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Only top-level descriptions Thomas, Dylan, 1914-1953 English poetry -- Welsh authors -- 20th century
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Notes for his father's 'Elegy'

  • NLW MS 23992E.
  • File
  • 1953

One page of untitled holograph notes by Dylan Thomas, 1953, written whilst composing his last poem, the unfinished 'Elegy' to his father, David John (D.J.) Thomas, who died on 16 December 1952.
The work first appeared in print, as a 'previously unpublished poem', in Encounter, 6/2 (February 1956), and was included by Vernon Watkins as an appendix to the Collected Poems after 1956. For a copy of the poem as completed by Vernon Watkins, see NLW MS 22552E.

Thomas, Dylan, 1914-1953

Poems sent to Thomas Taig

  • NLW MS 23990D.
  • File
  • 1937-1939

Letter, dated 23 August 1939, from Dylan Thomas to Thomas Taig, enclosing a selection of poems intended 'for some kind of dramatic presentation' (f. 1). The writer encloses holograph fair copies of two of his poems: 'Find meat on bones that soon have none ...' (ff. 2-4) and 'Ears in the turrets hear ...' (ff. 5-6). He also encloses his own transcripts of George Woodcock's poem 'Landore' (f. 7), and Alan Pryce-Jones's 'Voyage' (ff. 8-9), together with three published issues of Keidrych Rhys's periodical Wales, 1937-8 (ff. 10-69), one of which bears Dylan's signature, and notes (f. 69 verso).
Thomas Taig was active in the Swansea Little Theatre, and intended to present poems by Welshmen writing in English at a London theatre at the end of September 1939; see further Dylan Thomas, The Collected Letters, ed. by Paul Ferris (London, 2000), pp. 438 and 452n.

Thomas, Dylan, 1914-1953