Claims Office

Dai George is a poet, novelist and critic from Cardiff, now living in London. His first poetry collection was The Claims Office (Seren, 2013), and his next one, titled Karaoke King, will be published in 2021. He works as reviews editor for Poetry London, and his first novel, The Counterplot, is available as an Audible Original.

Dai George seems to me to offer something new to Welsh, and to British poetry. In fact, perhaps the poet he most reminds me of is the leading Northern Irish poet of the newer generation, Alan Gillis, not in terms of direct stylistic commonalities, but in that both these poets can and do switch successfully between a higher, lyrical style and something closer to demotic narrative. The diversity of Dai's style has been aided by the rigours of an MFA at Columbia - one of the best places anywhere to study poetry - where he has been introduced to wider ideas which have formed his work as a young poet away from the dominant influences of current British poetry. I expect Dai to fulfil his promise and to deliver a strong first collection in the next year or two. - Roddy Lumsden. "It doesn't matter whether this is a first collection or not. Many poets will struggle to produce work as exciting as this, no matter what number collection they are on. But the fact that there is certainly more to come from this highly talented poet is the most exciting thing of all. Dai George has got a big part to play in the future of poetry, and well beyond Wales. The Claims Office is where this all starts." - Carl Griffin, Wales Arts Review