His poems were among the first classic works to be republished as a result of a 2004 incentive on the part of the Welsh Assembly Government.
[2] Having moved to Merthyr Vale, where his father was working, he became politically active and wrote for socialist publications, until promotion forced him to take the employer's side.
During the First World War, he began writing poetry and contributing to mainstream newspapers such as the Western Mail.
[5] He eventually moved to Penygraig, and often faced hardship, receiving a civil list pension from 1949, thanks to the intervention of the Port Talbot Forum.
[6] One of his sons, Alun Menai Williams, was an army medic and a prominent anti-Fascist campaigner who joined the International Brigade and fought in the Spanish Civil War.