For many, Idris Davies 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. (T.S. Eliot)
