Goronwy Owen (poet)

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Goronwy Owen (1 January 1723 – July 1769) was an Anglican clergyman and one of the 18th century's most notable and influential figures in Welsh-language literature. He mastered the 24 traditional bardic metres and, although forced by circumstances into joining the Welsh diaspora, played an important role in the literary and antiquarian movement often described as the Welsh 18th-century Renaissance.^[1] In 1757, he emigrated with his family to Williamsburg in the Colony of Virginia and taught in the faculty of College of William & Mary, before taking up a position as a tobacco plantation owner and Episcopalian Vicar of Lawrenceville, Virginia, where he died in 1769.

In reaction to centuries of incomprehensible Welsh poetry in strict metre, however, Owen's verse was held up by the Gwyneddigion Society as a model for future poets during the late 18th-century revival of the Eisteddfod tradition.^[2] For this reason, his influence upon subsequent Welsh poetry and culture has been extensive.^[3]