Idris Davies (1905-1953) was born in Rhymney in south Wales. Originally a coalminer, he became a teacher and a poet, originally writing in Welsh but later exclusively in English. His work was inspired by mining disasters, the UK General Strike of 1926 and the Great Depression. The only poet to cover the significant events and huge changes of the early 20th century in the South Wales Valleys, his poems were referred to by T S Eliot as "the best poetic document I know about a particular epoch in a particular place."