John Evans - our man in the Valleys

John Evans is very tanned for a man from Pontypridd. Perhaps it’s because he loves getting out into the Welsh countryside in which case, wind and a cold sun can to remarkable things.
On St David’s Day six years ago he was voted among the 100 greatest Welsh men and women of all time in Wales’s largest ever online poll sponsored by the Welsh Assembly Government.
His work has been described as uncompromising, stark, discomforting and unsettling. But John describes his the latest a collection of poetry, The Acid Real, as ”beautiful, coming back to the places I have always been.”
He said: “I grew up in Pontypridd, in an industrial, harsh environment and I listened to music that reflected that: raunchy, raw, kind of dangerous music, it wasn’t a manufactured.
“I was young when I started my band, the Tax Exiles. I always loved words, but when I was growing up I didn’t really know  what is was to be a poet, I thought that someone would have to come and bestow the title on you. I never considered the thought that you could write your own poetry.
“Up in the valleys you see a lot of people who are very bright who never really had the opportunity to achieve what they should have done.
“I always thought, ‘my dreams are bigger.’ I wanted to do my own thing. I wanted to make music so I joined a rock n’ roll band.”
Punk beginnings led to an interest in poetry after John suffered from a bout of Glandular fever.
“After punk I went solo, signed as a recording artist, but I got glandular fever. I was bed ridden for a year, and it took a few years for me to recover and during that time I would write poetry.
“Years later I realised there were people who had written prior to me the kind of things I was writing. I was used to the poetry I was taught in school but I started writing things seemed to be getting across everything I want to say.”
In the flesh John is very different to his photos –sharper around the edges. And when he answered his phone during the interview his voice dropped and slowed so that he seemed another man altogether.
But then throughout his career he has had uncanny knack of changing tack.
“My new book, The Acid Real is beautiful in a way. Some of the stuff I was writing about before was dark because the situation was (italic)dark, it was difficult to wirte something optimistic at that time. It was post-industrial, there was a lack of identity, lack of knowing where your going, drugs hitting the streets in a massive way, young people’s lives being thrown away and high unemployment. It was very difficult to find the magic.
“Other people write pastoral poetry about the beauty of the farms and all that kind of thing. But behind that there some guy with a chainsaw trying to chop the tree down, there’s some farmer wants to destroy the badgers, the bright orange stream is polluted.”
John describes himself as anti-establishment and has never received any money form the Welsh Arts Council. He has used his talent as an artist to help fight social and political injustice. At the moment he is heavily involved in the Save the Badger campaign.
But he is disillusioned by literature in Wales.
“I would advise a Welsh writer to get his work published outside Wales. Wales is very much a closed shop. It depends if you have connected family. If your father is someone who has been published before, but generally they don’t open the door. I’ve seen a lot of talent that is never going to be allowed to come out or flourish.”
But it in the roots of Welsh identity where John finds hope.
“The ancient traditions in Wales were more open. But we have developed another culture, a culture that sees its identity through a rugby match. People don’t really know much about Welsh culture, or the Welsh language. It’s a pity. It comes from being a colonised country. We have become separated from our history and traditions. The Welsh know about other people’s history more then their own. Not many people know about how learned and well respected the Celts were.”
“You’ll find the soul of Wales if you look. You won’t find it on a Friday or Saturday night in Cardiff. But it is there. That is what I like. I go walking in the mountians. There is amazing archeological stuff that nobody bothers about. I find it all the time. There’s some astounding things. In some ways I like the fact that people don’t know. You can wander out and you don’t know what you are going to see or find. But that soulfulness is there.”
John Evans might be described as the beating heart of Welsh literature, tucked well under the nation’s skin.