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Idris Davies (6 January 1905 – 6 April 1953) was a Welsh poet. Born in Rhymney, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales, he became a poet, originally writing in Welsh, but later writing exclusively in English.
Idris Davies | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 6 January 1905 Rhymney, near Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales |
| Died | 6 April 1953 (aged 48) Rhymney, near Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales |
| Occupation | Poet |
Davies was the only poet to cover the significant political events of the early 20th century in the South Wales Valleys and the South Wales Coalfield, which was informed from his experience of having worked at the coalface. He is best known for the verses "Bells of Rhymney", from his 1938 Gwalia Deserta (meaning literally "Wasteland of Wales"), which were adapted into a popular folk song.
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Davies was born at 16 Field Street, Rhymney, Monmouthshire, the Welsh-speaking son of colliery chief winderman (mine lift operator) Evan Davies and his wife Elizabeth Ann.[1] He learned English at school.[2] After leaving school at the age of fourteen, for the next seven years Davies worked underground as a miner in the nearby McLaren Pit at Abertysswg and later at the Maerdy Pit in Pontlottyn.
In the autumn of 1925, Davies enrolled in three series of evening classes. First he enrolled in continuation classes in English, arithmetic, drawing and science. Then he enrolled in commercial classes in English and bookkeeping, the latter for a Royal Society of Arts examination, which he passed at elementary level.[3] Finally he enrolled, albeit without any conviction, in another set of evening classes in arithmetic and English grammar,[4] during which he became interested in English literature, in particular the Romantics. He rejected Welsh literature outright because of his accusation of what 'the parsons', as he called them, had done to it.[5]
At the time, interest in the Labour Party was at 'white heat'.[6] Consequently, Davies became extremely interested in politics, attending a series of weekly lectures in the local Workmen's Library on the application of Marxism to recent economic history which was taught by a graduate of Ruskin College, Oxford. As elsewhere, the political temperature in Rhymney rose considerably in the winter of 1925. However, before the year was out Davies experienced a serious accident underground, his second accident, as a result of which he lost a little finger.[7] In the following year the much-vaunted General Strike of 1926 occurred, the local pit closed and he became unemployed. He spent the next four years following what he called 'the long and lonely self-tuition game'.[8]
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In 1929, having passed the Oxford Local Examination at his second attempt, Davies became a pupil-teacher, an honorary post, in his old school, working with his old headmaster.[9] The following year a new teacher training course started at Loughborough College. He enrolled in the September with handicraft as his main subject.[10] However, it became clear that he didn't have any aptitude for handicraft. Consequently, it was decided that he should also enrol on a course in advanced English literature that was held two days a week at the nearby University of Nottingham and that he should not have one main subject, but two, English and History. He passed the course at advanced level and qualified as a teacher in August 1932.
Davies started teaching in that year in Laysterne Junior Mixed Primary School in Hoxton in Hackney, London, during which he became friends with Dylan Thomas. Also he became acquainted with a group of Welsh litterateurs who frequented Griff's Bookshop, a Welsh bookshop in Cecil Court, off Charing Cross Road, which was kept by the Griffiths brothers.[2]
After the end of the Second World War, Davies was transferred to Wordsworth School (which perhaps was in Stoke Newington, London). However, he had become nostalgic for Wales. Consequently, in 1947, with the help of a local councillor, he returned to the Rhymney Valley to teach at the junior school in Cwmsyfiog Schools, New Tredegar.[11] He taught there until 1951 when the abdominal cancer that was to cost him his life began.[12] He died, aged 48, at his mother's house at 7, Victoria Road, Rhymney on Easter Monday, 6 April 1953 and was buried in Rhymney Public Cemetery.[13]
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Davies was introduced to poetry in the autumn of 1925, after having enrolled in a set of evening classes in arithmetic and English grammar, following which, at the behest of the teacher, he bought a book of poetry by Keats. Then, in the spring, he read Shelley, to whom a friend had introduced him and borrowed a book of poems from him to read,[14] which he followed by reading Wordsworth.
Davies had his first book Gwalia Deserta published in 1938, after his work had appeared in various places, the Western Mail, the Merthyr Express, the Daily Herald, the Left Review and Comment (a weekly periodical of poetry, criticism and short stories, edited by Victor Neuburg and Sheila Macleod).[citation needed]
Davies had his second book, an anthology of poems, published (by Faber & Faber) in 1945, the poems having been chosen by T. S. Eliot. Eliot thought that Davies' poems had a claim to permanence, describing them as "the best poetic document I know about a particular epoch in a particular place".[13]
Davies' final volume, Selected Poems, was published shortly before his death. Around this time Dylan Thomas wrote him a surprisingly touching letter. Thomas had read "Bells of Rhymney" as part of a St. David's Day radio broadcast, but told Davies that he did not feel the poem was particularly representative of Davies' work, as it was "not angry enough".[15]
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There are memorial plaques to Davies at Victoria Road[16] and at the town library.[17]
After his death over two hundred of his manuscript poems and a short verse-play, together with the typescripts of his comprehensive wartime diaries, were deposited at the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth. Later, more of his unpublished poems and most of his prose – an unfinished novel, essays, lecture notes and some of his letters – were found. Some of this later material appeared posthumously in The Collected Poems of Idris Davies (1972); Idris Davies (1972), and Argo Record No. ZPL.1181: Idris Davies (1972).[13]
There is a modern memorial sculpture for Davies in Rhymney, with an inscription reading "When April came to Rhymney with shower and sun and shower" – the opening line of his poem "Rhymney".[18]
| "The author of this lyrical sequence is moved by a fine indignation born of experience. His poem, therefore, is the outcry of a community as well as that of an individual. It expresses the hopes, betrayal, and suffering of the people of South Wales. It has the simplicity of folksong, of a modern folksong rich with the idiom and image of the contemporary scene and outlook on life. These songs ring true and their appeal is more than a literary one. The author takes his place with Welsh poets such as W. H. Davies and Huw Menai as one authorised by his people to sing for them, and to show the world in music what they have suffered and are still suffering in actuality" |
| — Gwalia Deserta, frontispiece, 1938 |
In September 2006 a refurbished grave memorial was unveiled, at a re-dedication service, in the town's cemetery.[19]
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The editor's frontispiece from Gwalia Deserta provides a useful summary of Davies' outlook.
In a diary entry Davies wrote: "I am a socialist. That is why I want as much beauty as possible in our everyday lives, and so I am an enemy of pseudo-poetry and pseudo-art of all kinds. Too many 'poets of the Left', as they call themselves, are badly in need of instruction as to the difference between poetry and propaganda ... These people should read William Blake on Imagination until they show signs of understanding him. Then the air will be clear again, and the land be, if not full of, fit for song."[20]
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Gwalia Deserta XXXVI
In the places of my boyhood
The pit-wheels turn no more,
Nor any furnace lightens
The midnight as of yore.
The slopes of slag and cinder
Are sulking on the rain,
And in derelict valleys
The hope of youth is slain.
And yet I love to wander
The early ways I went,
And watch from doors and bridges
The hills and skies of Gwent.
Though blighted be the valleys
Where man meets man with pain,
The things by boyhood cherished
Stand firm, and shall remain.
from Gwalia Deserta (1938)
Davies' first published volume was the 1938 extended poetical work Gwalia Deserta. The verses it contained were inspired partly by such mining disasters as that at Marine Colliery at Cwm near Ebbw Vale in 1927, and by the failure of the 1926 UK General Strike, the Great Depression in the United Kingdom and their combined effects on the South Wales valleys.
The "Bells of Rhymney" verses, perhaps Davies' most widely known work, appear as Part XV of the book. The stanzas follow the pattern of the well known nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons". In the late 1950s the verses were adapted into a folk song by Pete Seeger and became a folk rock standard. The song, entitled "The Bells of Rhymney", has been covered by many others since. More recently some of the other stanzas from Davies' Gwalia Deserta have also been set to music by Welsh performer Max Boyce as the song "When We Walked to Merthyr Tydfil in the Moonlight Long Ago".
In February 2010 Davies' work was mentioned, by Conservative MP David Davies and Plaid Cymru MP Hywel Williams, in a Parliamentary debate concerning health-care in Wales.[21]
The 2017 album Every Valley, by London-based alternative band Public Service Broadcasting, includes a version of Gwalia Deserta XXXVI set to music and re-titled Turn No More. It is sung by Manic Street Preachers' singer James Dean Bradfield.[22]
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In Davies' own lifetime:
- Gwalia Deserta (literally Wasteland of Wales) (1938) Dent
- The Angry Summer: A Poem of 1926 (1943) Faber & Faber
- Tonypandy and other poems (1945) Faber & Faber
- Selected Poems (1953) Faber & Faber
Published posthumously:
- Davies, Idris (1980). Jenkins, Islwyn (ed.). Collected poems of Idris Davies (Second ed.). Llandysul: Gomerian Press. ISBN 0-85088-141-2. Retrieved 22 May 2024.
- Davies, Idris; Conran, Anthony (1993). The Angry Summer. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. ISBN 9780708310908.
- Davies, Idris (1994). Johnston, Dafydd (ed.). The complete poems of Idris Davies. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. ISBN 0708312721.
- Davies, Idris (2002). A carol for the coalfield and other poems. Llanrwst: Gwasg Carreg Gwalch. ISBN 0863817025.
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