[1] The Gwynn family then moved to Llanrhidian and Newton, as farm workers, and then to Morriston, Swansea, where the older boys found jobs in government factories.
[1] He attended a politics course at Ashridge College, Hertfordshire, and there he met Randolph Churchill and Lennox-Boyd, the unsuccessful Conservative Party candidate for Gower.
[1] According to Nigel Jenkins, among older Gower people: “...it is the name of Cyril Gwynn, and not that of Dylan Thomas, Vernon Watkins or Harri Webb, that comes first to their lips in any talk of poetry.
He was, in his day, a Gower celebrity, while remaining entirely unknown outside the area – a state of affairs to be regarded as quite proper, for any notion of Swansea or Cardiff 'recognition' would have struck Cyril as meaningless.
"[1] At the height of his powers, he would go out two or three nights a week, to ploughing match dinners, weddings, wakes, Christmas parties, Court Leet and harvest suppers.
[1] Most of his work deals with farming, the opening of a new road, the passing away of a respected member of the community, the arrival of a new vicar, and country craft skills.
[3] J. Mansel Thomas noted that he: "had a phenomenal memory, 'for everything except the price of beef', and I found that even after twelve years away [in Australia], he could still switch without hesitation to any one of a hundred or so of his poems, many with over a dozen verses – a gift that reminds one of another rural genius of Gower – Phil Tanner.
[3]Cyril Gwynn's poetic form comprises a narrative folk ballad which relies on a strong rhyme to "clinch the last line’s ironic twist" which would often "bring the house down.
[2]Although his house was always "full of books", he limited his reading in poetry so as not to fall too heavily under the influence of other poets, and so lose his spontaneity.
Speaking of this influence, Harri Webb commented: “..And he established in my mind an image of the poet as essentially social rather than a solitary character, one moreover, fortunate in his gifts, however humble, and under something of an obligation to spread them around for the pleasure of the people he belongs to, rather than to hoard them in the dark private cellars of introspection and incomprehension".However, despite critical appreciation, Cyril Gwynn always had doubts about the quality of much of his work.
When J. Mansel Thomas suggested to him the possibility of the Gower Society publishing a selected edition of his poems, in 1975: "The question of his that clinched the matter was a typical one: 'Will my name be on the book?’ he asked, thinking more of his family’s satisfaction than his own".
[3]John Beynon, a farmer, of Kimley Moor Farm, Rhossili was in the audience when Mansel Thomas read Cyril Gwynn's "yarns" at a roadshow in the late 1970s.
[1] Nigel Jenkins believes that the likelihood of the Anglicised areas of Wales providing enough of the conditions needed to seed a community-based poetry are far slimmer now, than in Cyril Gwynn's day.
Cyril Gwynn operated in isolation from the Welsh tradition, lacking the sense of a 'community of bards' that is the inheritance of the Welsh-speaking poet's in y fro Gymraeg, with its bardic contests, nosweithiau lawen and general interest in poetry.
Below is a list of poems from the Gower Society publication:[2] Contentment; The Widow's Reply; Heavy Cropping; Two of a Kind; The Jobbing Gardener's Complaint; The Kittle Hill Scheme (1927); A Modern Samual; When Mumbles was "The Mumbles"; A Smart Recruit; Ilston Quarry (1925); The Village Blacksmith; My Dream; A Bard's Dilemma; Versatility; To the Life-Saving Club; Partners; Impressions of Farming: 1) By a City Gent; 2) After hearing Kipling's 'If'; 3) By a Farmer; Pro Tem; Early Birds; Capital; Will the Mill; Reluctant Hero; Farewell and Welcome; Salvation; True to Type; Shades of John Peel (1939); Farming – Ancient and Modern; What's in a Name?