Jones, David Michael

(1895-1974)

   He was born in Brockley, Kent, of a Welsh father. From 1910 to 1914 he was a student at the Camberwell School of Art, London. In January 1915 he enlisted in the Welch Fusiliers, was wounded in 1916 in the attack on Mametz Wood on the Somme, and was evacuated from France with severe trench fever (a disease caused by lice) in February 1918. From 1919 to 1921 he worked at the Westminster School of Art and was commissioned to paint the lettering of the war memorial at New College, Oxford. His long poem In Parenthesis (1937)-which has its climax at Mametz in World War I-won the 1938 Hawthornden prize. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1955, Companion of Honor in 1974, and received an honorary doctor of letters from the University of Wales in 1960. He died at Harrow, Middlesex, and is memorialized by a stone in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey along with other poets of the First World War. Some of his poems: "Mabinog's Liturgy," "The Anathemata," "The Sleeping Lord," "The Tribune's Visitation," "The Tutelar of the Place," "The Wall."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Everyman's Book of English Verse. John Wain, ed. J.M. Dent, 1981. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Poetry Anthology, 1912-1977. Daryl Hine and Joseph Parisi, eds. Houghton Mifflin, 1978. Twentieth Century Anglo-Welsh Poetry. Dannie Abse, ed. Seren Books / Dufour Editions, 1997.