Leslie Norris, the Welsh poet and short story writer has died. I had an email correspondance with him a couple of years ago regarding a Dafydd ap Gwilym project. He very kindly sent me an unpublished translation of Y Dylluan, The Owl, which he actually rewrote for me because he had lost most of his original translation. I include it below. It's copyright (c) Leslie Norris 2006. I also include the Western Mail/icwales text.
The Owl (Y Dylluan)
A pity the pretty owl
Is chill and ill, won’t be still,
Won’t let me chant my prayer
As long as one star is there.
I cannot steal - this she’ll stop -
A single sliver of sleep.
Her bat-black back - like a house
Is hunched against rains and snows.
Each night (such is my unease)
In my ears (recalled with tears)
As I close (this I expect)
My eyes (they request respect)
This wakes me (I’ve not slept since);
Owl’s tuneless lamentations,
Her cracked carol, her cross cry,
Her travesty of poetry.
From then (and think of me)
Till dawn, with dark energy,
She calls, she cries out, she hoots
A rowdy range of rough notes,
I swear by St. Anne’s grandson
She rouses the hounds of Annwn.
She’s filthy, has two foul hoots,
Big-headed, a wealth of shouts,
Broad-browed and berry-bellied,
Her owl’s eyes have the mice marked.
Busy, base and old-fashioned,
Her call a croak, her plumes stained,
Ten woods can’t hold her yelling,
Her song - a roebuck’s belling,.
Her face, of a fine woman,
Her form - a flying phantom.
All birds attack her, the outcast,
How much longer can she last?
She’s much louder on the hill
Than the woodland nightingale.
By day she’ll not draw, it’s said,
From a hollow tree her head.
How she once howled! It’s the truth
She belongs to Gwyn ap Nudd..
Babbling bird, sings to felons,
Curses on her tongue and tones!
But I can scare her away
With this song that I ‘ll play -
“While waiting for frost to sting,
I’ll burn the ivy she hides in!”
Dafydd ap Gwilym
(Translated by Leslie Norris)
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_objectid=16931506%26method=full%26siteid=50082%26headline=%2dkey%2dfigure%2d%2dfor%2da%2dgeneration%2dof%2dwelsh%2dpoets%2ddies%2dat%2d84-name_page.html
The death of poet Leslie Norris last week marks the end of an era for literature in Wales, reports Rhodri Clark
LESLIE NORRIS lived most of his life in England and the US, but his early experiences in Merthyr Tydfil during the 1920s and 30s influenced much of his work as a poet and short-story writer.
He was also profoundly moved by the Aberfan disaster 40 years ago, an event near Merthyr which inspired one of his most powerful poems.
Although he had been writing poetry in the 1940s and 50s, it was not until the 1960s that he came to wider attention, initially through his contributions to Poetry Wales magazine.
He died on Thursday in Utah. He had lived there for more than 20 years, having held professorships at the Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah, until 2000.
Gwyneth Lewis, national poet of Wales, said yesterday, 'He was a key figure in the development of so-called Anglo-Welsh literature, although that term isn't really used now.
'It's a terrible loss. It's the passing of an era, with his death.
'He's been a key figure for a whole generation of Welsh poets. What was inspiring was the combination of Welshness and international standards.'
Prof Tony Curtis, professor of poetry at the University of Glamorgan, said Mr Norris had lived most of his working life as a lecturer in England.
'However, his writing - poems and short stories - was focused for much of his career on his home town and the Valleys,' he said.
'I included him in my video interview series on fiction writers from Wales at the beginning of the 1990s, and he visited the University of Glamorgan to record that and to give a reading to students.
'He was one of the most memorable performers of his own work and his reading of the short story, A Flight of Geese, about growing up in Merthyr, was one of the most remarkable literary occasions I have experienced.
'Leslie Norris was a significant poet of Wales, especially its landscape and society, and of nature, especially birds, in America.
'His poem about his childhood friend David Beynon is one of the most moving pieces about the Aberfan disaster - Beynon was a teacher killed on that day with his pupils.
'Leslie had been a professor at Provo in Utah for two decades and had established a reputation as a writer in America.
'He constantly talked of returning with his wife Kitty to end their days in Wales. That was not to be.'
Mr Norris was born in Merthyr in 1921. By the time he attended Cyfarthfa Grammar School he was already an avid reader and had a better understanding of English than some of his teachers.
After World War II, in which he enlisted with the RAF, he grew disillusioned with the changing nature of his hometown as old industries and ways of life were replaced by new.
He moved to England in 1948, the year in which he married a local woman called Kitty Morgan.
However, he kept looking back at Wales, and the sense of loss and exile is a strand in much of his writing.
His contributions to Poetry Wales helped to raise his profile, but soon he also found publishers and outlets in England and the US, including The New Yorker magazine.
His connections with American universities began in 1973, when he accepted a post in Seattle.
For many years Mr Norris owned a Carmarthenshire holiday home near Llandysul. His visits there, for angling and relaxation, informed and inspired some of his poetry about nature.
Elegy
Seabirds adoring the hill
Move with a bickering grace
As each descending bird
Settles into its place.
Smoothly the plain day ends.
Nothing can make amends.
- From 'At the grave of Dylan Thomas', by Leslie Norris. Selected by Prof Tony Curtis.
