Glasses raised to pub poem, a lost ode to a favoured Dylan pastime
THE centenary of the birth of carousing poet Dylan Thomas will be marked today by a reading of a newly discovered work — about a pub.
The poem, Song, will be read by Welsh actor Michael Sheen in New York, where he was to direct and star in Under Milk Wood overnight at 92Y — 92nd Street Y is the theatre where Thomas performed the first reading of his most famous work shortly before his death.
The 44-line Song, a playful ditty featuring several punning names including Mr Watts-Ewers and Mr Alf Measure, was written in Henneky’s Long Bar in Holborn in central London in 1951. The grade II listed pub is now called the Cittie of Yorke.
It was scribbled in pencil by Thomas for the Apollo Society, an arts group whose members included the poet Cecil Day-Lewis and the actress Peggy Ashcroft, and was found last year by a relative of one of the poet’s friends.
The poem is about the opening of a hotel — a “splendiferous place” and a “Buckingham Palace of booze” — and the despair of other local landlords.
John Goodby, chair of English language and literature at Swansea University and the editor of a new collection of Thomas’s poems that includes Song, said: “It’s a bit of fun and is very song-like, hence its title. It was written as an entertainment for friends as what is really a pub song. It probably did not mean that much to him since he gave it away, but what’s nice is the lyrical sound to it, rather similar to that of Under Milk Wood.”
Sheen, whose film roles have included Tony Blair in The Queen and David Frost in Frost/Nixon, will appear beside Kate Burton, daughter of actor Richard Burton.
The event in New York, where Thomas died in November 1953, aged 39, is one of several that took place at the weekend to mark the centenary of his birth in Swansea on October 27, 1914. In London, a work by Welsh poet Dannie Abse was among those read in tribute to Thomas.
Soap Bubbles was Abse’s last work, written just days before his death last month.
The poem was sent to artist Dan Llywelyn Hall, the organiser of Dylan’s Centenary Supper, which was held overnight.
It ends with the lines: “Now Jubal’s favoured poet who searched/for the gate marked BACK, is 100 years old/and Dilly Dilly Dylan (come and be killed)/ unlike Willie Willie Wee, is dead dead dead/Oh my dead dear, all’s vanished/Who heard the little thud of a book being shut?”
Several other poems written in memory of Thomas will be read by their authors, including Gillian Clarke, Wales’s poet laureate.
Hall said: “Dannie sent me all his drafts of Soap Bubbles and made some poignant changes a couple of weeks before he died.
“It was especially written for the dinner and he was due to read it there.”
Thomas moved to London in 1933, the year in which his breakthrough poem And Death Shall Have No Dominion was published.
Feted by bohemian London, Thomas drank heavily and his tempestuous marriage to Caitlin Macnamara was punctuated by affairs.
He often returned to south Wales and was happiest in the Boathouse, his home in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire.
Also taking place overnight was a Thomas gala at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, with readings from Tom Hollander, Rob Brydon and Jonathan Pryce.
The Dylathon, a 36-hour non-stop reading of Thomas’s works, began yesterday at the Swansea Grand Theatre. Actors Ian McKellen and Matthew Rhys were among those taking part.
Source: The Australian - 27 October 2014
