On 28 Jul 2016, at 23:32, Peter Riley wrote:

 The point was, I think, that he was inescapable (this was the 1950s+), he was in the air you breathed, and whether you "liked" his poetry or not didn't make much difference, you couldn't not know about it and you couldn't not hear it. I was overwhelmed by it, and by Hopkins,  but I never attempted to write like either of them, because, I think, I couldn't bring myself to claim that sonorous high ground. It's possible to admire a poet unreservedly without being influenced in the slightest. 

I guess that in Cambridge (1959-63) the prevalent intense fear of being cheated which was known as "discrimination" suppressed my interest in Thomas, and there were people making truly vicious speeches about him. But it was too late. It was too late too in the subsequent ex-Cambridge discussions which we now apparently have to refer to as "late Modernism". I don't believe he was ever mentioned and whether I returned to reading him from time to time I can't remember, but I know that when I picked up the 1996 revised Collected Poems it replaced the 1953 Collected which I still had.