R.S. Thomas

[JTolle]

Ronald Stuart Thomas (1913-2000) was a Welsh poet and Anglican clergyman, generally regarded to be one of the most important Welsh writers of the 20th Century. Professor M. Wynn Thomas said: "He was the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn of Wales because he was such a troubler of the Welsh conscience. He was one of the major English language and European poets of the 20th century."

Bio:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS_Thomas

More Bio and Quite a Few Poems: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/r-s-thomas

[JTolle]

Having read two of his collections of poetry, I consider Thomas a solid poet, potentially a truly great poet if he churned out anything else of the quality of Laboratories of the Spirit (1975).

Youtube seems to have quite a few videos of Thomas reading his own poetry. He has a great voice for it (reminds me of Geoffrey Hill), and to choose one I particularly liked: "No Time"

"Poste Resante"

I want you to know how it was,
whether the Cross grinds into dust
under men’s wheels or shines brightly
as a monument to a new era.

There was a church and one man
served it, and few worshipped
there in the raw light on the hill
in winter, moving among the stones
fallen about them like the ruins
of a culture they were too weak
to replace, too poor themselves
to do anything but wait
for the ending of a life
they had not asked for.
000000000000000000The priest would come
and pull on the hoarse bell nobody
heard, and enter that place
of darkness, sour with the mould
of the years. And the spider would run
from the chalice, and the wine lie
there for a time, cold and unwanted
by all but he, while the candles
guttered as the wind picked
at the roof. And he would see
over that bare meal his face
staring at him from the cracked glass
of the window, with the lips moving
like those of an inhabitant of
a world beyond this.
000000000000000And so back
to the damp vestry to the book
where he would scratch his name and the date
he could hardly remember, Sunday
by Sunday, while the place sank
to its knees and the earth turned
from season to season like the wheel
of a great foundry to produce
you, friend, who will know what happened.

[hdw]

Ronald Stuart Thomas (1913-2000) was a Welsh poet and Anglican clergyman, generally regarded to be one of the most important Welsh writers of the 20th Century. Professor M. Wynn Thomas said: "He was the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn of Wales because he was such a troubler of the Welsh conscience. He was one of the major English language and European poets of the 20th century."

Bio:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS_Thomas

More Bio and Quite a Few Poems: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/r-s-thomas

Thomas may have been a great poet, but it's absolute bullshit to call him the Solzhenitsyn of Wales. Solzhenitsyn was persecuted and deprived of his freedom for years for a mild criticism of the regime. Thomas praised the fire-bombing of English people's second homes in Wales and said, what did one death (of an innocent holidaymaker) count against the death of Welsh culture. He despised the Welsh Nationalist party Plaid Cymru because they weren't fanatical and violent enough for him. But because the UK is a far more civilised country than the Soviet Union was, nobody arrested him and put him in a labour camp, they just treated him as the batty old vicar he was and left him alone.

As for the death of Welsh culture thing, it has to be said that the Welsh themselves, like many Scots, have voted with their tongues for the English language, and it's wrongheaded to blame the nasty English bogey-men for depriving them of a culture that most of them never gave a damn about in the first place.

Nobody could be more Welsh than Dylan Thomas, though I don't think he wrote a word of Welsh in his life.

Harry