Books
Praise for How to Think Like a Poet
‘This is a wonderfully lucid and compelling account of how poetry works and why it matters. In 24 exhilarating chapters, George guides us from Homer's Iliad to the Instapoetry of today. A triumph in both concept and execution, How to Think Like a Poet fizzes almost audibly with intellectual energy and excitement.’ - Mark Ford
'With an infectious delight in his material, Dai George is a sure and skilful guide through some of poetry's most significant waters, opening our eyes to its everyday wonders. Thanks to its consciously global canvas, How to Think Like a Poet does something rather different to your usual poetic history or handbook, opening up fresh connections and avenues of thought across its chapters. George’s agile, luminous, refreshing readings of individual poets down the centuries reveal just how much they have to offer us today.’ - Sarah Howe
'Poetry haters will fall in love with poetry and the poetry lover will walk away refreshed after reading just a few pages of this authoritative, wide-ranging and witty book that is persistently fascinating and always an easy read!’ - Daljit Nagra
'
Praise for Karaoke King
“Against a background of ominously skewed weather, these poems search out ‘the structure of the new sky’, asking insistent questions of the world in all its unpredictability. Always sharp-eared, with a soundtrack that ranges from reggae to the most ephemeral jingle, they bring a sparkling attention to dailiness while sounding out a politics entwined with love, hope and subtle humour.” – Zoë Skoulding
“Dai George writes with a syntactical and lexical precision that is staggering. On this second collection he turns his hand to uncovering the minutiae of being in the world; noticing the passage of time; chronicling the sweeps and turns of the political climate; attending to the intimacies of shared experience. In his ‘History of Jamaican Music’, George adds in poetry to what Carolyn Cooper and David Katz have advanced in prose: extending a conversation on the singular contribution of a small Caribbean island to global music culture.” – Kayo Chingonyi
“Dai George’s verse is marvelously restive: one poem, mentioning ‘a split and democratic sky’, returns to the important word to harry and query it: “I mean democratic / as an argument that neither side can win.” These poems, many about music, are both thoughtful and melodic: George’s ear is precise, rueful, sanative. His images can amaze, yet through each poem journeys a voice we always want to know better, capable even in the tightest situations of the sort of thought you wish you’d had.” - Vidyan Ravinthiran
Praise for The Counterplot
Praise for The Claims Office
A really fresh and ambitious voice, celebrating the local without sentimentality, and tackling major matters of political vision, faith and scepticism, loyalty and self-knowledge, with assurance and sharp wit, and a brilliant metaphorical repertoire.
Rowan Williams
Dai George seems to me to offer something new to Welsh, and to British poetry. In fact, perhaps the poet he most reminds me of is the leading Northern Irish poet of the newer generation, Alan Gillis, not in terms of direct stylistic commonalities, but in that both these poets can and do switch successfully between a higher, lyrical style and something closer to demotic narrative.
Roddy Lumsden
A brilliant new voice in British poetry whose debut is rich with Welsh wit, lyricism and spirituality. A little gem, full of promise.
Dan Jones, an Evening Standard book of the year
