The Writers of Wales Database

HENRY, PAUL

Website: http://www.paulhenrywales.co.uk
Audiovisual footage available here

Poet. Born in Aberystwyth and now based in Gwent. Described by U.A. Fanthorpe as “a poet’s poet”, he has published five collections with Seren. His work has been widely anthologised and regularly appears in journals as diverse as Poetry Wales (which he has edited) and The TLS.  A selection of his earlier work,  The Breath of Sleeping Boys and other poems, appeared from Carreg Gwalch in 2004, in the Corgi Writers of Wales series. Originally a singer–songwriter, he regularly tutors Creative Writing courses at Ty Newydd. He has read and performed at writers’ centres, festivals and universities across the UK and Europe. Awards have included a Gregory Award from the Society of Authors and two Academi Published Writers' Bursaries. His latest collection, Ingrid’s Husband (Seren, 2007), was translated into French by Gérard Augustin and was published by L’Harmattan. Paul Henry currently presents the ‘Inspired’ series of arts programmes for BBC Radio Wales. He is a Fellow of The Welsh Academy.

Further introductions to Paul Henry’s poetry can be found on the British Council’s ‘Contemporary Writers’ web site:  http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/   
and on ‘Poetry International Web’:  http://www.poetryinternationalweb.org

 

Reviews:
With respect to Time Pieces (Seren, 1991)

”…Paul Henry’s poetry is sensitively attuned to ultimate realities in the domestic mode… a poet well worth keeping an eye on.."
Book News from Wales

With respect to Captive Audience (Seren, 1996)

”…Henry reminds us that extraordinary poetry is to be discovered in the ordinary events of love… there are few contemporary poets who are as confident of their emotional terrain, few as able to praise so uninhibitedly…”
New Welsh Review

With respect to The Milk Thief (Seren, 1998)

”…The haunting music, the cherished objects, the blank landscape of beaches, “the missed trajectories” of space and time all amount to a book which finds, like William Carlos Williams, its brightness in bits of broken glass and fragments of the marvellous…”
TLS


Selected Publications:
Time Pieces (Seren, 1991)
Captive Audience (Seren, 1996)
The Milk Thief (Seren, 1999)
The Slipped Leash (Seren, 2002)
The Breath of Sleeping Boys and Other Poems (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2004)
Ingrid’s Husband (Seren, 2007)
The Brittle Sea (Seren, 2010)




The Milk Thief (Seren, 1999)

The Milk Thief is time - as it colours the lives of the characters and relatives who feature in Paul Henry’s new collection of poems. The first two sections of the book are set primarily against the backdrop of the Ceredigion coast in Wales. A giant turtle washed up on the beach, an encounter with the British Boomerang Champion, and the summer sandals worn by the poet’s father, are among the incidents, people and objects that inspire these poems. The coastline also features in a sequence centred around twelve impressionistic portraits of female relatives entitled ’The Visitors’. Yet here, as elsewhere throughout the book, belonging is ultimately defined by love and not by place - a belief reinforced in the harder-edged final section of the book, ’Newport East’, where the colder realities of city life are seen through the poet’s sympathetic and transforming eye.

To purchase this title from gwales.com, please click on its front cover


The Slipped Leash (Seren, 2002)

The choices we make - between music and silence, impulse and security; between the “torn land” and the “dazzling sea” - feature strongly in this new collection of poems by Paul Henry. A twenty-first century muse is rehoused in the jazz clubs and seedy hotels of European cities. Yet the loss of a mother, a singer, depicted in a sequence which closes the book, brings back to heart what ultimately matters: that early music which shapes all our longings.

To purchase this title from gwales.com, please click on its front cover


Ingrid’s Husband (Seren, 2007)

How the living haunt themselves is the concern of Ingrid’s Husband, and the author discovers his spirits through an imagery of absences: a child’s signature in the dust of an old guitar; the stone plinth where a cafe once stood; a white balloon drifting down a shopping arcade; a chateau, still furnished with the belongings of its vanished owner… Love continues to underscore the commonplace in Paul Henry’s fifth collection and this lyric poet’s distinctive voice continues to haunt its readers.

To purchase this title from gwales.com, please click on its front cover

Eligible Writers on Tour subjects offered:

1. Read and discuss own work, (can include songs).
2. A broad range of Poetry and Fiction workshops for writers’ groups, higher or further education students and secondary school pupils.
3. "The Living Muse": poetry workshops for PGCE English students.

AGE RANGE: secondary school pupils and adults.