R.S. Thomas

R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) in 1994. Courtesy Doubt & Belief.

Ronald Stuart Thomas
Born	March 29, 1913(1913-Template:MONTHNUMBER-29) Cardiff, Wales
Died	September 25, 2000(2000-Template:MONTHNUMBER-25) (aged 87)

Rev. Ronald Stuart Thomas (29 March 1913 - 25 September 2000) was a Welsh poet and Anglican clergyman.

Life

Overview

Thomas was noted for his nationalism, spirituality, and deep dislike of the anglicisation of Wales. In 1955, John Betjeman, in his introduction to the earliest collection of Thomas’s poetry to be produced by a major publisher, Song at the Year's Turning, predicted that Thomas would be remembered long after Betjeman himself was forgotten. 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."

Youth and education

Thomas was born in Cardiff, the only child of Margaret (Davis) and Thomas Hubert Thomas. The family moved to Holyhead in 1918 because of his father's work in the merchant navy.

Thomas was awarded a bursary in 1932 to study at the University College of North Wales, Bangor, where he read classics. In 1936, having completed his theological training at St. Michael's College, Llandaff, he was ordained as a priest in the Church in Wales.

Career

From 1936 to 1940 he was the curate of Chirk, Denbighshire. He subsequently became curate at Willington Worthenbury|Tallarn Green, Flintshire.

While curate of Chilk, Thomas met Mildred (Elsi) Eldridge, an English artist. They married in 1940 and remained together until her death in 1991. Their son, Gwydion, was born 29 August 1945.

The Thomas family lived on a tiny income and lacked the comforts of modern life, largely by the poet's choice. 1 of the few household amenities the family ever owned, a vacuum cleaner, was rejected because Thomas decided it was too noisy.

For 12 years, from 1942 to 1954, Thomas was rector at Manafon, near Welshpool in rural Montgomeryshire. It was during his time at Manafon that he began to study Welsh and that he published his earliest 3 volumes of poetry, The Stones of the Field, An Acre of Land and The Minister. Thomas' poetry achieved a breakthrough with the publication of his 4th book, Song at the Year's Turning (effectively a collected edition of his earlier 3 volumes), which was critically very well received and opened with Betjeman's famous introduction.

He learnt the Welsh language at age 30, too late in life, he said, to be able to write poetry in it. The 1960s saw him working in a predominantly Welsh speaking community and he later wrote 2 prose works in Welsh, Neb (Nobody), an ironic and revealing autobiography written in the 3rd person, and Blwyddyn yn Llŷn, (A Year in Llŷn).

From 1967 to 1978 Thomas was vicar at St Hywyn's Church (built 1137) in Aberdaron at the western tip of the Llŷn Peninsula.

Beliefs

Thomas was an ardent supporter of CND and described himself as a pacifist, but he supported the Meibion Glyndŵr fire-bombings of English-owned holiday cottages in rural Wales. On this subject he said in 1998, "what is one death against the death of the whole Welsh nation?" He was also active in wildlife preservation and worked with the RSPB and Welsh volunteer organisations for the preservation of the Red Kite. He resigned his RSPB membership over their plans to introduce non-native kites to Wales.

The poet's son, Gwydion, a resident of Thailand, recalls his father's sermons, in which he would "drone on" to absurd lengths about the evil of refrigerators, washing machines, televisions and other modern devices. Thomas preached that they were all part of the temptation of scrambling after gadgets rather than attending to more spiritual needs. "It was the Machine, you see," Gwydion explained to a biographer. "This to a congregation that didn’t have any of these things and were longing for them." Although he may have taken some ideas to extreme lengths, Theodore Dalrymple wrote, Thomas "was raising a deep and unanswered question: What is life for? Is it simply to consume more and more, and divert ourselves with ever more elaborate entertainments and gadgetry? What will this do to our souls?" Although he was a clergyman, he wasn't always charitable and was known for being awkward and taciturn. Some critics have interpreted photographs of him as indicating he was "formidable, bad-tempered, and apparently humorless."

Final years

R.S. Thomas in 1995

Thomas retired from the church in 1978, and he and his wife relocated to Y Rhiw, in "a tiny, unheated cottage in one of the most beautiful parts of Wales, where, however, the temperature sometimes dipped below freezing", according to Theodore Dalrymple. Free from the constraints of the church he was able to become more political and active in the campaigns that were important to him. He became a fierce advocate of Welsh nationalism, although he never supported Plaid Cymru because he believed they did not go far enough in their opposition to England.

Thomas died at age 87. His ashes are buried close to the door of St. John's Church, Porthmadog, Gwynedd.

Writing

Evans

Evans? Yes, many a time
I came down his bare flight
Of stairs into the gaunt kitchen
With its wood fire, where crickets sang
Accompaniment to the black kettle’s
Whine, and so into the cold
Dark to smother in the thick tide
Of night that drifted about the walls
Of his stark farm on the hill ridge.

It was not the dark filling my eyes
And mouth apalled me; not even the drip
Of rain like blood from the one tree
Weather-tortured. It was the dark
Silting the veins of that sick man
I left stranded upon the vast
And lonely shore of his bleak bed.

“

”

"Evans" from Poetry for Supper (1958)

Almost all of Thomas' work concerns the Welsh landscape and the Welsh people, themes with a political subtext. His views on the position of the Welsh people, as a conquered people are never far below the surface. As a clergyman, his religious views are also present in his works. His earlier works focus on the personal stories of his parishioners, the farm labourers and working men and their wives, challenging the cosy view of the traditional pastoral poem with harsh and vivid descriptions of rural lives. The beauty of the landscape, although ever-present, is never suggested as a compensation for the low pay or monotonous conditions of farm work. This direct view of 'country life' comes as a challenge to many English writers writing on similar subjects and challenges the more pastoral works of such contemporary poets as Dylan Thomas.

His later works were of a more metaphysical nature, more experimental and focusing more upon his spirituality. Laboratories of the Spirit (1975) gives, in its title, a hint at this change in subject matter. Thomas described this shift as an investigation into the 'adult geometry of the mind'. He experimented with publishing poetry alongside original artworks by other artists.

Despite his nationalism Thomas could be hard on his fellow countrymen. Often his works read as more of a criticism of Welshness than a celebration. He himself said there is a "lack of love for human beings" in his poetry. Other critics have not been so harsh. Al Alvarez said: "He was wonderful, very pure, very bitter but the bitterness was beautifully and very sparely rendered. He was completely authoritative, a very, very fine poet, completely off on his own, out of the loop but a real individual. It's not about being a major or minor poet. It's about getting a work absolutely right by your own standards and he did that wonderfully well."

Thomas' final works commonly sold 20,000 copies in Britain alone.

Recognition

Thomas won the Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Award.

In 1964 he won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

In 1996, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. (The winner that year was Seamus Heaney.)

After Thomas's death, an event celebrating his life and poetry was held in Westminster Abbey with readings from Heaney, Andrew Motion, Gillian Clarke and John Burnside.

Publications

Poetry

• The Stones of the Field. Druid Press, 1946.
• An Acre of Land. Montgomeryshire Printing Company, 1952.
• The Minister (verse play; first produced on Welsh BBC Radio, 1953). Montgomeryshire Printing Company, 1953.
• Song at the Year's Turning: Poems, 1942-1954 (introduction by John Betjeman). Hart-Davis, 1955.
• Poetry for Supper. London: Hart-Davis, 1958; Dufour, 1961.
• Judgment Day. Poetry Book Society, 1960.
• Tares. Dufour, 1961.
• Penguin Modern Poets 1 (by Lawrence Durrell, Elizabeth Jennings, & R.S. Thomas). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1962.
• The Bread of Truth. Dufour, 1963.
• Pieta. London:Hart-Davis, 1966.
• The Mountains (illustrated by John Piper). Chilmark Press, 1968.
• Not That He Brought Flowers. London: Hart-Davis, 1968.
• (With Roy Fuller) Pergamon Poets 1 (edited by Evan Owen). Pergamon, 1968.
• Postcard: Song. Fishpaste Postcard Series, 1968.
• H'm: Poems. New York: St. Martin's, 1972.
• Selected Poems, 1946-1968. London: Hart-Davis MacGibbon, 1973; New York: St. Martin's, 1974.
• What Is a Welshman?. Christopher Davies, 1974.
• Laboratories of the Spirit. London: Macmillan, 1975; Boston: Godine, 1976.
• The Way of It (illustrations by Barry Hirst). Ceolfrith Press, 1977.
• Frequencies. London: Macmillan, 1978.
• Between Here and Now. London: Macmillan, 1981.
• Later Poems, 1972-1982. London: Macmillan, 1983.
• A Selection of Poetry (edited by D.J. Hignett). Hignett School Services, 1983.
• Poets' Meeting, Celandine, 1983.
• Ingrowing Thoughts. Poetry Wales Press, 1985.
• Destinations. Celandine, 1985.
• Poems of R.S. Thomas. Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1985.
• Experimenting with an Amen. London: Macmillan, 1986.
• Welsh Airs. Poetry Wales Press, 1987.
• The Echoes Return Slow. Macmillan, 1988.
• Counterpoint. Dufour, 1990.
• Cymru or Wales?, Gomer, 1992.
• Mass for Hard Times. Newcastle. UK: Bloodaxe, 1992.
• Collected Poems, 1945-1990. Dent, 1993.
• No Truce with the Furies. Newcastle, UK: Bloodaxe, 1995.
• R.S. Thomas (edited by Anthony Thwaite). London: Pheonix Press (Everyman's Poetry), 1996.

Song lyrics

• The Moor: For soprano and mezzo-soprano, unaccompanied (music by Hilary Tann). Oxford University Press, 1998.
• Mother and Son: For soprano, Eb clarinet, violin, viola, and cello (music by Hilary Tann). Oxford University Press, 1999.

Non-fiction

• Words and the Poet (W.D. Thomas Memorial Lecture). University of Wales Press, 1964.
• Selected Prose (edited by Sandra Anstey). Poetry Wales Press, 1983; Dufour, 1984.
• Neb: Golygwyd gan Gwenno Hywyn (autobiography in Welsh). Gwasg Gwynedd, 1987.
• ABC Neb (translated by Jason Walford Davies). Gwasg Gwynedd, 1995.
• R.S. Thomas: Ysbrydoliaeth: ilyfr i gyd-fynd ag arddangosfa, Mehefin 1995 = Inspiration: A Book to Accompany an Expedition, June 1995. Cyfeillion Oriel Plas Glyn-y-Weddw, 1995.
• Autobiographies (translated from the Welsh, with introduction & notes, by Jason Walford Davies). London: Dent, 1997.

Juvenile

• Young and Old (children's poems). London: Chatto & Windus, 1972.

Edited

• The Batsford Book of Country Verse. Batsford, 1961.
• The Penguin Book of Religious Verse. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1963.
• Edward Thomas, Selected Poems. London: Faber, 1964.
• A Choice of George Herbert's Verse. London: Faber, 1967.
• A Choice of Wordsworth's Verse. London: Faber, 1971.
• The Page's Drift: R.S. Thomas at eighty. Seren Books, 1993.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

RS Thomas reads "The Other (in memory RF)"

See also

• Anglo-Welsh poets
• List of British poets

References

Richard Burton reading 2 poems by R.S. Thomas.

• Morgan, Christopher. R.S. Thomas: Identity, environment, and deity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-7190-6248-9
• Brown, Tony. R.S. Thomas. Cardiff: University of Wales Press (Writers of Wales series), 2006. ISBN 0-7083-1800-2
• Morgan, Barry. Strangely Orthodox: R.S.Thomas and his poetry of faith. Llandysul, UK: Gomer, 2006. ISBN 1-84323-682-6.
• Rogers, Byron. The Man Who Went Into The West, The life of R.S. Thomas. London: Aurum Press, 2006. ISBN 1-84513-146-0

External links

Poems

• "The Country Clergy": a poem by R.S. Thomas from TLS, February 26, 2008.
• "Luminary" at Poem of the Week, The Guardian
• R.S. Thomas 1913-2000 at the Poetry Foundation
• Ronald Stuart Thomas at PoemHunter (34 poems)
• Poems by R.S. Thomas at My Poetic Side

Audio / video

• R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) at The Poetry Archive.
• R.S. Thomas at YouTube

Books

• R.S. Thomas at Amazon.com

About

• R.S. Thomas in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Guardian obituary, 27 September 2000
• review of Uncollected Poems
• "R.S. Thomas: Poet of the cross", Religion & Ethics Newsweekly
• "R.S. Thomas's Existential Agony" by John Pikoulis and Martin Roberts at poetrymagazines.org.uk
• R.S. Thomas by Malcolm Hebron (.PDF)
• Doubt & Belief: A blog on the poetry of R.S. Thomas

Etc.

• R.S. Thomas Study Centre