Every Remembrance Day, I try to dedicate some time to thinking about the Welsh poet and pacifist Hedd Wyn, who lost his life at Passchendaele, a coerced casualty of the First World War.

He was a conscientious objector until 1917, when he reluctantly volunteered in order to prevent his younger brother from being forced to fight and die in his place. He dreamed of winning the bard’s chair at the National Eisteddfod, awarded to the best poem of any year. His poem – Yr Arwr – was submitted from the trenches, but he fell before ever knowing it had claimed that year’s grand prize. As a mark of respect, the chair was draped in black.

He has become a personal hero to many others, and to many others throughout Wales, his legacy becoming increasingly folkloric as the years march on.

I was honoured to get the chance to make a short documentary for BBC Wales, using their archive, exploring the various and often wildly contradictory meanings we project onto the war dead in their absence.

I attempted to render this absence by creating a series of animated environments from Wyn’s life, charged with his memory but devoid of his presence.