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‘Curse, bless, me now’: Dylan Thomas and Saunders Lewis: Chatterton Lecture on Poetry read 24 October 2014

Tudur Hallam

in British Academy Lectures 2014-15

Dylan Thomas, the Swansea-born writer of English, and Saunders Lewis, the Wallasey-born writer of Welsh, are usually set in differing discursive camps. Memorable quotations—‘I cannot read Welsh’, to ... More

Dylan Thomas, the Swansea-born writer of English, and Saunders Lewis, the Wallasey-born writer of Welsh, are usually set in differing discursive camps. Memorable quotations—‘I cannot read Welsh’, to quote Dylan; ‘He belongs to the English’, to quote Saunders—continually drive them apart. Focusing on 1938, the year in which Dylan Thomas published his elegy to his aunt, ‘After the Funeral’, and in which Saunders Lewis delivered his lecture ‘Is There an Anglo-Welsh Literature?’, this paper considers how the former’s life and work might be read differently in conjunction with the latter’s. The authors’ differences and similarities are discussed, and the work of William Williams Pantycelyn, author of ‘Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah’ is read in the light of Saunders Lewis’s classic study of his romanticism so as to suggest not only a tangible link between the two poetic non-conformists, but also a means of appreciating Dylan Thomas’s own aesthetic development as a poet.Less

The Museum of Jurassic Radio: Sonic Excess in Dylan Thomas and Samuel Beckett

Jeff Porter

in Lost Sound: The Forgotten Art of Radio Storytelling

Whatever their aesthetic differences, Dylan Thomas and Samuel Beckett shared, as Chapter 6 argues, an interest in defying radio’s ontological borders (between being and nonbeing, embodiment and ... More

Whatever their aesthetic differences, Dylan Thomas and Samuel Beckett shared, as Chapter 6 argues, an interest in defying radio’s ontological borders (between being and nonbeing, embodiment and disembodiment) by flirting with the disruptive properties of sound. For Thomas and Beckett, the voice is not speech but sound, and their radio plays, especially Under Milk Wood and All That Fall, take extreme measures to liberate the word from speech—from the logos—destabilizing the codes of language. Using the incantatory power of voice, Thomas dramatizes the arbitrariness of signification through an excess of sound, while Beckett insists that spoken language is of the body, and in embodiment we find new ways to complicate, if not resist, the symbolic order of language and to take revenge on the logos for having devocalized language.Less

Graham and the 1940s

Tony Lopez

in W.S. Graham: Speaking Towards You

This chapter shows that both W. S. Graham and Philip Larkin had an interest in Dylan Thomas during the 1940s. Larkin confessed his youthful attachment to W. B. Yeats but said less about his ... More

This chapter shows that both W. S. Graham and Philip Larkin had an interest in Dylan Thomas during the 1940s. Larkin confessed his youthful attachment to W. B. Yeats but said less about his enthusiasm for Thomas. Graham and Larkin moved on from Thomas, the latter via the colloquial poetry of The Less Deceived. This chapter also examines Graham's work of the 1940s, including The White Threshold and in particular its title poem, which confronts the unknowable sea and reproduces the conflict between endurance and destruction in nature.Less

Prologue: Becoming a Novelist

Deirdre David

in Pamela Hansford Johnson: A Writing Life

After a lengthy correspondence beginning in September 1933 when twenty-one-year-old Pamela Hansford Johnson wrote to nineteen-year-old Dylan Thomas to congratulate him on winning a poetry prize, they ... More

After a lengthy correspondence beginning in September 1933 when twenty-one-year-old Pamela Hansford Johnson wrote to nineteen-year-old Dylan Thomas to congratulate him on winning a poetry prize, they finally met in the summer of 1934. When Thomas moved to London and gained fame as a promising young poet and his romantic involvement with Johnson ended, she followed his advice and turned from writing verse to writing fiction. His critiques of her poems were serious and stringent and they convinced her that she could never become a poet. Her first novel, This Bed Thy Centre, was greeted with shocked dismay since it dealt frankly with teenage sexuality and was set in a dingy South London neighbourhood.Less

Dependence in the Poetry of W.S. Graham

Peter Robinson

in W.S. Graham: Speaking Towards You

At thirty-eight years old, W. S. Graham's poetry as well as his literary life appear to have been expressions of independence. However, his poetry, at least up to The Nightfishing (1955), was ... More

At thirty-eight years old, W. S. Graham's poetry as well as his literary life appear to have been expressions of independence. However, his poetry, at least up to The Nightfishing (1955), was dismissed by some as too dependent on the voice of Dylan Thomas. Edward Lucie-Smith implies that Graham's independence is mere isolation and makes Graham's reputation excruciatingly dependent on the tides of literary fashion. This chapter examines Graham's indebtedness to Thomas and argues that it has been exaggerated at the expense of other influences. It insists that Graham is unusually alert to the writer's dependence upon language that may hinder as much as facilitate the communication sought by the writer. It also considers Graham's finest accounts of ‘dependence’ in his late, personal poems dedicated to his wife.Less

Irish Characters

Tom Walker

in Louis MacNeice and the Irish Poetry of his Time

This chapter considers MacNeice’s evolving relationship with the idea of character from the mid-1940s to the late 1950s, against the backdrop of his involvement in the ill-fated book project ‘The ... More

This chapter considers MacNeice’s evolving relationship with the idea of character from the mid-1940s to the late 1950s, against the backdrop of his involvement in the ill-fated book project ‘The Character of Ireland’. The opening section explores how during the late 1940s and early 1950s MacNeice was personally and professionally involved in Irish literary matters through his brief term as poetry editor of The Bell, his radio work at the BBC, and his close working friendship with W.R. Rodgers (his co-editor on the doomed volume). Rodgers’s and others’ preoccupation with cultural definition and the idea of the Irish character is shown to be reflected in MacNeice’s own investment in the concept of the character. This is seen most clearly in the manner in which Autumn Sequel celebrates not only a community of friends but a community of characters, whose individuality sets them at odds with modernity’s homogenizing forces.Less

Introduction: Contacting Graham

Ralph Pite and Hester Jones

in W.S. Graham: Speaking Towards You

Sixteen years after his death in 1986, W. S. Graham's poetry has remained current, even gaining in stature and attracting more readers, particularly in the 1990s. Graham's growing reputation during ... More

Sixteen years after his death in 1986, W. S. Graham's poetry has remained current, even gaining in stature and attracting more readers, particularly in the 1990s. Graham's growing reputation during the period was evident in the publication of Uncollected Poems in 1990, Aimed at Nobody in 1993, and Selected Poems in 1996. Graham was considered a victim of literary fashion and, more specifically, of the Movement. His early work, influenced by the Apocalyptic school and by Dylan Thomas in particular, was opposed to all the principles of the Movement. However, seeing Graham as a victim of the Movement oversimplifies him and his place in post-war poetry. This book argues that Graham was not comfortable with poetic labels and schools and that his poetry has some of its roots in Modernism, some in the Apocalyptic school, and others in the tradition of Scottish poetry. It shows that both Graham and Philip Larkin had interest in Thomas during the 1940s. It also explores Graham's links to other writers, thinkers, and artists as well as his place among post-war poets.Less

“Swastika arms of passage leading to nothing”: Bowen, Isherwood, Orwell, and the “New” Britain

Ashley Maher

in Reconstructing Modernism: British Literature, Modern Architecture, and the State

Though the cross-medium modern style advocated by Herbert Read and Stephen Spender aimed to bring good design to political as well as aesthetic structures, the Ministry of Information mobilized ... More

Though the cross-medium modern style advocated by Herbert Read and Stephen Spender aimed to bring good design to political as well as aesthetic structures, the Ministry of Information mobilized modernist rhetoric for propaganda during World War II. British authors such as Graham Greene and Dylan Thomas scripted films promoting the “new Britain” to be achieved through architecture-led revolution, yet the politicization of style and wartime fears of double agents meant that Elizabeth Bowen, George Orwell, and Christopher Isherwood turned the intense focus on style to their own work. Bowen used the “swastika arms of passage leading to nothing” of the mock-Tudor Holme Dene to scrutinize her memory-laden, late modernist writing, while Orwell and Isherwood directed their attention to streamlined glass and steel structures to contemplate the potential duplicity of their seemingly candid vernacular style.Less

The Movement Poets and the Movement Orthodoxy in the 1950s and 1960s

in The Poetry of Saying: British Poetry and its Discontents, 1950-2000

This chapter discusses the Movement Orthodoxy and the Movement poets during the 1950s and 1960s. The Movement poets remained a significant portion of syllabuses for schoolchildren sitting exams in ... More

This chapter discusses the Movement Orthodoxy and the Movement poets during the 1950s and 1960s. The Movement poets remained a significant portion of syllabuses for schoolchildren sitting exams in modern English Literature. The iambic pentameter is the poem's rhythm and the dominant metrics of almost all Movement poets except Gunn and Enright. Anthony Easthope allots a chapter to the ideological, subjective and linguistic implications of the favored prosodic structure in his book Poetry as Discourse. Metre can cite a specific accent for spoken performance although intonation is the exertion of a limited freedom in the poetic context. Dylan Thomas' death in 1953 seemed to signal the end of an era to young writers. The poetry of the 1940s is described as a utopian synthetic neo-Romanticism.Less

The Poetry of W.S. Graham

Edwin Morgan

in W.S. Graham: Speaking Towards You

The uncompromising chronological arrangement of W. S. Graham's ‘Collected Poems’ reminds readers of the whole heady iconolatry of the 1940s. In his early poems, the word is paramount but not meaning. ... More

The uncompromising chronological arrangement of W. S. Graham's ‘Collected Poems’ reminds readers of the whole heady iconolatry of the 1940s. In his early poems, the word is paramount but not meaning. As in the similar poetry of Dylan Thomas, however, there are frequent lines which stand out and become memorable. Both ‘The White Threshold’ (1949) and ‘The Nightfishing’ (1955) combine Graham's obsessional interests in the sea and in seeking to define the communicative act and art of poetry itself. This chapter analyses Graham's Collected Poems, first published in 1980, and considers his need to speak and to be heard, his doubts about the medium of poetry, and his desire for a home.Less

Glass: Woolf’s spectacles and Freud’s mirror

Nicola J. Watson

in The Author's Effects: On Writer's House Museums

Chapter 6 meditates upon the function of glass as a medium of ‘enchantment’ in the writer’s house museum. It considers how and to what effect objects are co-located and assembled within the vitrine ... More

Chapter 6 meditates upon the function of glass as a medium of ‘enchantment’ in the writer’s house museum. It considers how and to what effect objects are co-located and assembled within the vitrine as the basic meme of the museum and, with special reference to Virginia Woolf’s Monk’s House, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Old Manse, and Sigmund Freud’s apartment in Vienna, how eye-glasses, windows, and mirrors relate to tropes of authorial vision and authorial invisibility and immateriality. It argues that glass is the material by which the museum thinks through, dramatizes, and fetishizes impossibilities: the desire to see the writer in the flesh, the desire to see what the writer once saw; the desire to share the writer’s vision.Less

‘It is the poems you have lost’: Poetry and Sacrifice during the Second World War

Helen Goethals

in Sacrifice and Modern War Literature: The Battle of Waterloo to the War on Terror

This chapter suggests that, after Dunkirk, civilian morale in Britain was galvanized around three sacrificial moments: the purging of the National Government, the Battle of Britain, and the Blitz. ... More

This chapter suggests that, after Dunkirk, civilian morale in Britain was galvanized around three sacrificial moments: the purging of the National Government, the Battle of Britain, and the Blitz. Accordingly, T. S. Eliot, Edith Sitwell, Dylan Thomas and others published powerful poems on the idea of sacrifice, many deriving their power from drafting tradition and mythology into new visions of social organization. In analysing a variety of these poetic visions, this chapter also considers work by Alun Lewis, Louis MacNeice, R. N. Currey, Keith Douglas, Timothy Corsellis, and Sidney Keyes. Three salient issues that bear on sacrifice can help us understand the poets’ hopes and misgivings: the relation of sacrifice to numbers and consent; the moral stasis induced when deaths are ritualized; the insight that members of a given society live in harmony not because of the periodic bloodletting of war, but in spite of it.Less

The Orange Chair

Deirdre David

in Pamela Hansford Johnson: A Writing Life

The last years of Pamela’s life were marked by further illness but also by a remarkable dedication to work. She was hospitalized several times for respiratory illnesses, but in 1974 she published a ... More

The last years of Pamela’s life were marked by further illness but also by a remarkable dedication to work. She was hospitalized several times for respiratory illnesses, but in 1974 she published a book of autobiographical essays, Important to Me, which covered such topics as memories of her father, her relationship with Dylan Thomas, her visits to the USSR, and her friendship with other writers such as Edith Sitwell. After months of undiagnosed pain, Snow died in 1980 of a perforated ulcer and Pamela died almost one year later of congestive heart failure and respiratory illness exacerbated by having smoked since the age of fourteen. Yet characteristically she worked courageously until the very end on a novel published posthumously: A Bonfire, which similarly to her first novel deals explicitly with sexual desire. Her ashes were scattered at Stratford-upon-Avon, a place she visited every year on Shakespeare’s birthday.Less