A Last Respect celebrates the Roland Mathias Prize, awarded to outstanding poetry books by authors from Wales. It presents a selection of work from all eleven prize-winning books, by Dannie Abse, Tiffany Atkinson, Ruth Bidgood, Ailbhe Darcy, Rhian Edwards, Christine Evans, John Freeman, Philip Gross, Gwyneth Lewis, Robert Minhinnick, and Owen Sheers. It is a who’s who of contemporary poetry which shows the form in good health in Wales. The fifty-four poems in A Last Respect range across a gamut of subjects – relationships, nature, environmental issues, mortality, time, war, Wales, poetry itself, even the minefield of parents evenings. They are inventive, experimental, formal, original and of the highest quality.The poems are bookended by an essay by Professor Jane Aaron on the life and work of Roland Mathias, and an Afterword on him and on the state of poetry in Wales by Professor Daniel G Williams. These explorations of Mathias’ legacy make A Last Respect much more than an anthology by making it also an informative guide to poetry in Wales over the past fifty years.
