Dylan Thomas, Anglo-Welsh poet

Dylan Marlais Thomas was born in Swansea, south-west Wales, on 27 October 1914. His parents were Jack, a schoolmaster, and Florence, a railwayman’s daughter. Although his father was bilingual, Dylan never spoke Welsh. Indeed, he came to regard Wales outside Swansea as a strange, almost barbaric country. He always pronounced his name in the Anglicized form as “Dillan” rather than the Welsh “Dullan”.

His childhood was nothing unusual, although he was a keen observer of life in provincial, suburban Swansea, and from an early age he demonstrated a keen interest in words, and wrote poems.

He left school at 16 to work at the local newspaper, a career that lasted for only two years. However, he was a prolific poet at this time, writing more than 200 poems between the ages of 16 and 20. Half of the poems by which he is best known were written, in a series of notebooks, during his early life at his parents’ home in Swansea. For a young man, his themes were unusual, being preoccupied with decay and death to a large extent.

His first published poems were two of his best known, namely “And death shall have no dominion” and “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower”. He was noticed by such established poets as T. S. Eliot and Stephen Spender, and two poetry collections, “Eighteen Poems” and “Twenty-five Poems” were published in 1934 and 1936, although many of those in the second volume were written before those in the first.

He moved to London, where he lived a hand-to-mouth existence on occasional fees for poems and reviews, and the charity of his friends, often going back to Swansea when the money ran out completely. He met (1936) and married (1937) Caitlin Macnamara, although the marriage was rarely trouble-free, as neither of them remained faithful to the other. He began to be a heavy drinker at around this time, a habit that never left him.

The couple continued to scrape along together, living either with their respective parents or in rented houses in Laugharne, which is a coastal village near Swansea. Dylan never owned a property throughout his life.

In 1939 Dylan published “The Map of Love”, comprising 16 poems and seven short stories. Most of the poems were overworked and the stories of poor quality. However, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog”, which followed in 1940, was a different matter altogether. These ten stories show us the young Dylan through the eyes of his older self, with some pretence but no pretentiousness. There is plenty of humour and self-mockery here, and the book is a delight to read.

War service was not something that Dylan was particularly keen on, and he used his asthma, and a few tricks, to stay out of harm’s way. However, the war also threatened his living as a writer, and he tried to persuade his friends and contacts to support him through gifts of money. However, as it was clear to most people that it was money for beer that he was particularly keen to get, the well of generosity was not all that deep.

But the war would not let Dylan go, and, ironically enough, it led to him earning his first regular income since his brief time as a Swansea journalist. He wrote scripts for the Ministry of Information, who used them to make films on how the war could be won on the “home front”. Despite his drinking and his bohemian lifestyle, he was a success at this job, meeting his deadlines and doing what was expected of him. He also wrote radio scripts for the BBC.

Towards the end of the war, Dylan went back to Wales and to poetry, writing seven new poems, including “Fern Hill”, that appeared in his 1946 collection “Deaths and Entrances”. 

However, his domestic life was now in a mess, made more complicated by having two small children to care for. He thought about emigrating to America at one time. Whatever the reason, the poetic muse had dried up and “Fern Hill” proved to be the last poem he would write for two years.

The BBC provided him with a lifeline after the war, in that he became a regular and popular broadcaster, reader and radio actor.  He still drank too much, spent too little time with his family, and cultivated an image as a starving poet, although his finances were now as healthy as they had ever been, especially as he was also getting work on film scripts.

In 1949 the Thomases moved to Laugharne, renting the “Boat House”, which was to be Dylan’s last home. A few new poems followed the move, including “Over St John’s Hill”, and there a third child was born.

However, the finances now started to dry up, as the children proved to be expensive to educate and tax bills on previous income had to be paid.

In 1950 he was invited to go to America to give readings and lectures, and this was a huge success, introducing him to a new audience. He went for a second, longer, tour in 1952, which was again successful, although his health was clearly suffering at the time.

His collected poems were published in 1952, and these were very well received. They included one of Thomas’s best known (and, indeed, best) poems, “Do not go gentle into that good night”, written as his father lay dying. Another justly celebrated work from this time was “A child’s Christmas in Wales”, a recording made in America.

Dylan finally finished a “play for voices” that had been some time in the making. This was a commission from the BBC that started out as a series of sketches about life in a small Welsh town. Dylan called the town Llareggub, a deliberate jibe of a name when read in reverse, although the joke is somewhat spoiled by the more usual spelling, Llareggyb, in later editions of Dylan’s greatest work, “Under Milk Wood”. (The pronunciation would be the same when read by a Welsh speaker).

The play was completed in the Spring of 1953, and was first performed as a stage play in America, during Dylan’s third tour. It had many later performances as a radio play, and will always be associated with the late Richard Burton, whose voice was so well suited to the resonances of Thomas’s language.

Some Welsh people have taken exception to the supposed stereotypes presented by Dylan, but most people accept the portraits as being honest and well-intentioned. The only violence in the play is inside people’s heads. Like Dylan himself, many a man might dream about poisoning his wife, but never consider putting the thought into action.

In October 1953 Dylan was back in America, but he was now seriously ill with liver disease and continued to drink heavily. During an attack when he appeared to be deranged he was given morphine and fell into a coma, dying in New York on 9^th November, not long after his 39^th birthday. His body was brought back to Laugharne, where he was buried on 24^th November. A memorial plaque was placed in Westminster Abbey in 1982.

Had Thomas drunk less and lived longer, would he have developed further as a poet and writer of prose? It is possible, but would the results have been any better than the work of the little Welsh bohemian who cared little for convention or reputation? Whatever the answer, his reputation is assured as a leading light of the Anglo-Welsh tradition.

© John Welford