I used to have some time for R.S.Thomas but got 'switched off' somewhat
after he seemed to start imitating 'Crow' without the cartoon violence
effects and his technique became monotonously repetitive. I think he was
more important for what he stood for - a 'Welsh' voice that wasn't seeking
accomodation with the 'English', and I'd very much agree with Alan's reading
of those terms in Thomas's poetry.
North Wales must be one of the most patently bloody 'colonised' and
ghettoized places in Europe - you go round Llanberis and all the businesses
it seems are owned by 'English'. Radio Liverpool rains and reigns. Walk
round those black and slatefaced hills and count the tumbled down cottages.
If Plaid Cymru stood a candidate in Caerlyr I'd vote for 'em.
David Bircumshaw
----- Original Message -----
From: Alan Halsey <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2000 2:21 PM
Subject: R.S.Thomas
> I'm surprised there hasn't yet been an obit here for R.S.Thomas: nobody
> out there a fan? Not sure I'm exactly in that category but certainly
> admire much in his work - particularly I suppose the way his poetry was
> founded on deeply-experienced contradictions & evolved out of a refusal
> of easy resolutions. To me his most interesting period was in the early
> seventies when the struggle between opposites began to show up in those
> unexpected line-endings, very subtle discontinuities. I'd certainly call
> that 'innovative' & maybe the more interesting in that RST was clearly
> not interested in innovation for its own sake. I'd like to quote a poem
> here but damn it my copies of the books seem to have gone awol.
>
> I saw him give a talk once when he was already quite old & apparently
> not very well: non-stop for about an hour, without notes, utterly
> fluent, a performance & a half. It was about why English people living
> in Wales as I did should be deported at once, so it had a certain edge
> to it from my point of view. I was surprised how unacknowledgedly
> Marxist his argument was - for 'capitalist' read 'English', for
> 'exploited working class' read 'Welsh'. The fact that so many English
> have been exploited in exactly the same way was apparently entirely
> irrelevant as far as he was concerned. The interesting thing, of course,
> is that he never allowed himself to sentimentalise the Welsh people
> themselves - completely the opposite, in fact - which is the first of
> the really hard edges his poetry sprang from.
>
> Today's Guardian pieces stress his sternness etc but I witnessed a quite
> bizarre episode which showed another side of him. He turned up in my
> bookroom in Hay accompanied by a young I think Korean with a camcorder.
> Somehow or other he'd agreed to let this guy film him in this or that
> location - the last thing you'd expect him to do, but he was doing it
> with great good humour & grace. Well well. I wish I'd been sent a still
> of him standing under the faux-primitive necklace which hung from the
> ceiling at that time but I never saw any of the film ... I guess stashed
> in an archive somewhere.
>
> AH
>
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