Mike Jenkins

Plastics: Microstructure and Applications is a key text for senior students studying the science and engineering of plastics materials (or polymers) and will serve as a valuable introduction to the fundamentals of polymer properties for those new to the field. Starting from microstructure and physical properties, the book covers the mechanical, chemical, transport and electrical properties of plastics materials and also deals in detail with wider issues that today’s engineers and materials scientists need, such as manufacturing processes and the design of plastics products. A thorough revision of the book for this 4th edition reflects advances in the field by including more detailed discussion of characterization techniques, crystallization and molecular structure, thermoplastic composites, 3D printing and electrical properties of plastics. The chapter on materials and shape selection covers sustainability, life cycle analysis and waste disposal considerations for plastics materials.

In this innovative new collection, Mike Jenkins continues his life-long fascination with the history and fate of Wales, with the glories of its valleys and with the decline of its post-industrial landscape. In contrast, his career in teaching left him with a sense of optimism about young people, about the prospect of change and with an eagerness to embrace changing times. His sensitive awareness of the natural world, or what is available of the natural world in an urban context, is a frequently poignant feature of his work. Above all, though, these poems, like his prize-winning short stories, are full of colourful characters, dialogue, and incident.Mike Jenkins is now a full-time writer and teacher of Creative Writing, after spending over 30 years in teaching. Author of seven previous poetry collections for Seren, he has also published a novel, The Fugitive Three (Cinnamon Press, 2008) and a collection of short fiction, Child of Dust (2005). He has also published poetry and novellas for children. He is former editor of Poetry Wales and is co-editor and founder of Red Poets magazine. He has won an Eric Gregory Award, Welsh Arts Council Young Writers' Prize, John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry and, in 1998, the Wales Book of the Year for Wanting to Belong (Seren, 1997). Jenkins has appeared at the Hay and Aldeburgh festivals, has had a BBC Wales programme dedicated to his work, and has read many of his poems on TV and radio.

InIP Times sees Mike Jenkins developing further the picture of working-class society in south Wales which he presented so forcefully in his previous book, Empire of Smoke. His use of language and dialect moves still closer to that of his subjects, and the business of their living is written about not from a point of literary detachment, but with gritty involvement. The poems in this book mix tenderness towards people, particularly the poet's family, with anger at a society which is at best uncaring and often hostile. The result is a series of almost surrealistic pictures culminating in the title poem, and contrasting intriguingly with the content and compassion of poems in the tradition of Idris Davies. "… one of the wild men of poetry - a plugger, a pusher, a protester, a consummate rhymester, an agit-prop politiciser, a self-proclaimed Mr Oblong in a square hole" Peter Finch A humorous and impassioned reader of his work, Mike Jenkins has performed at numerous and diverse venues, read on radio and TV, and is a previous winner of the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry. He is a former editor of Poetry Wales, and a founder of the Red Poets Society, which organises regular performances and publishes an annual magazine of radical poetry. Wanting to Belong, his collection of interlinked short stories about teenagers in a south Wales valley, was Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year 1998, and has been filmed by the BBC.

In his fourth collection of poems, Mike Jenkins addresses issues of the greatest concern to us in the nineties. His subjects include South Africa, Chile, the Falklands War, Northern Ireland, economic dereliction, the environment and sexual oppression. The 'dissident voice' of the title belongs to anti-nuclear campaigner Hilda Murrell, who died in such mysterious circumstances.Mike Jenkins's poetry of issues is also a poetry of ordinary people. Often writing in character, he brings vividly to life the problems and dilemmas which face us daily. Through the rich imagery of these poems we come to see the human values and rights which we must exercise and defend in a civilised society."… one of the wild men of poetry - a plugger, a pusher, a protester, a consummate rhymester, an agit-prop politiciser, a self-proclaimed Mr Oblong in a square hole"Peter Finch"Alive with imagery and insight: exhilarating to read"Morning StarA humorous and impassioned reader of his work, Mike Jenkins has performed at numerous and diverse venues, read on radio and TV, and is a previous winner of the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry. He is a former editor of Poetry Wales, and a founder of the Red Poets Society, which organises regular performances and publishes an annual magazine of radical poetry. Wanting to Belong, his collection of interlinked short stories about teenagers in a south Wales valley, was Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year 1998, and has been filmed by the BBC.