He Sings The Broken Cities

In his latest collection of direct and visceral verse from the Valleys, Mike
Jenkins ranges across various themes. There are anguished poems of witness
to the ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide by Israel in Gaza. There are
poems exploring history, protest and rebellion in Cymru, Ireland and across
the world. And in his dialect poems, we hear voices from the margins of
society, in the dialect of the broken, the downtrodden and dispossessed
voices of modern times.

Running throughout these vivid and musical poems are echoes of R.S.
Thomas, Mogg Williams and most notably Idris Davies, another poet from
the Valleys whose work, like Mike Jenkins, wears the scars of his hometown
streets and hills.

Here is poetry as protest born from noticing. The 24/7 news cycle can make
us numb to the suffering of others. We swipe; we click on repeat; but this
poetry makes us stop, think and feel.

Mike Jenkins is one of only a few Welsh poets to put his head above the
parapet, and these poems deliver an urgent plea to the world: ‘Wake up!
Speak! Do something!’ —Patrick Jones

ISBN: 978-1-912710-88-1, 64 pps, £10 inc. p. and p.