Collected Poems of Idris Davies

For many, Idris Davies (1905–1953) was the archetypal poet of the Welsh Valleys, the poet of protest and passion. Though having the appeal of modern folksong, his work is also richly layered. It champions the ideals of a people struggling to come to terms with the great economic and religious changes of the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Rhymney, Davies worked underground as a miner before later becoming a teacher in London and South Wales. For Islwyn Jenkins, a close friend of the poet's and former Senior Lecturer at Trinity College, Carmarthen, the poetry of Idris Davies is "essentially that of a personal Welsh-English border experience." For Jim Perrin, who has written a new introduction to this collection, he is "the most significant and original Welsh poet to have written in English during the twentieth century."

"They are the best poetic document I know about a particular epoch in a particular place, and I think that they really have a claim to permanence… If all poets knew their proper material as he did, there would be less futile verse in the world." - T. S. Eliot

"This is poetry which in the best possible sense was meant to be popular; and it is also poetry which can speak to us about its time, but also about ours, as perhaps the best poetry should." - Paul Wright, Gwales.com

"The work is humane, dramatic, lyrical, sophisticated with a deceptive strength and a clear sense of rhythm." - Byron Beynon

Idris Davies (1905–1953) was born in Rhymney in south Wales. Originally a coalminer, he became a teacher and a poet, originally writing in Welsh but later exclusively in English. His work was inspired by mining disasters, the UK General Strike of 1926 and the Great Depression. The only poet to cover the significant events and huge changes of the early 20th century in the South Wales Valleys, his poems were referred to by T S Eliot as "the best poetic document I know about a particular epoch in a particular place."