Twenty Welsh Facts

Young Dylan was a sickly kid who suffered from bronchitis and asthma through the rest of his life and he spent a lot of his time at home reading rather than going to school. His poor health may well have been his saving as it prevented him from being called up to fight in World War II and instead he worked for the government writing scripts.

When he did attend school he went to a private school near his home and later attended Swansea Grammar School where his first poem was published in the school magazine.

At the age of 16 he left school and got a job using his literary talents working at the South Wales Daily Post, but however his poor health and the stress of the job forced him to leave 18 months later but he continued to work freelance for a few more years.

The freetime now available to Dylan gave him the chance to write and he could often be found in the Kardomah Café in Castle Street where he chatted with the poets, musicians and artists who also went there.

In February 1941 the Germans bombed Swansea destroying the café. Dylan wrote about his experiences of this in his play Return Journey Home.

His first poetry volume was published in 1934, the same year that he moved to London. He then went on to direct films for the Ministry of Information and ended up working for Strand Films.

In 1946 Deaths and Entrances was published and it was now that Dylan started to become more famous around the world. His voice was loved in America when he travelled the country in the 1950s reading his poetry and it was while he was in the US that he finished writing his most famous work Under Milk Wood and first performed it at Harvard in May 1953.

As with many talented people Thomas’s life was tragically short and he died in New York on 9th November 1953 aged 39. His death has been the cause of much discussion with some people saying it was due to his naturally weak constitution, others claim he died of illness caused by the addiction to alcohol.
At the post-mortem, the pathologist found that the immediate cause of death was swelling of the brain, caused by pneumonia. His liver showed very little sign of damage due to drinking. His body was returned to his home country where he was buried in the village churchyard at Laugharne on 25th November and amongst the mourners at his funeral were his mother, Florence, and his wife, Caitlin, who died in 1994 and was buried next to him.

Dylan’s poetry is famous for its musicality, particularly Fern Hill, In the White Giant’s Thigh and In Country Sleep. Dylan once told a friend that his style was influenced by the Mother Goose rhymes that his mother used to teach him when he was a child.

Dylan’s poem and death shall have no dominion is noted for its metaphysical sentiment and assertion of the eternal continuity of life in nature.

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

In 1982, a plaque was unveiled in honour of Dylan Thomas, in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey.