Cary Archard – författare

Dannie Abse, whose career as a poet spans sixty years, has made a huge contribution to the literature and literary life of Wales and to poetry and prose in the English Language. The Sourcebook is an essential companion to the poetry, prose, drama and critical writings of this major poet.Cary Archard has edited and written about Abse's work for over twenty years and collects here a marvellous representative selection of Abse's own writings, together with criticism of his work, which illuminates Abse's achievements for both students and general readers.Includes:Biographical and critical introductionSelection of Abse's criticism, autobiography and fictionInterviewsReviews of Abse's poetry over sixty yearsCritical essays of Abse's poetry, some newly commissionedBibliographyDannie Abse practised for many years as a doctor in a London chest clinic. Among his many publications are a dozen books of poetry and five novels, the last of which, The Strange Case of Dr Simmonds and Dr Glas was longlisted for the Booker Prize. His most recent book of poems, Running Late, won the Roland Mathias Prize and his prose memoir, The Presence, was Wales Book of the Year 2008.Cary Archard was born in south Wales, close to Aberdare, Alun Lewis's home town. The editor of Poetry Wales from 1980-86, and founder of Poetry Wales Press, he is the general editor of the uniform edition of Alun Lewis's works. Until recently he taught English and Philosophy in Bridgend.

Alun Lewis (1915-1944) was one of the few great British writers of the Second World War. His early death at the age of twenty-eight robbed Wales of its most promising poet and story writer. Although he had been writing since an early age, becoming a soldier had a stimulating effect on Lewis's writing: his first book of poems, Raiders' Dawn, was published in 1942, and The Last Inspection, a collection of stories, appeared in the same year, alerting critics and editors to the arrival of a new war writer. Both books are characterised by vivid realism and emotional power.Later in 1942 Lewis's new regiment, the South Wales Borderers, travelled to India. His experiences there are recreated in the beautiful poems of Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets and the stories and letters of In the Green Tree. On the reputation of these four books Alun Lewis is widely seen, with Keith Douglas, as the outstanding writer of World War Two.Collected Stories reprints the war stories in their entirety for the first time. It also collects stories published in student magazines and newspapers such as The Guardian, together with several previously unseen. In bringing together all this material, editor Cary Archard shows Lewis's development from remarkable schoolboy writer to mature and established author whose stories appeared in magazines such as Horizon and Lilliput. "... one of the mightiest poets and fiction writers of the twentieth century... a superb Collected Stories" Richard Simpson, Tar River Poetry"So lyrical, so larky, that, almost unconsciously, one starts to read them aloud to an empty room"Sunday Times"Each story is a gem, full of wise understanding of human experience, and deeply moving"PN Review"Stories of such artistry that one is inclined to reread them immediately to savour the moments they capture" Publishers' WeeklyAlun Lewis (1915-1944), the remarkable poet and short story writer, died, aged twenty-eight, in Burma in the Second World War. Some critics see him as the last of the great Romantic poets, a twentieth century Keats. Others describe his poetry as the path from pre-war Yeats and Auden to post-war poets like Hughes and Gunn. In Wales there are those who think his greater versatility and finer intelligence place him above his contemporaries Dylan Thomas and R.S. Thomas.