Dylan Thomas, an unlikely bedfellow

Why Dylan?

There’s a deep relationship with poetry and art, isn’t there? Something about condensing a mass of feelings or observations into a pithy, crafted art-form – so different to the big stories of novels and films.

Personally, I’ve had an intermittent affair with poetry (as a reader and writer). And I had no idea Dylan Thomas’s work would show up as titles for my latest series of paintings. A shocker for me, if not for you.

Because I’m strongly feminist. Have been since my teens and luckily I married a brilliant man who shares the same convictions. So I’ve surprised even myself with this rediscovery of Dylan, often thought of as a womaniser. 

Actually, I blame housework. Because it all started with a simple and much postponed chore, clearing-out the studio. As you must, from time to time. Sigh. Otherwise, the materials proliferate and towers of half-read art books overwhelm your creative space, cramping your style. Humble opinion.

A child’s Christmas in Wales

Then in one of these malingering piles, I uncovered a special copy of “A child’s Christmas in Wales”. This is Dylan’s memoir-poem written in 1952. It was gifted to me in a stocking when I was 15. Needless to say, I wasn’t interested. I wanted records by The Smiths, DMs and black leggings as gifts. What was this quaint, old-fashioned booklet doing in my presents pile?!

Something told me not to throw it out, though. I was a thinker and a reader (in my existentialist phase, yawn) so not a total heathen. And I’ve dragged the booklet around with me from home to home ever since without paying it much attention. Until now.

Boldly illustrated, with raw and direct woodcuts, this neglected poetry suddenly connected with my own creativity a mere 35 years later. And then some! By coincidence, I took up linocut printmaking as a hobby 6 years ago and launched into visual art making, so the book’s illustrations landed with me too. But it’s the language of this memory poem that really speaks to me. The compassion for humanity, the nostalgia, playfulness and gems of observation… they have hit home like a juggernaut in midlife. 

Booze and a breathless poetic voice

Perhaps I’ve been dismissive of Dylan Thomas over the years. Possibly because I was frustrated at my inability to access his more dense, philosophical poetry, filled with sometimes illogical or revolutionary word order and a self-confessed fondness for obscurity. Plus he makes me feel not Welsh enough (I’m half-way there). Though I’ve since realised he couldn’t speak Welsh either. 

Then I saw the biopics – movies like The Edge of Love (you know, the one with Keira Knightly) – and clocked his abusive inclinations in a chaotic personal life. 

A booze-hound and sexual incontinent, his treatment of the primary women in his life does not sit well with me. (A tad hypocritical given I myself struggled with both behaviours in my 20s and early 30s.)

The “rogue-savant”

As I began mulling on the duality of all this, I was reminded of Mozart, classical music’s “rogue-savant” – my neologism, do you like it? Similarly incontinent and grotesque in his personal life, Mozart’s symphonies and Requiem still reduce listeners to tears nearly 300 years on. 

It’s as if the exquisite sensitivity and soulfulness in an extreme act of creation must have counterbalancing opposites. The converse destructive side becomes evident in roguish unrest, a quest to trash one’s own body as well as those of others.

And yet the universal quality of such people’s works (I say people because there are women like this too) surpasses their bodily limitations. Their words, art and music enter the realm of the sublime. Crikey!

All the moon long

Take the poem “Fern Hill” written by Thomas in 1945 (notably as the second world war was ending). You’ll find the Poetry Foundation’s reading here.

I have returned to this again and again and nabbed lines for at least four titles in my latest series of paintings (which will hang in The Art Shop & Chapel in Abergavenny).  Such wonderful phrases:

All the moon long…

Time held me green…

Fly with the high fields…

Golden in the heydays…

The appeal is in the wistfulness, the freedom, the sense of escape. We meld into the landscape or hover above it like a bird.

Do we love Thomas because he refused to reference the machine age and trappings of contemporary life perhaps? Or admire his uncanny skill of conjuring an acute sense of place? I mean, can’t you just feel yourself wandering the streets of Llareggub in “Under Milkwood”? Don’t you just know in your mind’s eye what every doorway and street corner looks like?

And then you find out that the fictional name Llareggub is actually “bugger all” written backwards. My rogue-savant is playing with us after all. And he does it with technical flair – a poetic virtuoso and a jester, all at once. Teasing us yet all the while tweaking our heart strings.

Playful contrast and an underlying sincerity

Beneath it all, though, I like to believe there’s sincerity here. And depth. A genuine passion for solace in the pastoral. There’s a relationship between poet-artist and their landscape, which signifies something spiritual and invincible in our humble lives. Dylan shares this reputation with Wordsworth – both give voice to a sense of harmony in nature but not without the inexorability of time making its presence known.

And this is where I see Dylan’s influence in my art. There’s a kind of contrast in his anarchic language just as my drawn lines and shapes lack convention. His words are scattered carefully to surprise you. The gems of oppositional colours in my paintings aim to catch the eye.

There’s dissonance in among his rhyme, so that you understand what you’re hearing but have to stop and think – you can see it with this line, “The horses coming out of the whinnying green stable…” You might expect the horses to be whinnying, but you know that he’s noticing a distant sound from inside the stable building, which is unexpectedly green with moss. Much more evocative.

But listen to me! I’m getting into details you can glean and interpret for yourself. I hope you do, and I hope you find it uplifts you.

I’m no rogue-savant. I just discovered that Dylan’s words convey something my paintings aim to evoke. And those words moved me.