Mamiaith
Ness Owen lives on Ynys Môn 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 (Mother tongue) 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. The majority of the poems are 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.
Ness Owen
Ness Owen lives on the island of Ynys Môn, off the North Wales coast, where she writes plays, poetry and stories in between lecturing and farming. Her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies. Ness’s first collection Mamiaith (Mother Tongue) was published by Arachne Press in 2019; and her work also appeared in our anthology An Outbreak of Peace. She is one two guest editors for our bilingual anthology A470.