Talysarn village memorial unveiled for Robert Williams Parry - 'poet of the summer'

Slate is an apt material for the inscription on the memorial here unveiled to R. Williams Parry, one of Wales's foremost 20th century poets, who was born in this quarrying village of Talysarn. Quarrying featured in his work, as did nature and the Mabinogi myths associated with the area. The lovely tree-lined path is Y Lôn Goed near Llanystumdwy, which features in the poet's poem 'Eifionydd'.

R. Williams Parry was one of Wales's most notable poets of the twentieth century. Born in 1884 at Talysarn in Caernarfonshire, he studied at Aberystwyth and Bangor and took up various teaching posts before being appointed lecturer in the Welsh and Extra-Mural Studies Departments at University College Bangor, where he remained until his retirement in 1944. He wrote his poetry using both the strict-metre 'cynghanedd' form and freer forms, and won the Eisteddfod chair in 1910 for his poem 'Yr Haf' – published in one of his two published volumes, 'Yr Haf a Cherddi Eraill'. He died in 1956.