In this innovative new collection, Mike Jenkins continues his life-long fascination with the history and fate of Wales, with the glories of its valleys and with the decline of its post-industrial landscape. In contrast, his career in teaching left him with a sense of optimism about young people, about the prospect of change and with an eagerness to embrace changing times. His sensitive awareness of the natural world, or what is available of the natural world in an urban context, is a frequently poignant feature of his work. Above all, though, these poems, like his prize-winning short stories, are full of colourful characters, dialogue, and incident.Mike Jenkins is now a full-time writer and teacher of Creative Writing, after spending over 30 years in teaching. Author of seven previous poetry collections for Seren, he has also published a novel, The Fugitive Three (Cinnamon Press, 2008) and a collection of short fiction, Child of Dust (2005). He has also published poetry and novellas for children. He is former editor of Poetry Wales and is co-editor and founder of Red Poets magazine. He has won an Eric Gregory Award, Welsh Arts Council Young Writers' Prize, John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry and, in 1998, the Wales Book of the Year for Wanting to Belong (Seren, 1997). Jenkins has appeared at the Hay and Aldeburgh festivals, has had a BBC Wales programme dedicated to his work, and has read many of his poems on TV and radio.
