BIOGRAPHY

Alun 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.

Born and brought up near Aberdare in South Wales, the son of teachers, Lewis read history at Aberystwyth and Manchester. Early in 1940, after a brief period teaching and despite his pacifist inclination, he enlisted in the Royal Engineers. In the following year he joined the South Wales Borderers and travelled to the war in India. Becoming a soldier had a stimulating effect on Lewis's writing: Raiders' Dawn, a collection of forty-seven poems, appeared in 1942 and early in 1943, The Last Inspection, a book of short stories, was published, both to considerable critical acclaim. In March 1944, Lewis died in an accident on active service in Burma. His second volume of poems, Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets, was published in 1945 and his Indian short stories, together with some letters, In The Green Tree (1948).

from Alun Lewis COLLECTED POEMS, C. Archard (1994)