Eisteddfod 2024: more success for 'Seren y Fro' Leisa

A young singer from Cowbridge has followed up her recent success by winning a National Eisteddfod competition.

Leisa Gwen Roberts won the Solo competition for under 12s on the Pavilion stage in Pontypridd on Sunday.

Last month, she also took to the stage at GlastonBarry Juniors after winning Bro Radio's 'Seren y Fro' ('Star of the Vale') competition for young Welsh performers from the Vale of Glamorgan.

Leisa, who sang the Robat Arwyn song Cana O Dy Galon in front of over 7,000 people at Romilly Park, has also performed with the Vale-based children's choir Côr Heol y March.

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In other competitions on the Maes, Penarth soprano Manon Ogwen Parry took 3rd place in the prestigious W Towyn Roberts Scholarship competition for young soloists.

And Côr Bryn Owain, based in Cowbridge, took runners up in the new competition for new and reformed choirs taking part in the festival for the first time.

The first main prize ceremony of the week saw Tonyrefail born Gwynfor Dafydd win the Crown for a selection of poems on the theme of 'Atgof' (memory or remembrance).

Adjudciators said the poet and journalist, who wrote under the pseudonym of 'Samsa', "evoked a range of emotions from the sadness of the Senghennydd wives, to the comedy surrounding the attention given to Guto Nyth Brân."

They added the writer, whose roots are in Rhondda Cynon Taf, "has both a close and distant relationship with the area and its people, and feels at one with society, and yet slightly apart."

Gwynfor attended Ysgol Llanhari, the same school attended by the new Archdruid, Mererid Hopwood, and was inspired to take up writing poetry after she paid a visit 

A former winner of the Chair and the Crown at the Urdd National Eisteddfod, Gwynfor was also part of the Tir Irall team that took victory in this year's series of the BBC Radio Cymru poetry contest Y Talwrn.

The main ceremony on Tuesday will feature the Daniel Owen Memoiral Prize.

Bro Radio will have a special highlights programme from the National Eisteddfod on Saturday at 4pm, with a special edition of Y Newydd focusing on the festival's gigs on Thursday at 7pm.

Do you have a story to share? Email News@broradio.fm 

 

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