RESULTS

Cell Angel explores many areas of contemporary experience, and takes Elfyn's work further afield. The poems move from narrow prison cells to Mexican hotel rooms, from Vietnam and its bloodthirsty mosquitoes to a chilly Welsh beach, from South African mercenaries to snowmen and pomegranates. The book's title is double-edged: her cell is not just prison but also a place for contemplation, while her angel is both Eastern and Christian. Drawing on Tibetan Tulku thought as well as Indian Boddhisattva, these poems embody Menna Elfyn's restless search for the spiritual within the earthly. Some of the poems, such as 'No. 257864 H.M.P.', deal directly with her prison experiences whilst others cover widely varying forms of captivity: the young girl locked into the stereotypes imposed on her by her culture and upbringing, for example; or into the straitjacket of her gender's preoccupation with physical beauty.

Menna Elfyn is the best-known, most travelled and most translated of all Welsh-language poets. The extraordinary international range of her subjects, breathtaking inventiveness and generosity of vision place her among Europe's leading poets. This bilingual edition of her later poetry includes work from Cell Angel (1996) and Blind Man's Kiss/Cusan Dyn Dall (2001), as well as the first English translations of Perffaith Nam (2005) and a selection of new poems.