List Of Writers

THOMAS, IFOR

11 Wingate Drive, Llanishen, Cardiff CF14 5LR.
Tel: (029) 2040 6734
Email: ifor.thomas@trackconsulting.com

Performance poet. Born in Pembrokeshire – he now lives in Cardiff. Founder member of many performance-based writing groups. He has won the John Tripp Award for spoken poetry and has been a prizewinner in the Cardiff International Poetry Competition. Ifor is a member of the Academi Members’ Committee. His most recent collection of poems, Body Beautiful, was on the Wales Book of the Year 2006 Short List. Click here to read more

Reviews:
With respect to Body Beautiful (Parthian, 2005)

”… In Ifor Thomas we have a real 21st Century voice; a voice that can make itself heard above the roar of traffic and the voices of kids as they come out of school. Ifor’s is the kind of poetic voice we need in these loud times. Listen to it. Listen to it now…"
Ian MacMillan

"...With a superb sense of timing, Ifor Thomas grafts his expertise in performance poetry onto sharper, leaner, new work...the poems remain suffused with a gutsy tenderness and compassion..."
www.dufoureditions.com  

Selected Publications:

A provocative and challenging collection of over 70 poems by a Pembrokeshire-born poet, comprising 33 new poems together with some poems which have appeared in previous publications. Comprising of finely crafted, entertaining poems, this collection is often provocative sometimes achingly funny. The words trace a development from ferocious performance poetry to an increasingly bittersweet seam of writing, challenging, witty and honest.

To purchase this title from gwales.com, please click on its front cover

Body Beautiful (Parthian, 2005)

The subject matter of this book could hardly be more sobering - it chronicles the poet’s experience of being diagnosed with prostate cancer, of undergoing surgery and then of entering recovery. The book’s title, although taken from one of the few poems in the collection which are not about cancer, nonetheless summarises how many people will feel towards a disease which is regarded with dread. As might be expected, much if the material is unsettling, poignant and chilling, and yet the poet’s characteristic humour - very black on occasions - is displayed frequently. While treating the subject seriously, it manages to do so with an engaging wit, memorable imagistic ability, clear human sympathy and commendable absence of self pity.

To purchase this title from gwales.com, please click on its front cover