Inner drive is a lot to do with the kind of society you’re raised in, in terms of your literary upbringing. In Wales when I was growing up there was a very competitive nature of social poetry. There would be loads of little events around the place, competitions between 4 or 5 teams of poets would be organised and we’d have 5 or 6 tasks on meters of poetry like the 4-line Welsh englyn (like a haiku) or the talwrn. I still go to these events and compete. This is what surrounds you, in south Ceredigion there’s a real tradition of doing this kind of thing - it’s where the drive to compete comes from.

Speaking Welsh means that you’re aware of a body of context for different things that you may not be aware of if you didn’t speak the language, for example, the tradition of poems about the Welsh princes and nobility. You don’t have to speak Welsh to know about these things but it’s always in the back of your mind. On the other hand, with some issues it really doesn’t make much difference what language is spoken, we’re all the same underneath.

I want to use poetry to action change around me. A lot of my work is to do with the campaigns that I believe in and the social aspects of this. I work with the Welsh Language Society as I believe that it's a matter of right that Wales should be a bilingual nation. I believe in the rights of the community, that they should be enabled to survive in the face of economic pressures. I feel that socialism is the fairest way to live. I try not to be too pretentious about it, but it’s in my work. The subject of a favourite poem I’ve written is about fighting apathy with direct action and protest. That’s a big part of my poetry – trying to defeat apathy.

Poetry is so much more than just work; it’s part of society as much as anything. Very few poets have 'writing poetry' as a job but you’re thinking about it all of the time, even when doing a 9 to 5 job, it’s the main thing that’s in your head. The additional aspect to poetry is that there’s a strong social structure behind it in Wales. People will ask you to write a poem and read it at a friend’s wedding or birthday. It’s a social duty of the poet in Wales, more so than poets anywhere else in the world. It’s one of the great things about Welsh poetry and how it’s kept alive.

An example of this is Archdruid Dic Jones who recently passed away. He was one of the most important poets in Wales, but even someone like Dic, who was so highly respected, would write and perform for social occasions if asked, he was as approachable as anybody else. Poets should not be divorced from the rest of society but be a living, breathing part of it.

I’ve just finished my PhD thesis. Handing it in felt really good, although the last 2 weeks were pretty bad so it’s a real relief that I can do something else. I’ve thought about this thing constantly for the last 3 or 4 years! I start lecturing geography on Thursday for the foreseeable future and hopefully now the thesis is out of the way I can go back to some poems that have been left half-done. Also, randomly, there’s an Italian translation of some of my poetry being published soon.

At the moment, on the Welsh poetry scene, there’s Llyr Gwyn Lewis and Guto Dafydd who are worth watching out for, they’re real up and coming talent.

I’ve always written in the cynghanedd form. Very quickly after starting to write, my friend Eyrig Salisbury and I began attempting the cynghanedd. It’s an artform, a skill that I wanted to master. We didn’t think of it as something that was old-fashioned as there’s a constant awakening and reinvigoration of cynghanedd poetry. Each time there’s been 2 or 3 waves of new generations who'll write differently to the poets before them. The rules and conventions are set in stone but this is always open to interpretation, to being done in new and fresh ways. In the 80’s Twm Morys and Myrddin ap Dafydd started the trend of taking poetry to pubs and clubs. We’re doing that because we want to make it relevant to our generation as well.

A major influence for performance poetry is my long-standing friend Eyrig Salisbury, but when it comes to the page I’m massively influenced by Gerallt Lloyd Owen – he was one of the best of his generation. He wrote poems back in the 1960’s about the investiture of the Prince of Wales in his book Cerddi’r Cywilydd (Poems of Shame). There are so many poems within that collection that will just blow you away, not just his use of cynghanedd but with what he wanted to say and how he did it, he was a really big influence…

The aim of any poet who writes in cynghanedd is to win the chair at the Eisteddfod. That’s probably the one thing I’d like to achieve. I’ve already won the crown, which is for freeverse, and won 2 chairs at the youth Eisteddfods, so this is now the ultimate goal. I’ve got ideas, there's things I want to write about, but I don’t want to enter the competition with just anything – I want to win with a brilliant poem.

Hywel Griffiths's poetry collection Banerog can be bought from Palas Print, Caernarfon, Gwynedd.