“Watch the poetry platforms. Our street fighting bard will be knocking them flat soon.” – Peter Finch
"We negotiate the challenges of where we are and what we are with the notions of what we might have been. Dai balances the dark underground visions ... recognising the penance and the praise ... He knows who he is and reminds us of who we are by these appreciations of writers and artists. Art is not that which we simply view, it is what sustains and instructs us." – Tony Curtis, Nation. Cymru
An essential collection, Street Fighting and Other Past Times is a moving study of life, love, memory and loss. A late, but not too late, first poetry collection, from one of the leading literary interpreters of the South Welsh experience.
For readers who are interested in both the pre- and post-devolutionary cultural landscape of Wales, this is a crucial addition to the canon of Welsh writing in English, crowning and celebrating a life filled with enriching work at the coal-face of Welsh culture.
You can read Dai's essay, On Being a Poet in Wales, here in Nation. Cymru.
