Jones, Glyn

(1905-1995)

   Poet, short-story writer and novelist, he was born in Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorganshire, and was educated at Cyfarthfa Castle Grammar School. He was deeply affected by the poverty he saw as a teacher in the slums of Cardiff in the 1920s and 1930s, something he later wrote about in his novel The Learning Lark (1960). Although dismissed from his post as a conscientious objector in the Second World War, from 1952 until his retirement in 1965 he taught at Glantaf County School, Cardiff. He became a fluent writer and speaker of Welsh, but felt constrained composing poetry in Welsh, as it was not his mother tongue. Nevertheless, he did translate Welsh poetry into English and collaborated with other Welsh translators. The Dream of Jake Hopkins (1954) was dramatized for radio. The first chapter of his novel The Dragon Has Two Tongues (1968) is biographical. His Selected Poems (1975) collects much of his later work and his Collected Poems was published posthumously in 1996. Some of his poems: "Again," "Dafydd's Seagull and the West Wind," "Esyllt," "Merthyr," "Swifts," "The Common Path," "Where All Were Good to Me, God Knows."

   Sources: Dylan Thomas's Choice: An Anthology of Verse Spoken by Dylan Thomas. Ralph Maud and Aneirin Talfan Davies, eds. New Directions, 1963. 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 Book of Welsh Verse in English. Gwyn Jones, ed. Oxford University Press, 1977. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Twentieth Century Anglo-Welsh Poetry. Dannie Abse, ed. Seren Books / Dufour Editions, 1997.