October 27: Dylan Thomas

Today's birthday is Dylan Thomas, born in 1914. He was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems Do not go gentle into that good night and And death shall have no dominion; the 'play for voices' Under Milk Wood.

1. The name Dylan means 'son of the sea' - he was named after a character in an old Welsh story, Dylan ail Don. His middle name, Marlais, means 'voice of the Sea' after his great uncle, also a poet, whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles. While we pronounce his name “Dillan”, the Welsh pronunciation is “Dullan”. Dylan preferred the former, possibly because the latter sounded too much like “Dull one”.
2. His mother was a seamstress and his father was an English teacher. Dylan was born in Swansea, South Wales.
3. He started writing poetry as a teenager. He kept a notebook full of his poems, and edited the school newspaper. He was very proud of the fact that he won the school mile race in 1928. He carried the newspaper's picture of him winning the race with him until he died.
4. He left school at 16 and worked as a journalist, but that career didn't last long. He left to become a poet full time. While several of his early poems were published, his breakthrough poem was Light breaks where no sun shines in 1934. Some of his best known poems including And death shall have no dominion, Before I Knocked and The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower were all written at this time.
5. He met his wife Caitlin Macnamara in London in 1936. Even though she was going out with someone else at the time, Thomas proposed to her that same evening. They married in 1937 and had three children. He had several affairs, though, and both he and Caitlin were heavy drinkers.
6. When World War II broke out, he wasn't conscripted because of lung disease. He struggled to support his family financially at that time and tried to get work with the Ministry of Information. He was unsuccessful there, but got a position with Strand Films, making films for the MOI. He also wrote scripts for the BBC.
7. The village of Llareggub in Thomas's radio play Under Milk Wood is 'buggerall' backwards.
8. His 1940 work Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog is a parody of the title of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
9. In 1950, Thomas went on a three month poetry tour of New York, performing at arts centres and universities. He became infamous for being drunk at parties and even during some of his performances, and for his shocking behaviour. His most popular poem in America was A Child's Christmas in Wales.
10. He died, aged just 39, in 1953, while on another tour in America. He'd been ill before he went, suffering from gout, lung problems and blackouts and according to his assistant, "looked pale, delicate and shaky, not his usual robust self" when she picked him up at the airport. He postponed or cut short several social engagements because he wasn't feeling well, although it didn't stop him drinking. One night he returned to his hotel claiming to have drunk 18 whiskies although the owner of the pub he'd been to later refuted the claim, saying he didn't think Thomas had had any more than nine whiskies. Air pollution in New York reached a high about that time, which is likely to have made Thomas's lung problems worse. He was admitted to hospital with breathing problems and fell into a coma from which he never recovered. Cause of death was recorded as pneumonia, brain swelling and a fatty liver.

See Also:

Quotes by Dylan Thomas

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