Poetry
Category: Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 206
ISBN: 9781854113160
Publication date: February 24, 2015
Price: £12.99
Alun Lewis (1915-1944), the remarkable poet and story writer, died, aged 28, in Burma during the Second World War. Some critics see him as the last of the great Romantic poets, a twentieth century Keats. Others view him as the bridge between pre-war poets like Auden and Yeats to post-war poets such as Hughes and Gunn. He was born and raised in Depression-struck south Wales and, following degrees in history at Aberystwyth and Manchester, became a teacher there. Early in 1940, despite his pacifist inclinations he enlisted and, after long periods of training, joined the war in India.
Becoming a soldier galvanised Lewis’s writing. By 1944 he had written two collections of poems and one of short stories, all published to considerable acclaim. Firmly established with Keith Douglas as the leading writer of the Second World War, Lewis’s death in an accident while on active service was huge loss to English literature. This Collected Poems comprises a body of work which has endured and which transcends the label ‘war poetry’; it is complete in itself and full of promise of greater things.
Alun Lewis
Alun Lewis, (1915-1944), the remarkable poet and short story writer, died, aged 28, in Burma in the Second World War. Some critics see him as the last of the great Romantic poets, a twentieth century Keats. Others describe his poetry as the path from pre-war Yeats and Auden to post-war poets like Hughes and Gunn. In Wales there are those who think his greater versatility and finer intelligence place him above his contemporaries Dylan Thomas and R.S. Thomas. Born and brought up near Aberdare, a mining region in south Wales, Lewis read history at Aberystwyth and Manchester universities with scholarships. After a brief period teaching in Caerphilly and despite pacifist inclinations, he enlisted in the Royal Engineers. He later joined the South Wales Borderers and was posted to India. Becoming a soldier had a stimulating effect on Lewis’s writing: Raiders’ Dawn, a collection of forty-seven poems, appeared in 1942 and early in 1943, The Last Inspection, a book of short stories, was published, both to considerable critical acclaim. Lewis died in an accident during active service in Burma in 1944. His second volume of poems, Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets, was published in 1945 alongside his Indian short stories, together with some letters, in In The Green Tree (1948). Morlais, Lewis’ previously unpublished novel from the 1930s, was published by Seren in July 2015.
Cary Archard
Cary Archard was born in south Wales, close to Aberdare, Alun Lewis’s home town. The editor of Poetry Wales from 1980-86, and founder of Poetry Wales Press, he is the general editor of the uniform edition of Alun Lewis’s works. Until recently he taught English and Philosophy in Bridgend.
