The man who photographs poets

John Briggs, the Newport Minnesotan, reflects on photographing poets with his work illustrating the new Five Guys, anthology of poetry, featuring Topher Mills, Ifor Thomas, Dai Smith, Peter Finch, Patrick Jones and edited by Natasha Gauthier.

I’ve been doing this regularly now for the past quarter of a century since first shooting Peter Finch at Cwmbran Library in 2002 doing his famous deconstructing Mills and Boon trick.

But the first time ever was long before that, in October 1967, when I was sent to do a picture story on the poets John Berryman and Allen Tate, both professors at the University of Minnesota where I was a student photographer for the Minnesota Daily in the late 60s.

Years later, in 2007/2008 I did two stories for the New Welsh Review, including photographs I had taken, on my experience of shooting John Berryman at home and on campus.

The second story in 2008 was of me taking some prints of JB to various Dylan Thomas haunts in Laugharne in response to DT’s invitation to JB to come and visit him there, as recalled by JB in his elegiac poem ‘In Memoriam’. JB never made it to Laugharne so I thought I would take him there myself, accompanied by rapper/poet Leon Charles who did some readings of his own and DT’s verse.

After 2002, it was Peter who invited me to come along and shoot literary events hosted by Academi, of which he was the head. Book launches, award ceremonies such as Book of the Year, and the Baylit Festival, visits to poets such a Danny Abse were all part of it. I also did a few events at Hay Festival of Literature in the mid Noughties of Welsh writers on stage and at the Welsh book stall.

During informal gatherings of writers in the Vulcan pub in Cardiff I would photograph them drinking Brains beer, culminating in their performances and readings for the Save The Vulcan campaign in 2009. Shooting for Academi lasted until 2011 when Peter retired and my services were no longer required by the new Literature Wales.

In 2012 I was commissioned by the IWA to photograph twenty-five writers working in Wales for their 25th anniversary publication 25/25 Vision: Welsh horizons across fifty years.

The Murenger

In 2014, with the beginning of open mic poetry evenings hosted by Alan Roderick at the Murenger in Newport, I started photographing poets in the ‘stygian gloom’ and Rembrandtesque’ light of the back bar.

As exhibition organiser since 2014 for Cwtsh Community and Arts Center in Stow Hill, Newport, I also take photographs of speakers at the monthly First Friday events. I continue to do that to this day.

In 2026, I will be putting together a photographic exhibition at the Cwtsh, Handpost in Newport of writers in Wales, to be launched by Peter Finch, covering the above-mentioned stages in my ‘career’. And so it goes.

Ifor Thomas will be appearing with Tracy Rhys at Tiger Bay Poetry Chapter on Thursday 18th of December.

The Five Guys will be launched with Bardic Books at St Illtud’s Church 630 pm in Llantwit Major CF61 1SH on the 10th of January 2026. Tickets from Bardic Books. They will be appearing all around Wales in 2026 including at the Murenger Inn, Newport in April

John Briggs was born in 1947 in St Paul, Minnesota. He came to Wales in the 1960s to study at Atlantic College in the Vale of Glamorgan, where an increasing passion for photography resulted in his first street images of Cardiff. He gained a degree in French at the University of Minnesota, also working as a part-time reporter before returning to Wales to do teacher training at University College, Cardiff, where he began systematically photographing the city’s disappearing docklands.

Briggs’s books include Before the Deluge, Taken in Time and Newportrait. He has also published Walking Cardiff and Walking the Valleys in collaboration with Peter Finch.