For openers, let's agree that Dylan Thomas was no model for youth, nor was he anybody's idea of an agreeable houseguest, especially if one had daughters. We pass over in silence his, to say the least, unconventional marriage, his drinking et cetera, and his untimely death, hastened by his unrestrained life. And yet undoubtedly he is thought of as a romantic figure, a rebel against structured society. He was a natural bohemian who lived life fully and with abandonment.

Dylan Thomas - Playwright

Dylan Thomas was one of the 20th century's major English poets, and certainly one of the most popular. As it happens, two of his most loved works, Under Milk Wood and A Child's Christmas in Wales, are prose pieces, not poetry; but the distinction hardly matters; his prose and his poetry have the same musical sound and rhythm, and in both it is the music that matters most. Thomas chose words as a composer chooses the chords to play and the instruments to play them.

Try reading aloud the last lines of his poem I, in My Intricate Image:

And then this, from A Child's Christmas in Wales:

Both pieces have the unmistakable Thomas pulse, the same care for the sound of the words, the poem somber, the prose lighthearted; and both cry out to be sung. No wonder that Sarah and Denis Rodgers put Child's Christmas to music. Thomas's poems, written to be read and reread, slowly, are more densely constructed than his stories, the underlying emotion and thought more tightly compacted into the words, the imagery more challenging, more ambiguous. Readers may take different meanings from lines like 'My ghost in his metal Neptune / Forged in man's mineral', and who is to say which meaning is correct? A Child's Christmas, on the other hand, is written to be read to an audience, so the narrative, the genial humour, the characters - prankish schoolboys, tippling aunts, dozing uncles - are more readily accessible. Thomas knew the difference between reading for oneself and listening.

To be sure, Thomas's poems can be daunting at first acquaintance. Often the meaning appears somewhat obscure. Equally often, however, the sound conveys much of the meaning. Though it may seem strange to say so, even if the sense of the words may not be clear, one can tell what the line is expressing from the sheer sound of it.

For those for whom Christmas in Wales is their introduction to the writing of Dylan Thomas, a treasure chest of delights lies waiting in the work of this wild Welshman.

Frank McGilly