David Heslin Rowlands (25 December 1931 – 26 April 2001) was a Congregational minister, lecturer and writer. Rowlands won the crown at the

National Eisteddfod The National Eisteddfod of Wales (Welsh: ') is the largest of several eisteddfodau that are held annually, mostly in Wales. Its eight days of competitions and performances are considered the largest music and poetry festival in Europe. Competitors ...

in 1969 and 1972, and was made archdruid in 1996.

Life history

Rowlands was born in

Pontardawe Pontardawe () is a town and a community in the Swansea Valley (Welsh: ''Cwmtawe'') in Wales. With a population of 6,832, it comprises the electoral wards of Pontardawe and Trebanos. A town council is elected. Pontardawe forms part of the county ...

in 1931; his father, Lewis Dennis Rowlands, was a steelworker. His father abandoned the family when Dafydd was ten; he never saw his father again. Rowlands was educated at University College, Swansea, where he gained a degree in Welsh. He then went on to train for the ministry at the Presbyterian College in Carmarthen. After leaving education he worked as a Congregational minister. In 1959 he married Margaret Morris; the couple had three sons. Rowlands left the ministry and became a teacher at Garw Grammar School in Pontycymer. In 1968 he was appointed to the staff of Trinity College Carmarthen, in the

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peopl ...

Department. He left in 1983 and began a career as a scriptwriter and programme presenter. His programmes included documentaries about the poet Gwenallt Jones, the hymn-writer Ann Griffiths and the daughters of Rebecca, 1840s rioters in West Wales. He wrote scripts for ''

Pobol y Cwm ''Pobol y Cwm'' (''People of the Valley''; ) is a Welsh-language soap opera produced by the BBC since October 1974. The longest-running television soap opera produced by the BBC, ''Pobol y Cwm'' was originally transmitted on BBC One Wales an ...

,'' the Welsh language soap and ''Licrys Olsorts,'' the Welsh-language counterpart of ''Last of the Summer Wine.'' In 1969 Rowlands was awarded the crown at the

in 1969 held at

Flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and sta ...

for his sequence of poems ''I Gwestiynau fy Mab''. He was again awarded the crown in 1972, this time in Pembrokeshire with his work 'Dadeni'. and that same year he won the

Prose Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...

Medal for his volume of essays ''Ysgrifau yr Hanner Bardd''. This was followed by three collections of poetry, ''Meini'' (1972), ''Yr Wythfed'' (1975) and ''Sobers a Fi'' (1995) and in 1980 he produced a pamphlet of prose poetry ''Paragraffau o Serbia''. In 1977 Rowlands wrote the experimental ''Mae Theomemphus yn Hen'', a prose novel in the Welsh language. In the novel he explored his relationship with his father in an uncompromising self-examination, rarely seen in modern Welsh literature. He was

archdruid Archdruid () is the title used by the presiding official of the Gorsedd. The Archdruid presides over the most important ceremonies at the National Eisteddfod of Wales including the Crowning of the Bard, the award of the and the Chairing of t ...

(David Rowland) from 1996 to 1999. Rowlands died of ischaemic heart disease in 2001.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rowlands, Dafydd 1931 births 2001 deaths People from Pontardawe Welsh-language poets Crowned bards Welsh Eisteddfod archdruids 20th-century Welsh poets Welsh-speaking clergy