Dylan Thomas day is here at last

The Royal Mint at Llantrisant, here in Wales, has struck a special Alderney £5 coin to commemorate the centenary of Dylan Thomas’s birth – click on the image to find out more

This year sees the centenary of the birth of wonderful Welsh writer Dylan Thomas and celebrations have been going on throughout 2014. But today, October 27, is his birthday. He was born in Swansea just after the outbreak of World War I.

Much has been written about the great man, but there’s something maybe you haven’t seen, on the Royal Mint blog. If you follow that link, it gives a great taster of what Dylan Thomas was all about. And a special coin has been struck for his centenary, too!

I have no special insight into the man and his works. Like most Welsh people, I studied his poems at school for O-level and A-level, and I have visited his writing shed – at The Boathouse in Laugharne. Sadly that was years ago – next time I will take my camera!

Dylan Thomas’s boathouse at Laugharne, his last home – picture from Wikimedia Commons

Although I like the play Under Milk Wood and the book A Child’s Christmas in Wales, it’s perhaps his poems I love best. My favourites include And Death Shall Have No Dominion, The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower and Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. We studied such poems for hours at school, word by word, and later I remember comparing his style with that of Gerard Manley Hopkins for an A-level essay.

Here is just one of his poems. I have chosen Especially When The October Wind, as it is more of a nature poem and appropriate for this time of year. It was first published just a few days before his 20th birthday. See what you think of his choice of adjectives, especially the hyphenated ones…

Especially when the October wind
Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea’s side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water’s speeches.

Cwmdonkin Park in Swansea, where Dylan Thomas walked as a young man – picture from Wikimedia Commons

Behind a pot of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour’s word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.
Some let me make you of the meadow’s signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven’s sins.

Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,
Some let me make you of the heartless words.
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea’s side hear the dark-vowelled birds.

Swansea Bay by Kevin Trahar – Dylan Thomas was living by the sea in Swansea when he wrote the poem above

So let’s all read one of Dylan’s poems and remember him today – it’s a shame his flame was snuffed out so early, when he died on tour in smoggy New York City of pneumonia and the long-term effects of alcohol, on November 9, 1953, aged just 39.

For all the latest news see the WalesOnline Dylan Thomas section…