The Brittle Sea

For two decades Paul Henry has been quietly building an oeuvre of beautifully crafted poems. Born into a family of musicians, music pervades his poems on childhood, as do a large cast of aunts, neighbours, friends and relations, many of whom appear in Dylan Thomas-like character sketches. Some of his earliest portrait-poems are set against the Breconshire villages where Henry lived from his mid teens; a move south to Newport inspires poems about the undulating river Usk and the post-industrial cityscape. And, by popular request, in the ''new poems'' section, rugby fans will find the three poems Henry was commissioned to write for BBC2''s ''Poetry in Motion'', which celebrated the Welsh national rugby team as they prepared for the 2008 Rugby World Cup.

"Paul Henry is the poet I wish I could be. If I ever meet a genie and get three wishes, I''m asking for his musicality, his use of back-story and his ability to create the most haunting resonance."
Sheenagh Pugh

"His poems possess... unpretentious clarity and directness... Henry is a very fine poet."
Agenda

Paul Henry was born in Aberystwyth and came to poetry through songwriting. Described by the late U.A. Fanthorpe as "a poet''s poet" who combines "a sense of the music of words with an endlessly inventive imagination", his work has been widely anthologised and regularly appears in journals as diverse as Poetry Wales and the TLS. His other collections, all published by Seren, are Ingrid''s Husband (2007), The Breath of Sleeping Boys and other poems, The Slipped Leash, The Milk Thief, Captive Audience and Time Pieces. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1989. He ran the Ledbury Festival''s Poetry Cafe at Hereford''s Courtyard Theatre. A regular tutor at Ty Newydd, Wales''s national writers'' centre, he also works as an associate lecturer at the University of Glamorgan and as a radio presenter for BBC Wales. He lives in Crickhowell, Powys.