Menna Elfyn's Parch reviews, poem features & books of the year 2025
A shimmering, sublime gathering of poetic work.’ – Mab Jones, Buzz Magazine, on Parch
Menna Elfyn's new collection Parch was published by Bloodaxe Books in October 2025. The poems in Parch offer a voice to those whose liberty or dignity have been undermined, seeking religious, linguistic and cultural tolerance for all, and not shying away from the effects of (in)humanity on our environment, histories and lives. Mercy is a recurring theme, with poems addressing the tension between justice and forgiveness.
Parch is Menna Elfyn’s sixth poetry book from Bloodaxe and for the first time includes many poems written in English and some in her own translation. Other poems in the collection are translated by Emma Baines, Joseph P. Clancy, Gillian Clarke, Robert Minhinnick and R.S. Thomas.
Her previous five books of poetry with Bloodaxe are all dual-language. Her 2007 retrospective Perfect Blemish: New & Selected Poems was followed by two further Welsh-English collections, Murmur (2012), a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation; and Bondo (2017).
Menna Elfyn is one of the foremost Welsh-language writers. As well as being an award-winning poet, she has published plays, libretti and children’s novels, and co-edited The Bloodaxe Book of Modern Welsh Poetry (2003) with John Rowlands. When not travelling the world for readings and residencies, she lives in Carmarthen. She was Wales’s National Children’s Laureate in 2002, and was made President of Wales PEN Cymru in 2014. She was, until 2016, Creative Director in the School of Cultural Studies at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David; she is also Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing. She received a Cholmondeley Award in 2022, a prize which recognises a poet's body of work.
Menna's online launch with Bloodaxe on 21 October 2025 is now available to via YouTube - scroll down for details. For details of her forthcoming in person events, see here.
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'Elfyn writes about the intimate and every day, the natural world and about women’s experiences, always able to transform her awareness of the small, and the beautiful, to the affective and often, then, the political. Her voice is challenging and compassionate by turn, unafraid of joy, and full of the energies of community, offering through the power of language, truth, consolation, and possibility.' – Deryn Rees-Jones, co-judge of the Society of Authors' Cholmondeley Awards 2022
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WELSH CULTURAL HIGHLIGHTS OF 2025
Nation.cymru, Cultural Highlights 2025: Poetry Roundup, online 2 January 2026
Two books by Welsh poet Menna Elfyn were included in Nation.Cymru’s Cultural Highlights poetry roundup of 2 January 2026.
The first book was Let the World’s People Sing (H’mm Foundation, 2025) a trilingual poetry collection drawing on work from across Menna Elfyn's career. The volume gathers poems from earlier Bloodaxe titles including Perfect Blemish: New & Selected Poems (2007), Murmur (2012) and Bondo (2017), alongside poems from her previous collections. Originally written in Welsh, the work has been translated into Arabic by Rawan Sukkar and Lara Matta, with English translations by Gillian Clarke, Elin ap Hywel, Damian Walford Davies and Paul Henry.
‘Together, these poems are careful and compassionate, concerned with fostering understanding in an uncertain political climate and challenging injustice wherever it arises.’
The other book mentioned was Menna Elfyn’s new Bloodaxe collection Parch.
‘In October, Elfyn also published Parch (Welsh for ‘Respect’), her sixth collection in a long and lasting partnership with Bloodaxe. For the first time, many of the poems have been written directly in English.’ – Nation.Cymru (Cultural highlights 2025: Poetry Roundup)
https://nation.cymru/culture/cultural-highlights-2025-poetry-roundup/
Golwg, Arts Highlights 2025, 18 December 2025
Editor Non Tudur chose Menna Elfyn’s new collection Parch for the Welsh language magazine Golwg’s Arts Highlights 2025 feature of 18 December.
‘Dau lyfr dw i wedi eu caruyn 2025: Parch (Bloodaxe) gan Menna Elfyn a Rhuo ei distawrwydd hi (Cyhoeddiadau'r Stamp) gan Meleri Davies. Mae'r ffordd mae Menna wedi rhoi ein hiaith fel rhodd i'r byd yn ysbrydoledig iawn; mae hi'n arwain y ffordd. Mae'r ffordd mae Mel a Menna yn sgrifennu am fywydau menywod (y pwer a'rboen) yn rbennig. Dau lais barddonol gwahanol ond hardd.’ – Non Tudur, Golwg (Dau lyfr dw i wedi eu caru yn 2025)
‘Two books I have loved in 2025: Parch (Bloodaxe) by Menna Elfyn and Roaring her silence (Cyhoeddiadau'r Stamp, 2024) by Meleri Davies. The way Menna has given our language as a gift to the world is very inspiring; she is leading the way. The way Mel and Menna are writing about women's lives (the power and the pain) is special. Two different but beautiful poetic voices.’ – Non Tudur, Golwg (Two books I've loved in 2025)
In print only.
POEM OF THE WEEK FEATURE IN THE GUARDIAN
The Guardian, online Monday 27 October 2025
Carol Rumens featured 'Storm in Brooklyn Subway' from Menna Elfyn’s new collection Parch as her Poem of the Week in The Guardian on 27 October 2025. The poem was reproduced in full, accompanied by Carol’s thoughtful commentary.
‘’Storm in Brooklyn Subway’ is almost an imagist poem; it’s a reminder of Ezra Pound’s ‘In a Station of the Metro’, that rarest moment of underground revelation in modern poetry. Elfyn’s rich sense of verbal music is a bonus, and enables her to skim between worlds – underground and overground, sacred and secular – and, perhaps, between words. It seems that the interplay of Welsh may have helped produce lightning and luminosity in Elfyn’s English-language poetry.’ – Carol Rumens, Poem of the Week, The Guardian
WELSH REVIEW COVERAGE
Buzz Magazine, online 19 September 2025
Menna Elfyn’s new collection Parch was given a brilliant early review in Mab Jones’ September 2025 poetry column in Buzz Magazine Wales.
‘The word ‘parch’ holds a double meaning: ‘respect’, in Welsh, and associations of thirst or dryness in English. Menna Elfyn’s new collection dances beautifully in that dual space, shifting between reverence and acting as a record of truth; honouring the past yet also inscribing something new. […] All of which makes reading Parch like leafing through some amazing, modern illuminated text that’s still being written. This is a reverent, resonant, real-life-loving collection that looks backward, sideways, upwards, downwards, and forwards, all at once. A shimmering, sublime gathering of poetic work.’ – Mab Jones, Buzz Magazine
Read in full here.
POEM BY MENNA ELFYN ON BBC RADIO 3 - STILL AVAILABLE ON BBC SOUNDS
The Verb, BBC Radio 3, Friday 17 February 2023, 10pm
Menna Elfyn read and introduced her specially commissioned poem ‘Horse Chestnut Tree in Uppsala 2022’ on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb on 17 February 2023 as part of their Something Old, Something New feature marking the BBC Centenary. Unusually for her, she wrote this first in English and then translated it into Welsh. After reading the poem in English, Menna was then asked to read the final stanza in Welsh. The poem is now included in Menna Elfyn’s sixth poetry book from Bloodaxe, Parch, published in October 2025.
The poem is available on BBC Sounds as a separate clip here.
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JOINT ONLINE LAUNCH EVENT
Tuesday 21 October 2025, 7pm
Bloodaxe October online launch event
Menna Elfyn joined Kit Wright as they read from their new books and discussed them with Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley. This event also featured audio recordings of Selima Hill reading from her new collection. Menna read first in each set.
Watch below or on our YouTube channel.
[22 October 2025]
