Anjela Duval

Anjela Duval, Marie-Angèle Duval, is a Breton poetess born on April 3, 1905 in Vieux-Marché, near Plouaret (Côtes-d’Armor), died on November 7, 1981, in Lannion.

She is the only daughter of a farming family, and had taken over the farm. (his father died in 1941, his mother in 1951). She was, in fact, their only daughter, as her older sister Maia (who died at the age of ten, but remained present in some of the poems) as well as a brother (Charles) had died before her birth. Alone, because she had remained single (because of her stubborn refusal to follow in “exile” the man she would have loved, a sailor whom she dated at the time (in 1924-1926 it is said)). She is a poor and simple peasant woman who writes her poems on a schoolgirl’s notebook in her small house of the Vieux-Marché in Traoñ an Dour, an isolated hamlet after her hard day’s work in the fields.

She read Breton from a very young age, but only started writing it in the 1960s. She attended school, with the sisters in the neighboring town of Trégrom, only from the age of six to twelve (1917); but, victim of a bone disease, she then followed some correspondence courses for young girls from rural areas. She was therefore quite fluent in French, although she had learned her catechism in Breton, as was then the rule.

Looking for a Breton language magazine, she was told that Ar Bed keltiek had a Breton nationalist tendency.
She herself embraced this cause, which was exceptional for a peasant woman. (According to other sources, it was discovered by Abbé Marsel Klerg).

She became known to the French public through André Voisin’s program Les Conteurs, in 1971.

His complete works (under the title Oberenn glok), were published in 2000. Printed in 1000 copies, and quickly sold out, they were reissued in 2005, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his birth.