgyn: Blodeugerdd Barddas o Gerddi’r Rhyfel Mawr 1914–1918
(Llandyb ̈ıe: Cyhoeddiadau Barddas, 1989).
(^5) An entry for Alun Llywelyn-Williams is included in Meic Stephens (ed.),The New Companion to
the Literature of Wales(Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998), 467–8; and his friend and former
colleague Elwyn Evans provides an introduction to his life and works inAlun Llywelyn-Williams
(Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1991). See in addition Dafydd Glyn Jones, ‘The Poetry of Alun
Llywelyn-Williams’,Poetry Wales, 7/1 (Summer 1971), 14–24. Joseph P. Clancy has translated all his
published poems as well as a selection of his prose inThe Light in the Gloom: Poems and Prose by Alun
Llywelyn-Williams(Denbigh: Gee and Son, 1998).