William H. Davies

Foliage (Dodo Press) William H. Davies

William Henry Davies or W. H. Davies (1871-1940), was a Welsh poet and writer. He spent a significant part of his life as a tramp or vagabond in the United States and United Kingdom, but became known as one of the most popular poets of his time. As a young man Davies became an apprentice to a picture-framer in his home town, but never settled into regular work in this craft. He was a difficult and somewhat delinquent young man, and made repeated requests to his grandmother to lend him the money to sail to America. When these were all refused, he eventually took casual work and started to travel. The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908) covers his life until that point in time including many adventures and characters in the USA (1893-99), where he lived as a tramp. During this period he crosssed the Atlantic several times working on cattle ships. The 1970's pop group "Supertramp" took its name from this book. Amongst his other works are: Soul's Destroyer (1905), A Weak Woman (1911), Foliage (1913) and Forty New Poems (1918).