When poets outlive their period of greatest influence, it is all too easy to chart a decline in how their works are received and written about. Davies, as part of the Georgian phenomenon, had the ‘misfortune’ not to die in the First World War and the temerity to keep on writing further into the new century. Inevitably, later readers will see the historic arc and survey a collected bulk of criticism (some of it negative) which built up as the poet wrote against the tenor of the times. He was not the only case, of course. Published Georgians who continued to write after 1918 were destined to suffer the same fate once the zeitgeist had moved on. Even Edward Marsh and Harold Monro were aware of this; in their later Georgian Poetry anthologies it is possible to detect the strain the editors were under, faced with an increasing tide of criticism and complaint. ‘I should like to make a mild protest against a further charge that Georgian Poetry has merely encouraged a small clique of mutually indistinguishable poetasters,’stated Edward Marsh, in the last issue of his series. As a significant contributor to all five volumes, Davies was already set up to receive the backlash in a way that a potential Georgian like D. H. Lawrence could avoid.

In line with Davies and the changing poetic fashions, we could also consider Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and Edmund Blunden. But while these three examples could ride out any periods of fashion and neglect by reason of academic careers or private income, only Davies had to wear the patronising label of ‘tramp-poet’ and continually sell a marketable version of himself in the effort to sustain a career. The acceptance of working-class people as poets has always had a troubled history, and it is only in recent years that it is relatively common for a broader range of backgrounds to be represented in poetry and spoken word. The time is right, therefore, to look again at a poet like Davies,50 and to assess what makes him an exemplary poet of his own period, and what he continues to bring forward as relevant news for readers today.