The Writers of Wales Database

JONES, DAVID

Friar David Jones was born in Wales and has lived the monastic life for many years. He was introduced to Carthusian life in a small monastery in France, and subsequently achieved a doctorate in Rome in 1999. He currently resides as a hermit in Duleek, Co. Meath, Ireland, and since 1980, has been keeping a poetic journal. His publication In Perpetuum (Original Writing, 2008), covers the years 1995-2001. Much of the earlier work in this volume was analysed in detail by Dr Eva Schmid-Mörwald, in her doctoral thesis, subsequently published in the Analecta Cartusiana in 1994, under the title of The Lyre and the Cross.

David caused some interest in the field of Carthusian spirituality, as he became a test-case for the fundamental question: Is literary activity compatible with the purely contemplative life? David’s volume, entitled Alpha & Omega (Original Writing, 2009), covers 2000-2009; a period in which many upheavals took place. It represents his struggle to push his right to write in a Carthusian monastic setting. This explains why the early part of the work is situated in an Italian and French context, whilst the final part is situated in a more Celtic (Irish-Welsh) atmosphere. David’s Welsh linguistic heritage has influenced much of this later verse.

Reviews:
With respect to In Perpetuum (Original Writing, 2008)

"…Great, ever new, is the value that the reader discovers in reading each one of Fr David’s poems: it is the value of Truth, tinged with intense interior experience, with a very rich culture, with a sensitivity ever so human…"
Dr Lucia Musi 


Selected Publications:
Paradise Regained: A Welsh Novice Monk (Melrose Books, 2006)
In Perpetuum (Original Writing, 2008)
Alpha & Omega (Original Writing, 2009)
A World within The World (Original Writing, 2010)