Dylan Thomas
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"Rage, rage against the dying of the light"
“Do not go gentle into that good night” -wrote Dylan Thomas of his terminally ill father in 1952 - “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” The lines have become one of the most quoted couplets in English verse.
Less than a year later Thomas would himself be dead, the victim of a suspected morphine overdose administered by a New York doctor. He had already become that rarest of literary creatures- an internationally famous poet.
Born in Swansea in 1914, the young Dylan liked to describe himself as “The Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive”. It was a prophetic joke. Like Rimbaud, he would take poetry to new heights before dying in his thirties.
While biographies of Thomas fully chronicle his drinking, habitual indebtedness and letting- down of friends, he also possessed disciplined ambition. Hence the swift departure his safe job on the South Wales Evening Post to seek fame – if not fortune- in the bright lights of London.
Thomas’s reputation was made in 1934 with the publication of his 18 Poems, including one of his most acclaimed works; The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower. It is at once a vigorous manifesto of youth and a stoic acknowledgment of the inevitability of death.
A second collection followed in 1936 when he met his future wife Caitlin. They settled eventually at Laugharne in Carmarthenshire, a period she later described as their happiest spent together. The Boathouse in Laugharne was where he wrote some of his best known works and it is preserved today as it was during his lifetime and is visited by numerous literary fans each year.
Thomas was in constant demand both as a writer and performer. His rich voice and magisterial delivery graced BBC broadcasts from Cardiff, Swansea and London. It echoes still through numerous recordings. His epic verse tale Under Milk Wood was, like much of his work, written to be heard as much as read.
While some will argue that Wales has produced better poets, none has touched so many people so deeply as Dylan Thomas.
He died in a New Yorkhospital on 9 November 1953.