Leslie Norris Biography

Welsh poet and short-story writer, born in Merthyr Tydfil, educated at the City of Coventry College and the University of Southampton. After lecturing at Bognor Regis College of Education, in 1973 he began teaching at American universities and became a professor at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, in 1985. His collections of poetry include Tongue of Beauty (1941), Finding Gold (1967), Islands off Maine (1977), and A Sea in the Desert (1989). Walking the White Fields (1980) is a collected edition of his verse. His volumes of short stories include Sliding (1978) and The Girl from Cardigan (1988). Both his poetry and his prose display remarkably rich powers of description. An elegiac intensity of concern with memories of his boyhood in Wales characterized much of his earlier writing. His imaginative response to a wide variety of landscapes and weathers forms a valuable contribution to the modern traditions of rural poetry. Among his other works is his edition of The Mabinogion (1980).