Name Gwerful Mechain | Role Poet | |
Gwerful Mechain (fl. 1460–1502), who lived in Mechain in Powys, is perhaps the most famous female Welsh-language poet after Ann Griffiths (1776–1805), who was also from northern Powys, and the only female medieval Welsh poet from whom a substantial body of work has survived. Little is known of her life, but it has been stated that she was a descendant of a noble family from Llanfechain.
Her work, composed in the traditional strict metres, including cywyddau and englynion, is often a celebration of religion and sex, sometimes within the same poem. Probably the most famous part of her work today is her erotic poetry, especially Cywydd y Cedor ("Ode to the Pubic Hair"), a poem praising the vulva. It is a work in which she upbraids male poets for celebrating so many parts of a woman's body. "Let songs about the quim circulate," she adjures her readers. As to the pubic hair: "Lovely bush, God save it."
Her year of birth has also been said to have been 1460.