Mamiaith

Ness Owen lives on Ynys Mn off the North Wales coast. This is her first collection, and is partly bilingual. The poems journey widely from family and motherhood, to politics, place and belonging: an underlying connection to the earth of Ness' home, that feeds a longing/desire/determination to write in the Mamiaith (Mothertongue) that she speaks, but did not learn to write fluently. The interplay of languages and the shifts of meaning from one to the other feed the musicality of the poems. Most of the poems were written in English, five have been additionally translated into Welsh (with help from Sian Northey) one was written in Welsh and translated into English by Ness.