- Bird River
- ISBN: 9781845279370
- John Davies
- Publication: September 2023
- Format: Paperback, 210x148 mm, 108 pages
John Davies is a poet and carver of wooden birds, whose prior career as an academic has taken him from his Port Talbot birthplace to teach English Literature in North Wales (where he now lives) and North America. Birds and the river Clwyd are the threads that ties the whole together.
Author Biography:
Born in Cymmer Afan near Port Talbot in 1944, John Davies left Aberystwyth University with an MA in English Literature. Apart from three years in America two on teacher exchanges in Michigan and Washington and one at Brigham Young University, Utah he was head of the English Department at Prestatyn High School. John has published eight books of poetry and edited several anthologies and has been carving birds for almost fifty years. His wife Marilyn paints them. Their work has appeared in recent years mainly in Oriel Ffin y Parc, Llanrwst and Oriel Glasfryn, Caerwys.
Further Information:
The book devotes chapters to wood carving, the art of sourcing driftwood along the river, and shares personal or admiring portraits of many figures of note in the wood carving or literary spheres.
This is a book to take on holiday, to dip into, particularly if holidaying in North Wales, as it is full of fascinating eclectic detail. It is a cabinet of curiosities. It is always enthralling to see a craftsman at work, and here we can enjoy not only Davies's obvious skill of carving accurate wooden birds and the care he takes to shape feathers, head tilts, legs and colouring, but also his knowledge of their habits and of other north Wales wildlife, while his ability with the pen shines through as he shares his poetry and writes informative essays about notable writers and craftsmen from north Wales and America.
'Bird River is impossible not to like, and it is an important record of north Welsh life, people and nature.' Books Council of Wales report
