Poetry 1900-2000: W H Davies

Poetry 1900 - 2000 is the Library Of Wales poetry anthology edited by Meic Stephens which will be read and discussed on Wednesday 22nd April in the bar at the London Welsh Centre, Grays Inn Rd in the company of Meic Stephens, poet Paul Henry, Fraser Cains and any poets and friends there on the night.

Here is the first in our series of lives of the poets taken from the profiles Meic Stephens gives us as a taster in the anthology.

It starts with the hobo WH Davies, author of the Autobiography of the Super Tramp which catapaulted him to instant fame in1908. Born in 1871 in Newport, Gwent he was brought up by his father’s parents in a pub in Newport’s docklands. Apprenticed to a picture framer at the age of 14 he became a wanderer and lover of art, and nature which he discovered on walks in rural Gwent. In 1893 at the age of 23 with a small sum left him by his grandmother he left for America to seek his fortune but without success: he became a hobo riding the boxcars and in 1899 on his way to the Klondyke goldfields he fell from a train and had his right leg amputated at the knee.

He returned to London and in 1905 began publishing his own poetry and with the success of Super Tramp and patronage from the likes of George Bernard Shaw he became a man of letters. In 1923 he married a former prostitute. ‘Young Emma’, their story, was published posthumously in 1980. He died in his home Glendower in Gloucestrshire in 1940.

The poem he is best remembered for is Leisure which opens:

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

His poems celebrate nature and touch on social injustice and the suffering of marginal people.

Text: Fraser Cains. Image: plaque at Davies' birthplace, by Martinevans123 at wikimedia.