William John "Shiner" Hawken was my Grandad. He was a great family man and lived all of his life in and around Roche in Cornwall.Married to Elsie in 1914, they had six chidren. He worked in the china clay industry and in his spare time wrote poetry in the local Cornish dialect, winning prizes at the Cornish Gorsedd and having one Poem "Belowda Diaments" set to music by the BBC for the theme to a documentry on the mining industry.
In 1974 a book of his poetry was published. I am lucky enough to have a copy of the book and through this website would like to share his work with you. They are written as they were meant to be spoken, hence the spelling.
