In tribute to Dylan Thomas, Speech at a dinner hosted by Rt. Hon Carwyn Jones AM, First Minister and Mrs. Jones
Cardiff, Wales, 27th October 2014
Annwyl Gyfeillion,
First Minister of Wales (Rt Hon Carywn Jones AM)
Lord Mayor of Swansea (Councillor Ceinwen Thomas)
Ambassadors Cultural and Plenipotentiary,
Friends, Poets, Fellow Dylathonians,
Thank you First Minister for your kind words.
This morning found me, not in Llareggub, but in Cardiff with the First Minister. Looking over Cardiff Bay, we spoke of the common bonds that draw us together, including the precious common maritime border that sustains us, and to the protection and conservation of which we are both committed. We also recognised our distinct, proud identities as Irish and Welsh sons and the heritage we share.
At midday, I visited your Senedd, which has included men like former Secretary of State (for both Wales and N. Ireland) Paul Murphy, who worked in support of the Good Friday Agreement and will always have my country’s thanks.
Like Paul Murphy, many of your Senedd members are also active in the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, or BIPA, which has played a special role in bringing together parliamentarians from across these islands to recognise and act upon issues of mutual interest and concern. I particularly note the important work being undertaken by one of the Committees on the critically important issue of youth unemployment.
Wales has been a leader within these islands that are part of the British-Irish Council, including on the issue of indigenous, minority, and lesser-used languages – and just this week, a delegation from our Oireachtas visited Cardiff to consider how best to develop our bilingual policies in Ireland.
All of us are especially grateful for the work of the Ireland-Wales Research Network, a collaborative project that promotes interdisciplinary research and brings together some of our best minds with intense focus on the history and literature of our two countries. Irish poetry represents the oldest vernacular poetry in Europe and surely Welsh is close behind.
It is fundamentally important that language has brought us, and continues to bring us, together. Through our Parliaments, our scholars, our fine literary traditions.
We are here this evening to celebrate the centenary of the birth of one of the greatest poets who wrote in the English language – Dylan Thomas. How are we to approach this man’s birthday?
We could take a cue from the poet himself, as expressed in “Poem in October”:
My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
Here we find a still young man reflecting on his youth, hopeful for his future – like Walt Whitman, he celebrates himself. He walks in his own weather.
But that fair weather of optimism would change to storm. The demands of publication, of performance, of adulation, would claim a price. For some of the curious, the legend of the life has sometimes been substituted for an appropriate appreciation of the immense poetic and literary achievement of what was too short a life.
As Dylan Thomas’s beloved wife Caitlin, herself the daughter of Irish parents, observed wryly, “We created the legend and then lived up to it.”
But “to begin at the beginning” one can only envision the years of preparatory work, the agony of creation, the decades of artistic dedication that made tonight possible; for this is a centenary celebration of that prodigy of the world of poetry that is Dylan Thomas.
Amidst the calendars and the clocks, the ringing of the remembrance bell, I am especially mindful of the hour. I wish to acknowledge all those who have participated in the past 32 hours of readings and song – who began at the beginning and continue their homage as thin night darkens. To the friends, lovers, and true companions of art and literature – this celebration indeed belongs to you and to our honoured centenary.
I also wish to acknowledge, in these last hours before the precise 100 year anniversary of Dylan Thomas’s delivery into the world, the literal labours of his mother, Florence Hannah, and the outstanding efforts of her great granddaughter, Hannah Ellis, who is with us tonight. And let us remember too that extraordinary woman, Caitlin, who was Dylan’s wife, and who shared the legend that was their life together.
If there are any certainties to be carried into the future, I would suggest that one is that wherever poetry in the English language is being called up, be it in lonely places, or in the seminar rooms of universities, Dylan Thomas’ name will be invoked, and some of his lines will be quoted. Whether they are the opening lines of poems, such as “Do not Go Gentle into that Good Night”, or songs from Under Milk Wood, they will rush easily to the light of memory and they will linger, echoing down the days that are given to us.
When I told a fellow poet that I was coming here, he said to me that to have written “Fern Hill” would have been enough to have made a reputation, but we have been given so much more – work that was crafted out of what I might describe as the contradiction that is involved in relation to the English language, when mediated by a Celtic imagination.
In Dylan Thomas’ case that imagination was drawing on the rich heritage that is the Welsh Cynghaniedd. Thus, standing behind the available materials that were there in the language of Shakespeare was a heritage of sounds, some of which were in the learned structures of metrical form, but others – based on a more fundamental contradiction between a finite life and an infinite imagination – were drawn from the sensuous, if fleeting, encounter with the divine that is revealed in human imperfection.
For a writer, the price for the seeking of perfection can include the fear that the well is drying, and I have been very impressed at how well this point has been made in the brilliant lecture of the former Welsh Poet Laureate, Gwyneth Lewis, who reads some of Dylan Thomas’ later work as revealing this uncertainty as to the ability for future work.
Since my inauguration, a Dublin-based Welsh male-voice choir has performed at Áras an Uachtaráin, my home as President of Ireland. At my request, they made an arrangement and sang what I believe might be a very appropriate prayer by parliamentarians everywhere, “The Sunset Poem”, the prayer of Reverend Eli Jenkins in Under Milk Wood:
Every morning, when I wake,
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please do keep Thy lovely eye
On all poor creatures born to die.
And every evening at sun-down
I ask a blessing on the town,
For whether we last the night or no
I’m sure is always touch-and-go.
We are not wholly bad or good
Who live our lives under Milk Wood,
And Thou, I know, wilt be the first
To see our best side, not our worst.
O let us see another day!
Bless us this holy night, I pray,
And to the sun we all will bow
And say goodbye – but just for now!”
Wales is so right to recall and celebrate its prodigy in the wholeness of his work and life. Dylan Thomas’s complexity has been mined by scholars of English literature with enthusiasm and, some benefit, to our understanding. Yet I would fall back on his own summary of his creative ferment:
I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.
How honoured we are tonight by the presence of Dylan Thomas’ granddaughter for whom this evening must be a special one, but we have all been given an inerasable legacy in words that will go on from generation to generation.
Let us go then and give honour to Dylan Thomas.