This volume deals with the 20th-century literature that is either Anglo-Welsh or that which relates to Wales. The argument of how writers ground themselves in their imagined Wales as a means of anchoring themselves against groundlessness in modern civilization, is also examined.

Lawrence ... describes the poems in this first collection of his unrhymed poems] as "intended as an essential story, or history, or confession," the critical experience occurring in the period of, "roughly, the sixth lustre of a man's life"-that is, from the age of 25 to 30. His Argument emphasizes the dramatic nature of the sequence. He speaks of "the protagonist" and of "the conflict of love and hate that] goes on between the man and the woman, and between these two and the world around them, till it reaches some sort of conclusion, they transcend into some condition of blessedness."...

Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923) was the volume that Lawrence himself described as his best collection of poetry. Composed in various locations during his exile-in Italy, France, Germany and the United States-this long collection occupies a crucial place in the development of his poetry and is that most unusual of creations: a masterpiece of modernist nature writing. This version offers the full text of the first British edition (which included the poems from the short 'Tortoises' volume, unlike the US edition).