Welsh, or Cymraeg, is spoken by around 900,000 people and is recognised as having vulnerable status, although there is strong institutional support with a goal to reach 1million welsh speakers by 2050.

Poet Maximiliano Buss Kopp lives in Patagonia, and says that in Welsh ‘bell’ sounds like ‘far away’ and that’s how this Manchester Cathedral Poetry Prize-winning poem started for him.

Dean Rogers Govender said that Kopp’s poem ‘transcends language and geography. The poet beautifully draws out the bell chimes beyond geography and nations. The distance of Chubut does not silence the bell’s chime in the ‘starlit chapel of his chest’. This has an endless appeal to the transcendent and joy that bells can bring to the human spirit.’

You can read the winning poem below featuring Welsh language. Shared with thanks to Manchester Cathedral for their contribution to the exhibition.

Chubut, Chapel Chime

Mimosa, 1865: salt-bitten timbers, hymns softly hummed.
He lands where the Chubut gentles its limed green,
coirón rasps like wire on his boots; the fence sings a thin note.

He learns the light—white that rings on stone;
heat tastes of brass on the tongue.
Goat bells—brief bronzes—braid the brown air of the meseta;
their tin tintinnabulation
tunes the dusk to blue.

He says, “Cofia’r Cymru yn y wlad bell,” and hears it answer:
bell as distant, bell as bell—one word, two metals.
Far is a peal in the ear; distance, a chapel chime.

He opens acequias, sows barley, speaks softly of those
who went ahead on the voyage—
no harsh name for the hush that claimed them.

Sundays, tin roofs tick; the wind carries coal-scent,
and memory—mild as milk, keen as salt—
slips its hand into his: Gaiman not yet named,
Rawson newly hewn, the river a restless ribbon.

The steppe’s dry choir hums; a ewe coughs; a kid calls.

And in the small, starlit chapel of his chest
the bells begin again—
Cofia’r Cymru yn y wlad bell—
far, ringing, here.