Tony Curtis Biography

British poet, born in Carmarthen, Dyfed, educated at University College, Swansea. After a period as a schoolteacher, he lectured at Glamorgan College of Education, Barry, and became a senior lecturer in English at the Polytechnic of Wales, Pontypridd, in 1979. His collections of verse include Album (1974), Preparations (1980), Letting Go (1983), Selected Poems, 1970–1985 (1986), The Last Candles (1989), Taken for Pearls (1993), and War Voices (1995). The domestic and local modes which prevailed in his earlier poetry have been increasingly supplemented by poems responding to broader social concerns. His later writing is also marked by ambitious use of dramatic monologues to enact events geographically and historically remote from the contemporary Welsh context which forms a basis for much of his best work. His other publications include the critical monograph Dannie Abse (1985). Among his works as an editor is the anthology The Poetry of Snowdonia (1989).