We all usually remember a favorite singer or musician by a profusion of songs, writers by our very well-loved short stories or essays or whatever… I remember R.S. Thomas as the name that jumped at me most often in my own personal jottings of favorite poetry culled
from books and magazines in the university library during 1960s and 70s.
R.S. Thomas was born in Cardiff in 1913, but grew up in Holyhead, Anglesey from age five. He won the coveted Heinemann Award in 1955, the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1964, and the Cholomondeley Award in 1978. The Welsh Council's Literature award went to him four times. In 1996 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award for
Poetry from the Lannan Foundation and the Horst Bienek Prize for Poetry from the Bavarian Academy of Fine Art. He was nominated for 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature.
He published his first collections The Stones of the Field in 1946, followed by more than 50 other books of poetry and prose. His autobiography 'Neb' (No-one) written in Welsh, was published in 1985 and translated into English, and published in 1997. He has often
been labelled the greatest Welsh poet and even finest religious poet in English.
Thomas paints on a vast canvas covering major areas with queries on time and history to the self, also relationships and love, science and technology, the machine, the Cross and prayer. Like very few writers before him he is said to have produced his best work in his old age around 70s-80s. Dennis Healy said he reminded him of Beethoven's last quartets in
its fearless exploration of the mysteries surrounding life and death. He could be called the greatest metaphysical poet since the Metaphysicals of the 17th Century. He has penetrated deep into the relationship between God and Man in a world dominated by science and materialism… intense intellectual rigour in dazzling images.'
David Scott said of him : ' Reading R.S. Thomas's poems has become like reading the prophet Jeremiah… we find the same tenacity of theme and purpose; the ability to look without blinking into the misuse of the raw material of humanity…'
Lets see some specimens :
To the church on the hill
three women came
with the need to escape
from the echo of their silence.
One had bent bones,
one the hernia of
the spirit. One looked up
with turned eye at a half truth.
I listened to them singing
grey hymns with the mould
on them; doled them
the hard crust of communion
and the tart wine, facing them
at last with the answer
of the locked door to the question
they were too late to ask.
The scales fell from my eyes,
and I saw faces. I screamed
at the ineffectuality
of love to protect me.
A dislocation of mind:
Love photographed
the imbecility of
my expression and framed it.
In time's telescope
all women became
one woman, burning
like a star in her own sky
And all men became
one man, and I
was that man, eager
to woo, and lost her.
With cash in the one,
and no harm in the other,
they persuaded all
but the child, who knew
with a Child's roguery
whichever he touched
of the hands held out
would always be empty.
Still Point
In the universe one
World beneath cloud
Foliage. In that world
a town. In the town
a house with a child,
who is blind, staring
over the edge of the universe
into the depths of love.
© R.S. Thomas, Kunjana Thomas, Rhodri Thomas.
From collected later poems (1998-2000), Bloodaxe Books.
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Comments: 12
I shall look for more about him .
The Island
And God said, I will build a church here And cause this people to
worship me, And afflict them with poverty and sickness
In return for centuries of hard work
And patience. And its walls shall be hard as Their hearts,
and its windows let in the light Grudgingly, as their minds do,
and the priest's words be drowned By the wind's caterwauling.
All this I will do,Said God, and watch the bitterness in
their eyes Grow, and their lips suppurate with Their prayers.
And their women shall bring forth On my altar,
and I will choose the best Of them to be thrown back into the sea.
And that was only on one island.
(c) -R.S.Thomas
Ajay, this was one of the poems I had chosen to highlight in the article here!
I guess our tastes in literature and music seem to run parallel in an uncanny way...
Am toying with the idea of introducing great jazz musicians here.
What to do you say?
This is a lovely poem, thanks for sharing or course.
Cheerz!
Cheerz!