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ThomasThere was Edward Thomas. He was very good Though it was late before even he knew. They gave him a gun and sent him away. Two months he lasted, until a stray shell With his name on it exploded at Arras. There was Dylan Thomas. He was bloody good. Every evening after the versifying He would sit in a bar with the boyos Staring cymrically into his whisky, Pouring it down his throat like a fish. There was D M Thomas too. He was OK If you liked sex and psychoanalysis and such And goings-on in white hotels. In time, poetry ceased to be his field, But he of course was not Welsh. Lastly there was Thomas the Church. Duw, that was not an easy man to know, Unless your name was Puw or Prytherch, But those who read his quiet books Reach the simple verdict: he was good.
(1913-2000) was the foremost Welsh poet of his day, and an Anglican clergyman. In 1996 he was nominated for the Nobel prize for Literature, but was passed over in favour of .
His poetry gave a realistic, sympathetic but unsentimental view of the Welsh countryside and the people who inhabited it. He wrote two prose works in Welsh, but all of his poetry was in English. Only occasionally would he "perform cultural excesses on Saxon territory" i.e. read his poetry to audiences in England. He was a Welsh nationalist who - despite his professed pacifism - supported the fire-bombing of English holiday homes. He resigned from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) over their plans to introduce non-native red kites (birds of prey) to Wales. One does not have to read far between the lines of the various accounts of his life to detect that he must have been a cantankerous old so-and-so. But by comment consent he was a very fine poet indeed.
I ought to be ashamed of myself for everconfusing him with Edward Thomas. No-one could ever confuse him with Dylan Thomas. The above poem (based on 's poem On the Farm) should makes any such such confusions less likely.
© Bob Newman 2007. All rights reserved.
This page last updated 16/02/2007