In what other ways did delan thomas respond to the war creatively? Well, certainly, documentary work, ad with strand films, had an impact on his writing. And i think a poem such as ceremony after a fire raid, whicha be one of he writes in the later period, in forty four, it's this idea of a public performance of remembrance. The grievers grieve among the street, burned to tireless death. A child of a few hours with its kneeding mouth charred on the black breast of the grave, the mother dug and its arms full of fires. I think that's am yes, tat'stha. It's this fear, the
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the celebrated Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953). He wrote some of his best poems before he was twenty in the first half of his short, remarkable life, and was prolific in the second half too with poems such as those set in London under the Blitz and reworkings of his childhood in Swansea, and his famous radio play Under Milk Wood (performed after his death). He was read widely and widely heard: with his reading tours in America and recordings of his works that sold in their hundreds of thousands after his death, he is credited with reviving the act of poetry as performance in the 20th century.
With
Nerys Williams
Associate Professor of Poetry and Poetics at University College Dublin
John Goodby
Professor of Arts and Culture at Sheffield Hallam University
And
Leo Mellor
The Roma Gill Fellow in English at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge
Producer: Simon Tillotson