Layer Cake

'Layer Cake' is the multifaceted debut poetry collection from Welsh writer Dave Lewis. This collection of poetry stretches from 1985 to 2009. For more information, visit Dave's website - www.david-lewis.co.uk

Praise for his work:
"Dave Lewis is a poet, teacher, zoologist, web designer, global traveller, husband, father, newspaper columnist, and so many other things. He is a 21st Century Renaissance Man; a genuine multi-tasker; a man whose life history and work reflect and document so many of the changes that affect us all today.

"His poetry is honest and direct. Each word is effective. Each word is easily understood. Unlike so many others today, he writes from the heart and soul, from raw emotion; he has drawn on his wide-ranging knowledge and experience to evolve a style, an elevated poetic diction, which eschews artifice and ornate language. To do otherwise, to court obscurity, to write for just a small coterie, would be for him to miss the mark. Dave Lewis' poetry is for everyone, not just the metropolitan intelligentsia, or Arts Council elite, or pseudo-university academics.

"Although a true son of his native South Wales Valleys, his work moves from the local to the national, to the international; he aspires to a universal discourse, beyond the here and now, and beyond class, or localness, or country.

"His subject matter is both urban and naturalistic and reflects not only a love of towns and cities but also his awareness and passion for the wild landscapes that lie beyond - from the wet streets of his hometown, Pontypridd, and the sunlit switchbacks of San Francisco, to the lush, green Breconshire mountains, and the dry, arid deserts of Kenya.

"This excellent collection of Dave Lewis' work is highly recommended, and it should help establish poetry in its rightful place as a vital form of artistic expression for everyone."

Dave is from Cilfynydd, South Wales. He has always lived in Wales except for a year in Kenya. He has written sports articles for the BBC and columns for local newspapers and websites. He continues to run several websites, including the popular Pontypridd Town Online. He is the founder and organiser of the International Welsh Poetry Competition, an international competition which seeks to encourage and nurture talented writers who have been overlooked by the arts establishment in Wales. He also runs the Maya Poetry Book Awards and self-publishing company, Poetry Publisher.