The Bard of Wales

Gwen Herat in Swansea, South Wales

POETRY: The nip in the air blowing the cold autumn wind did not prevent the large number of visitors to see the Dylan Thomas Festival at the Centre at South Wales, Swansea, the home of the greatest Welsh poet and the second next to William Shakespeare.

If the English are proud of the Bard of Avon, so are the Welsh of their Bard and very justly. His written material far exceeds William Shakespeare and it is a matter of a century that he will be on equal pedestal with Shakespeare.

Thomas is a modern writer born in the last century where contemporary writing was the call of the day as against the dialogue found in Shakespeare plays.

Ever since his birth on 27 October, 1914, he lived at Condonkin Drive until he moved to London on his 20th birthday in 1914. He returned frequently, staying for weeks until his money ran out. His parents moved to Bishopstan in 1937 after his retirement. His house was new when the parents purchased it and a few months before Dylan was born.

When finally the house was sold in 1943, it was more by luck that it retained its old features. Currently, it is in the custody of city and county of Swansea who runs the Dylan Thomas Centre. October being the month he was born, a whole set of programmes of events is organised at Dylan's birthplace. They include a mixture of lectures for students and teachers, talks, informal gatherings, workshops and reading of his poetry by eminent academics in his memorial.

Films made on his works such as "Under the Milkwood" with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are screened while in the evenings, excerpts from his plays climax the nights. The atmosphere is very much in keeping.

They take place in many of the rooms that Thomas used to write from. The walls are inspirational especially the large upstairs room in which he was born. Those attending the events have the chance of wandering around the house and peep under the floorboards of his room which he once described as 'the untidiest room you ever saw where many of his unpublished manuscripts still lay.

Visitors are genuinely excited at looking out of the same window Thomas used to scan across the sweep of Swansea Bay which is the place where the better part of his poems were written. Although largely empty, I can still feel that atmosphere and the buzz between speakers and audience of the literary events.

Afterwards, even the hardened cynics admit that there is something very special about the house, unaware that I was creating a mild stir in my Bathik saree at the Centre. Swansea is a very orthodox city, retaining its century old culture and facial facades of their high buildings that one could see across the massive bay.

Fishing is the main industry and hundreds of boats, make it a romantic, out of this world scenic beauty. There is fresh air and people seem to have the whole day to wander around, looking at the art centres and theatres full of Dylan Thomas's memory.

Creative fluids

The Centre is a popular place for writing classes and workshops for aspiring Welsh writers and so much has been read and written at the Centre in the past. It is spectacular that the creative fluids keep flowing.

Since I have visited the Dylan Thomas Centre many times, one of my favourite quotes about the Centre in his works comes from his semi-autobiographical short story "The Peaches' where he quotes 'A story I had made up in the warm, safe island of my bed with sleepy midnight Swansea flowing and rolling round outside the house, came blowing down to me then.'

Echoes of Dylan Thomas's words still swirl around Comdonkin Drive as though they were written yesterday while people continue to write and study poetry and prose in this inspirational centre. His words surrounding them, fire their imagination.

Alcoholic

When Dylan Thomas belonged to the Swansea Little Theatre in Mumbles, he was fond of a pint during breaks in rehearsals. So fond was he of liquor that the breaks between rehearsals became longer and longer when eventually he was thrown out of the group.

Dylan's drinking sessions in Mumbles pubs like the Antelope and the Marine are now firmly part of the hard-drinking image most people have of the poet which is why both pubs now feature in the third official Dylan Thomas Trail based around Thomas's haunts in Mumbles and Gower.

The poet's love for beer is the stuff legends are made of. His love affair with pubs made him admit "I liked the taste of beer. It leaves white lather, its brass-bright depths, the sudden world through the wet brown walls of the glass' Thomas also said, 'In Swansea, I remember being bought two pints at a time my belly what for.

'Though drinks killed him before he turned forty, he possibly could not have written that much if he was constantly drunk. Some also suggest that he was a moderate drinker who only sipped haves and could make a point last all afternoon. Then, he was a heavy smoker too.

Great lover

'I am a lover of the human race, especially women; he said and there are scores of them he lived with, lived off and loved. On one of his trips to America, with an anthology containing photographs of poets from across the Atlantic and pointing out some female poets, Thomas claimed 'Slept with her, slept with her, slept with her, could have done but brushed her off.

Slept with her. But many discard the idea he was a ladies' man but Thomas managed to attract the attention and sympathies of many women he met during his short life.

Some who figured most prominently in his life are Pamela Hansford-Johnson, edith Sitwell, Emily Holmes-Comna, Elizabeth Reitall and Caitlin Thomas who he married and had three children from an extremely tempestuous relationship, announcing 'I don't like to wake up alone in the morning'.

The celebrations to his life at the festival will continue until November 9 exhibiting his profuse writings, simultaneously in London and New York.

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