Collected Poems Emyr Humphreys

Emyr Humphreys is best known as one of the most distinguished novelists that Wales has yet produced. He is also an accomplished poet, and this collection includes all the poems that he wishes to see preserved. The poetry of Emyr Humphreys has long acquired a kind of underground reputation, as samples of the work (appearing, most notably, in Penguin Modern Poets: 27) offered tantalizing glimpses of its distinctive quality. In particular, the 1970 Ancestor Worship sequence was rumoured to be a major achievement, even though copies of it were virtually unobtainable. To reread it here, in the Collected Poems, is to appreciate the way its stature grows from its power to reveal the full scale and consequence of Humphreys's lifelong preoccupations with country, language, power and art. With this comes the realization that his novels and poems are different aspects of a single complex whole.