Ruth Bidgood

Ruth Bidgood (née Jones; 20 July 1922 – 4 March 2022) was a Welsh poet and local historian who wrote in English.

Life and career

Ruth Jones was born at Blaendulais, Seven Sisters,^[1] near Neath, Wales, on 20 July 1922. Her mother, the former Hilda Garrett, was a teacher.^[2] Bidgood's Welsh-speaking father, Rev William Herbert Jones, became vicar of St Mary's Church, Aberavon,^[3] where Ruth was brought up. She was educated at a grammar school in Port Talbot, and went on to read English at St Hugh's College, Oxford.^[3] During World War II, she served in the Wrens as a coder, at Alexandria in Egypt.^[4]

After the war, Bidgood worked in London helping to prepare a new edition of Chambers's Encyclopaedia,^[5] but eventually she and her husband, David Bidgood, whom she had married in 1946,^[2] moved to Coulsdon in Surrey.^[3] She and her husband had two sons and one daughter, Janet (died 2007).^[2]

Bidgood and her husband bought a holiday bungalow at Abergwesyn, near Llanwrtyd Wells in Powys.^[5] During the 1960s, she became concerned about the construction of reservoirs and introduction of forestries in mid Wales, which she felt adversely affected the life of the region; this influenced her 1970 collection, The Zombie-Makers.^[6] In the 1970s, after her husband had left her,^[2] she made her home permanently at the bungalow, and began publishing poetry and researches into local history.

Bidgood died at Bryn Gwy residential home in Rhayader, on 4 March 2022, at the age of 99.^[7][8]

Collections

In April 2011 her collection, Time Being, was awarded the Roland Mathias Prize.^[9]

A book-length study of Bidgood's work, written by Matthew Jarvis, was published in 2012 by the University of Wales Press in the "Writers of Wales" series.^[10] The book was launched together with Bidgood's Above the Forests collection at Aberystwyth Arts Centre on 27 July 2012.

Works

• The Given Time, 1972
• Seven articles in Transactions of the Radnorshire Society, (1974–1980) on Llandewi Hall
• Not Without Homage, 1975
• The Print of Miracle, 1978
• Lighting Candles, 1982
• Kindred, 1986
• The Fluent Moment, 1996
• Abergwesyn: Bwlch y Ddau Faen (1997). Newtown, Powys: Gwasg Gregynog. ISBN 0-948714-72-7
• Singing to Wolves, 2000
• Parishes of the Buzzard, a local history of Abergwesyn
• New and Selected Poems, 2004
• Symbols of Plenty, 2006
• Hearing Voices, 2008
• Time Being, 2009
• Above the Forests, 2012