Aneirin Karadog talks about the great Welsh literary award ceremony: the Chairing of the Bard. A new bardic chair is designed and made for each Eisteddfod and awarded to the winning entrant in the awdl…. strict metre competition. It is possible for a Chair not to be awarded if the judges believe that no entry has reached the required standard. This happened most recently in 2013. A favourite guest of ours, Mererid Hopwood was the first female winner and she won the Crown at a later Eisteddfod.  Tonight’s speaker, Aneirin Karadog, won the Chair at the Monmouthshire Esiteddfod in 2016. Chairs have been awarded since 1876 in the modern format but the earliest such ceremony is known to have taken place in 1176.  So there are almost one hundred and fifty Chairs knocking around and many have gone missing over the years.  Aneirin will trace some of the stories which will doubtless include the Black chair, so called after Hedd Wyn won the award posthumously after his death in World War One.

Aneirin Karadag was born in Llanwrst. He has a degree in French and Spanish from New College, Oxford. His mother is Breton and his father Welsh so he has those languages as well. He has worked for Tinopolis as a research and broadcaster on Wedi 7, Sam ar y Sgrin, and Heno. He has been Bardd Plant Cymru – the Welsh language children’s laureate. He has presented  documentaries about zombies and about Dylan Thomas. He now works as a freelance writer and broadcaster and has completed doctoral research at Swansea University into the relationship between the poet, the medium and the audience. He won his very own Chair in 2016 having won the Urdd Chair in 2005.