An Aberystwyth lecturer travelled to India this week to launch a unique collection of children’s poetry featuring the ancient Welsh art of cyng-hanedd.

The Bhyabachyaka and Other Wild Poems has been co-authored by Indian writer Sampurna Chattarji and Eurig Salisbury, a poet and lecturer at Aberystwyth University’s Department of Welsh and Celtic Studies.

It will be launched in New Delhi at Buckaroo, an award-winning festival of children’s literature which has been held annually in India since 2008.

Published by Scholastic India, the poems are written in English but draw on the writers’ native languages of Bangla and Welsh.

For the first section of the book, the two poets penned verse based solely on the sound of unfamiliar words in each other’s language such as Bhyabachyaka (befuddled) in Bangla and Ffrwchnedd (banana) in Welsh.

The other three sections feature poems inspired by invented words, by culturally important words like cynghanedd or puja, and by place names, including the longest train station name in the UK - Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

Speaking ahead of the launch, Eurig said: “What we’ve aimed to do in this collection of poetry is to bring both languages and their traditions to a wider audience of children and parents in India and beyond, in a way which is lively, interesting and often humorous."

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