Overview

A Darker Way is a collection of poems and songs by Grahame Davies which traces a hard-won but redemptive path between idealism and irony, failure and faith. These poems are alert to both the superficiality and the seriousness of the everyday, often showing that human feelings are complicated and surprising. Renowned not only as a poet, but also as a lyricist, his lyrics explore belief and unbelief, meaning and mystery, dealing with love and loss with both realism and compassion. The spiritual, even the supernatural, is never far from the surface in these poems, but Davies never settles for the simplistic. His quiet, unassuming style is powerful, moving, and redemptive.

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9781781727515

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Reviews

'In this unusual and moving collection, Davies circles an elusive religious faith, and often finds redemption through community. With a novelist's empathy for ordinary, decent, slightly damaged characters, he introduces us to 'Speedway Eddie', 'Happy Larry', and a former work colleague who was the ""queen of parties"" but fell out of favour and ""had no leaving do."" When she re-emerges one night on the narrator's doorstep delivering his take-away, smart and feisty as ever, his distrust of a showy personality is banished: ""I could have wept, / and not with pity for her, but with pride.""'- Colleague.;'Encounters for Davies are forms of gentle learning and may extend to the edge of the supernatural. The sequence Visitors calmly recounts various kinds of haunting, ranging from a beautiful love-poem, 'Found', to a disappointed account of a hurried business-meeting with the devil ('VVIP'). Davies has the knack of writing poems-as-stories where nothing much happens, and yet, as in a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, the reader's mind is planted with seedlings of insight and longing. He can bring places to life, too; when he says 'Goodbye to a Home' in one poem, and celebrates 'A New Home' in another, both homes are themselves imagined as conscious, copiously beneficent spirits.; Central to the collection is a sequence commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster, accompanied by a selection of photos by I. C. ""Chuck"" Rapoport. Here, the power of the poems lies in their simplicity and child-eyed directness, qualities sustained even in the complex form of the villanelle chosen for the elegy, 'The Graves of Aberfan'.; Grahame's poems are touched by the sacred, achieving a balanced transcendence in their awareness that, so often, ""life is too big"". Despite the shadows, A Darker Way is like a glowing hearth where humour and lyricism, comfort and blessing are exchanged. It feels a privilege to have been invited.' - Carol Rumens.

"'In this unusual and moving collection, Davies circles an elusive religious faith, and often finds redemption through community. With a novelist's empathy for ordinary, decent, slightly damaged characters, he introduces us to 'Speedway Eddie', 'Happy Larry', and a former work colleague who was the ""queen of parties"" but fell out of favour and ""had no leaving do."" When she re-emerges one night on the narrator's doorstep delivering his take-away, smart and feisty as ever, his distrust of a showy personality is banished: ""I could have wept, / and not with pity for her, but with pride.""'- Colleague.;'Encounters for Davies are forms of gentle learning and may extend to the edge of the supernatural. The sequence Visitors calmly recounts various kinds of haunting, ranging from a beautiful love-poem, 'Found', to a disappointed account of a hurried business-meeting with the devil ('VVIP'). Davies has the knack of writing poems-as-stories where nothing much happens, and yet, as in a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, the reader's mind is planted with seedlings of insight and longing. He can bring places to life, too; when he says 'Goodbye to a Home' in one poem, and celebrates 'A New Home' in another, both homes are themselves imagined as conscious, copiously beneficent spirits.; Central to the collection is a sequence commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster, accompanied by a selection of photos by I. C. ""Chuck"" Rapoport. Here, the power of the poems lies in their simplicity and child-eyed directness, qualities sustained even in the complex form of the villanelle chosen for the elegy, 'The Graves of Aberfan'.; Grahame's poems are touched by the sacred, achieving a balanced transcendence in their awareness that, so often, ""life is too big"". Despite the shadows, A Darker Way is like a glowing hearth where humour and lyricism, comfort and blessing are exchanged. It feels a privilege to have been invited.' - Carol Rumens."

Author Information

Grahame Davies is a poet, novelist, editor and literary critic, who has won numerous prizes, including the Wales Book of the Year Award. He is the author of 17 books in Welsh and English, including: The Chosen People, a study of the relationship of the Welsh and Jewish peoples; The Dragon and the Crescent, a study of Wales and Islam; a novel, Everything Must Change, based on the life of the French philosopher Simone Weil, and the popular work of psychogeography, Real Wrexham. His is a native of Coedpoeth near Wrexham but is now based in Cardiff and London. He travels internationally as a reader and lecturer, carries out many high-profile poetry commissions, and is a much sought-after lyricist for classical composers. His poetry has been translated into many languages and is widely anthologised. His latest non-fiction book Real Cambridge was published in 2021.

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