Poetry
Raiders' Dawn
Alun Lewis · 1942
Synopsis
Poems written in the training camps of the British army, while waiting to leave. A soldier watches his comrades sleep in a requisitioned barn. A woman stays at home and no one knows what to write to her. The Welsh hills return in the middle of drill, without having been called up. Other pieces speak of the miners of the south and of the children one will not have. The enemy never appears.
Context
The collection appeared in 1942, after the publisher had himself written to the author, having read his poems and stories in the press; a story collection followed the same year, and the soldiers carried the verses with them. What one finds in it is not war poetry in the ordinary sense: there is neither combat nor enemy, but waiting, boredom, men asleep and the homeland returning without warning. The engraved portrait that opens the volume is by a friend of the author.
Who it is for
About a hundred pages in English, never translated. The language is simple and direct, without the difficulty of the poets of his generation.
Prizes and reception
The only collection published in his lifetime, reprinted six times, which immediately established him among the best English poets of the war.