In the 19 78, seventies and eighties, as in a lot of other areas of british life, conservatism kicked in. thomas was seen as a kind of dead end and excessive colourful flare up e not somebody to imitate. So academia went down that path of ignoring him really, and excluding him from the histories. He's being rehabilitated now, but gradually, i'd say, i think there's a conover. The most interesting recent criticism has been to think about what a welsh literature in english might look like,. And aillon gets us into a very particular world of other poets such as linette roberts cadris.
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