T. Harri Jones

Description

For many, T. Harri Jones (1921-1965) is the last great unknown Welsh poet of the 20th century. Born at Cwm Crogau, in the parish of Llanafan Fawr near Builth Wells, Jones was the son of a road worker and servant girl, and the grandson of a shepherd who predicted, at his birth, that he would become a poet. His English studies at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth were interrupted in 1941 when he volunteered to serve in the Navy. Jones wrote poetry throughout this period, and continued to write after he returned to Aberystwyth and during his subsequent teaching career in England. His first published poem appeared in the New Welsh Review in 1946. Unable to secure a university lecturing post in the UK, in 1959 he accepted a position at University College, Newcastle, New South Wales. Jones published three volumes of verse in his lifetime and wrote a great deal more. In them, he appears a confessional poet in the modern manner, baring his life with astonishing frankness and sensitivity. The poems reveal him in all his passion and anguish, his vulnerability and lovability. Lucidly and obsessively, he liberated himself from the cramp of chapel religion as from rural isolation to enter the modern age. A sufferer of depression, Jones struggled with emotional and personal anxieties. Tragically, he drowned in unexplained circumstances in a bathing pool near his Australian home, and his ashes were returned to Llanafan Fawr.

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