Goronwy Owen (poet) facts for kids

Goronwy Owen (born January 1, 1723 – died July 1769) was one of the most famous Welsh poets of the 1700s. He was very skilled at writing poetry using the 24 traditional bardic metres, which are special rules for Welsh poems. Even though he had to leave Wales, he was a big part of a movement that helped Welsh literature and history grow. People often call this time the Welsh 18th-century Renaissance, like a rebirth of culture.

Life

Goronwy Owen was born on New Year's Day, 1723, in a place called Llanfair Mathafarn Eithaf in Anglesey, Wales. As a child, he lived at his family home, "Y Dafarn Goch". He later went to Friars School, Bangor, and then to Jesus College, Oxford. He did not stay long at Oxford, only about a week in 1744, even though his name was on the college's lists for several years.

In January 1746, he became a priest. He worked for a while at St Mary's Church, Llanfair Mathafarn Eithaf. After this, he left Anglesey for good. He traveled to different places, working as a school master and a priest.

Owen's Travels and Work

• He went to Denbighshire in Wales.
• In 1746, he became a master at Oswestry School and a priest in nearby Selattyn.
• From 1748 to 1753, he was a master at the grammar school in Donnington and a priest in Uppington, near Shrewsbury.
• He then moved to Walton, Liverpool, and later to Northolt, Middlesex.

In November 1757, he moved with his young family to America. He took a job at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, which was then a British colony.

Life in America

Rev. Owen started teaching around April 1758. He likely taught Latin. Before the first summer ended, he married Mrs. Clayton, who was the sister of the college president. Sadly, she died within a year.

He left the college and, in August 1760, asked to become the Vicar of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church. This church was in Lawrenceville, Brunswick County, Virginia. He got the job a year later and stayed there for the rest of his life. In 1761, he bought a farm where he grew tobacco and cotton. In 1763, he married Joan Simmonds, who was his third wife. He passed away in July 1769 and was buried on his farm.

Work

After moving to America, Rev. Owen became known as a poet who wrote with hiraeth. This Welsh word means a deep "longing" or "homesickness" for his home in Anglesey.

He learned much about writing poetry from Lewis Morris. Lewis Morris was also from Anglesey. He and his brothers were important people in a group of Welsh writers.

Poetry and the Eisteddfod

In the 1790s, the Eisteddfod tradition started to become popular again. The Eisteddfod is a festival of Welsh music, literature, and performance. A group in London called the Gwyneddigion Society supported this revival.

For a long time, much Welsh poetry written in strict meter was hard to understand. The Gwyneddigion Society felt that Rev. Goronwy Owen's poetry was a much better example. They wanted poets competing at future Eisteddfodau to follow his style.

Rev. Owen had always wanted to write a long, important Christian poem, like John Milton's Paradise Lost. However, he felt that the strict rules of Welsh poetry stopped him from doing this.

By promoting Rev. Owen's work, the Gwyneddigion Society made sure his ideas lived on. Even as late as 1930, judges and poets at the National Eisteddfod of Wales were still trying to create the great Welsh national poem that Rev. Owen had dreamed of writing.

However, according to Eisteddfod historian Hywel Teifi Edwards, a Welsh national epic poem never truly came to be.

The town of Benllech in Anglesey honored Goronwy Owen. They named their village hall and their primary school, Ysgol Goronwy Owen, after him.