"Wales has provided Britain with some of the finest poetry of the century, from the modernism of David Jones, the powerful lyrics of Dylan Thomas and the understatement of R. S. Thomas to a
host of talented younger poets. In this, the definitive anthology of Anglo-Welsh poetry, Dannie Abse, himself one of Wales's most dsitinguished poets, has chosen the outstanding poets and poems
of the last century, displaying a breadth and variety which belies the usual notions of "regional poetry." Abse's selection will delight, surprise and provoke. It begins with Georgian poets W.
H. Davies and Edward Thomas and the war poet Wilfred Owen. It includes the miner-poet Idris Davies, the lyrics of Vernon Watkins and writers such as Tony Conran, T. H. Jones and Nigel Jenkins,
for whom Welsh language poetry is a major influence. Polemicists such as Harry Webb and John Tripp stand beside the elegance of John Ormond and Leslie Norris, while history and world events
loom in the work of Tony Curtis and Duncan Bush. Robert Minhinnick, John Davies, Paul Henry and Stephen Knight add to the list of another generation of talented poets. And, as the century
progressed, so women poets gained wider readership: Jean Earle, Gillian Clarke, Christine Evans, Gwyneth Lewis, Hilary Llewellyn-Williams and Deryn Rees-Jones among them. English language
poetry in Wales is largely a 20th-century phenomenon: as this anthology demonstrates, its contribution to poetry in Britain is influential beyond its brief history."
