extra context

• Bardd Gwlad= land poet

  An uneducated bard who travelled celebratory events and was cherished by the community. Very different to the English model of a lone Romantic.
• Owen's inspirations

  • RS Thomas (he sent Thomas a copy of the Blue Book after it was published with a thankyou note)
  • Dylan Thomas (Sheers wrote A Visit to America about Thomas)
  • David Jones (a wartime writer, whose book In Parenthesis Sheers wrote an admiring essay on)
  • Alun Lewis (Wrote a play called If I should go away about Lewis)
• Sheers is a keen environmentalist, as can be seen from his co-founding of the Black Mountains College project, and sees landscape poetry as playing a role in this.