There were very few templets for thomas. I mean, when you look at his writing though, you can see the traces of kanhanet. That's not to say that he is trying to write in strict welsh metre, in english but he's infused with hearing welsh. Some of that leaks into the english language poetry as well. We have words like parced, which he puns on in english, fore parched in order to make means reverend in welsh. And he's talking about the parched worlds of wales, ie ee, spiritual aridity of nonconformist church. So he uses welsh words, but he's not fluent
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