'The Claims Office' is the startlingly good debut poetry collection from Dai George, a young writer originally from Cardiff. His method is mostly straightforward narrative but the textures and imagery are often elaborate and strange. This rich surface is undercut by an interesting attitude: a mix of rebellious energy and unflinching satire. His 'nature' poems are often anti-nature poems, for example the darkly funny 'Narwhal'. There are lively pieces about London and New York: 'Metroland' and 'New York on a Shoestring'; skewed loves poems: 'Plans with the Unmet Wife'. 'His works about his native Wales alternate between an edgy sarcasm and the elegiac tone of the collection's title poem, placing George very much in the lineage of poets like Duncan Bush, John Ormond, Mike Jenkins, Robert Minhinnick and R.S. Thomas; they display a deep suspicion of authority and a reluctance to conform to nationalist cliche. His spiky and tender character sketch of an old Valleys boxer, points to another influence, Gwyn Thomas. The generous forms and temperament of American poet C.K. Williams is another influence on this promising young author.
'The Claims Office' is the startlingly good debut poetry collection from Dai George, a young writer originally from Cardiff. His method is mostly straightforward narrative but the textures and imagery are often elaborate and strange. This rich surface is undercut by an interesting attitude: a mix of rebellious energy and unflinching satire. His 'nature' poems are often anti-nature poems, for example the darkly funny 'Narwhal'. There are lively pieces about London and New York: 'Metroland' and 'New York on a Shoestring'; skewed loves poems: 'Plans with the Unmet Wife'. 'His works about his native Wales alternate between an edgy sarcasm and the elegiac tone of the collection's title poem, placing George very much in the lineage of poets like Duncan Bush, John Ormond, Mike Jenkins, Robert Minhinnick and R.S. Thomas; they display a deep suspicion of authority and a reluctance to conform to nationalist cliche. His spiky and tender character sketch of an old Valleys boxer, points to another influence, Gwyn Thomas. The generous forms and temperament of American poet C.K. Williams is another influence on this promising young author.
'Dai George was born in Cardiff in 1986 and has studied in Bristol and New York, where he received a Masters in Fine Art from Columbia University's famous writing programme. Now living and teaching in London, but often back in Wales, he has had poems and critical articles published in The Guardian online, The Boston Review, Poetry Wales, New Welsh Review and others. His poetry has appeared in several anthologies, including the Salt Book of Younger Poets and Best British Poetry (2011 and forthcoming in 2013). He is at work on a novel about the Gunpowder Plot, starring the playwright Ben Jonson as a central character.
Dai George seems to me to offer something new to Welsh, and to British poetry. In fact, perhaps the poet he most reminds me of is the leading Northern Irish poet of the newer generation, Alan Gillis, not in terms of direct stylistic commonalities, but in that both these poets can and do switch successfully between a higher, lyrical style and something closer to demotic narrative. The diversity of Dai's style has been aided by the rigours of an MFA at Columbia - one of the best places anywhere to study poetry - where he has been introduced to wider ideas which have formed his work as a young poet away from the dominant influences of current British poetry. I expect Dai to fulfil his promise and to deliver a strong first collection in the next year or two. - Roddy Lumsden. "It doesn't matter whether this is a first collection or not. Many poets will struggle to produce work as exciting as this, no matter what number collection they are on. But the fact that there is certainly more to come from this highly talented poet is the most exciting thing of all. Dai George has got a big part to play in the future of poetry, and well beyond Wales. The Claims Office is where this all starts." - Carl Griffin, Wales Arts Review
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