John Davies was born in 1944 and brought up in Cymmer,[1] a coal mining village in the Afan Valley, some ten miles north of Port Talbot in south Wales.
[4] Davies writes about Cymmer and his family in the first three poems of his 1985 collection, The Visitor's Book,[5] and again in Starting Point in his 1991 collection, Flight Patterns, where he writes: "Where you started from didn't stop because you left...You keep on looking back...You were never meant to leave and can't..." Davies also draws upon his uncle Joseph Chappell, a coal miner in Cymmer, in The Voice Box (in The Visitor's Book) and in Farmland (in Flight Patterns).
Much of Davies' work has been concerned with roots, language and belonging,[6] as Professor Elinor Shaffer has elaborated in her study of literary devolution.
[9] In 1954, the family moved to steel-making and English-speaking Port Talbot,[10] a town with a rich cultural tradition,[11] including connections with the poets Ruth Bidgood, Sally Roberts Jones, Moelwyn Merchant, Dylan Thomas, Edward Thomas and Gwyn Williams.
[17] Three of his collections, The Visitor's Book (1985), Flight Patterns (1991) and Dirt Roads (1997), include his reflections on his time in America.