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Idris Davies (6 January 1905 – 6 April 1953) was a Welsh people poet. Born in Rhymney, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales, he became a poet, originally writing in Welsh, but later writing exclusively in English.
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 Coal mining. 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.
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.Jenkins, p. 57. Finally he enrolled, albeit without any conviction, in another set of evening classes in arithmetic and English grammar,Jenkins, p. 58. during which he became interested in English literature, in particular the Romanticism. He rejected Welsh literature outright because of his accusation of what 'the parsons', as he called them, had done to it.
At the time, interest in the Labour Party was at 'white heat'.Jenkins, p. 59. 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.Jenkins, p. 62. 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'.Jenkins, p. 74.
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.
After the end of the Second World War, Davies was transferred to Wordsworth School (which perhaps was in Stoke Newington). 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.Jenkins, p. 202. He taught there until 1951 when the abdominal cancer that was to cost him his life began.Jenkins, p. 225. 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.
Davies had his first book Gwalia Deserta published in 1938. His work had earlier appeared in the Western Mail, the Merthyr, the Daily Herald, the Left Review and Comment (a weekly periodical of poetry, criticism and short stories, edited by Victor Neuburg and Sheila Macleod).
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".
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 Saint 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".
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).
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".
| "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.
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."
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 music by Pete Seeger and became a folk rock standard. The song, entitled "The Bells of Rhymney", has been Cover version 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.
The 2017 album Every Valley, by London-based Alternative rock 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.
Published posthumously:
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