Dylan Thomas Statue and Victoria Hopkins

The Dylan Thomas statue at the Marina outside is a good place to introduce Victoria Hopkins, the new SwanTV reporter and news reader.



Just across the Marina bridge is another statue, that of Captain Cat, a major character in Under Milk Wood, the play for words written by Dylan Thomas and one of the vivid memories I have in the days of Radio. I still enjoy listening to many programmes on radio and in particular the drama. You can use your imagination rather than depend on what you see when you watch TV. I can clearly remember listening to Under Milk Wood. The year must have been 1954 and the first recording presented by the BBC with  Richard Burton and I think I may have listened on a crystal set using a pair of ex-RAF headphones.

Crystal sets were a way of listening privately and I'd listen in bed. Radio Luxemburg was popular. The sets were often sold as kits for self assembly and I think mine was in a small cigar box.  Meanwhile the family listened in the drawing room to such programmes as Tony Hancock, Dick Barton, Ray's  Laugh and many others. Whilst we now sit around the TV we used to have the radio on  doing other things. Here is a photo of a crystal set from the early fifties. Now we have a single device that;s a phone, TV, radio and much more

Just to remind you, Captain Cat is the old blind sea captain who dreams of his deceased shipmates and lost lover Rosie Probert. He is one of the play's most important characters, as he often acts as a narrator. He observes and comments on the goings-on in the village from his window.

Sowing bulbs in Cwmdonkin Park

Short film shot last month.

Listening to Dylan Thomas reading is so relaxing. His voice is so clear and pitched to almost hypnotise. No wonder he was so successful on radio. When the BBC studios in Swansea were unusable programmes were recorded in Swansea Uplands. In a grove where Martin Amis grew up with his parents. Martin slept in an open draw in his parents bedroom. My mother in law lived next door and says she found these bohemians strange folk!!

Dylan lived in a nearby avenue. He died in 1953. Martin Amis as born in 1949 so they might as well have lived in different centuries.Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914-1953)
Reading by Dylan Thomas

Love In the Asylum
A stranger has come
To share my room in the house not right in the head,
A girl mad as birds

Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume.
Strait in the mazed bed
She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds

Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room,
At large as the dead,
Or rides the imagined oceans of the male wards.

She has come possessed
Who admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall,
Possessed by the skies

She sleeps in the narrow trough yet she walks the dust
Yet raves at her will
On the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.

And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last
I may without fail
Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.

Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas Walks re-instated

We are pleased to announce that the Dylan Thomas walks are being started again in this, the centenary year of the birth of the Great Man.
 
It is intended to run these as follows.
 
Until March 2014
Uplands Walk     1st & 3rd Saturdays each month at 11.30 outside the Uplands Tavern, Swansea
      
Literary Pub Crawl  1st & 3rd Wednesday each month 6.30 outside No Sign Wine Bar Wind Street, Swansea

Walks from April onwards to be announced.

Group walks can be arranged to suit you. Call 07976 364681

The Hunchback in the Park.

On the Uplands Walk we stop by the actual fountain that Dylan Thomas floated his tin boat in. Now refurbished it's looking good but the tin cup is missing.

We usually read verses from this poem and we soak up the atmosphere and imagine the Hunchback behind every tree as Dylan runs home in the twilight.

Painting By Jeff Phillips. Swansea illustrator with a huge Dylan Thomas collection

Under Milk Wood

The walks are up and running again

They are back. Both the Dylan Thomas Literary Pub Crawl and the Uplands & Cymdonkin Park Walk are running from the 19th June and then in the first and third weeks of every month. Come along and learn about Dylan Thomas's life, what inspired him and his local connections.

Come and join us on Thursday 20th June for the Dylan Thomas Literary Pub Crawl. This is a fun evening with loads of stories about Dylan and the area. 

 

And the Uplands and Cymdonkin Park walk is on Wednesday 19th June and then twice a month. There are meeting points for disabled people or ambulant walkers so you'll enjoy this experience too. Call for details. Check this walk is running if weather is wet or very windy.



 

 

 

I do hope you'll join us.

 

Mike Leahy 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dylan Thomas Literary Award

 The Dylan Thomas Literary Award is here again. This most prestigious event celebrated young authors (under thirty years) from around the world.

We followed three of them this week from Mozart's where they read excepts from their short-listed books, across to Noah's in Swansea Uplands where they were interviewed by Peter Stead, who created the awards back in 2006. There is a glittering prize - of £30,000. A bonus to any author today: and particularly to a young author in this very competitive market. The readings were such a contrast and all held the packed room audience spell-bound.
 


Introduced by Hannah Ellis, grand-daughter of Dylan Thomas. This was a warm and inspiring event.

 Lighting was extremely poor at this location as was the sound but we have managed to capture the essence of the intimate atmosphere. Watch out for footage on SwanTV

Tuesday evening the  Dylan Thomas Literary Finalists went to the Swansea Print Workshop where there was a presentation on the Dylan Thomas Project run 10 years ago with both original and new artists. The work is very delicate and cotton gloves were the order of the day. Touching the paper may have a damaging effect.

As a memento of the occasion the Print Workshop had set each author's name in cold type and produced a simple poster for each to take away. They actually printed off their individual copies.  

There are some really interesting old printing presses at the Swansea Print Workshop that are still used today. 

Dylan Thomas Theatre

Join us tonight with a £1 saving per person. See end of this post or look in the right hand column.

Although not a pub the Dylan Thomas Theatre is just a few steps from one of the pubs we visit.

 And it is well worth strolling down to take a look outside the building and the wall paintings. If there is a performance taking place we will peek in and look at the Dylan Thomas memorabilia on the Foyer walls. 

This is the home of the Little Theatre Amateur Production Company. 

Dylan Thomas was a member and performed with them in the thirties as a young man. They perform Under Milk Wood every year on the Dylan Thomas anniversary using sets from another production being performed by a different Theatre Group which makes it very interesting. I have seen three shows in different years and each has been delighful and a joy to watch. I highly recommend you look out for, and attend, a performance later in the year.

Directly outside the Theatre and looking out to see is a state of Dylan Thomas. A commment was made that his likeness is terrible compared to the likeness of the chair (which is pretty good). On the plinth is carved  '......though I sang in my chains like the sea' from his much-loved poem 'Fern Hill'.

Another statue on the Marina: and a particular favorite of mine is that of Captain Cat.

This is a great statue, larger than life and a great photo shoot location. I have taken some fabulous photos at different times of the day and from different angles with some satisfaction. Of course Captain Cat wouldn't appreciate this being blind.

Opening lines from Under Milk Wood

To begin at the beginning:

It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and- rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.

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We can arrange special walks for your group so if you want to arrange something give me a call. We can arrange for food at one of the pubs, an actor to be speaking extracts from Dylan Thomas poetry or stories. We also do the Uplands Walk taking in Cwmdonkin Park and standing by the actual fountain from "The Hunchback in the Park" and much more. Finishing up in the Uplands Tavern. Plenty to see and talk about.  Call me on 0797636468.

Save £1 today. take a photo of the voucher and show the guide tonight.

Enjoy the great weather.

Do not go gently into that good night

Do not go gently into that good night. Listening to Dylan Thomas reading his own work is spine tingling. Just imagine listening to Charles Dickens or even Shakespeare.

I believe that Charles Dickens is actually a good choice to compare with Dylan Thomas in some respects. Both were prolific writers who toured America where they drew huge crowds reading their own work.

Do not go gentle into that good night . . . . but join us on Thursday outside the No Sign Wine Bar at 6.30 for a couple of hours of Dylan Thomas and delving back 70-80 years to see a different Swansea to that we know today.

I liked the taste of beer

We meet outside the No Sign Wine Bar. One of the oldest pubs in Swansea. Was it called the "No Sign" because this was a residential area? Or because it actually had no name and the Revenue Men needed to call it something for their records. Or was there another reason? Come in to see the polished bare floorboards. Walk through the length of the ground floor and be amazed at the distance the bar staff must walk every day!!

See you there.

A successful inaurgural walk

The clock on the mantlepiece at the Boat-house. in Laugharne ticks on. Or does it? Why not take a trip down to West Wales and find out.

The first Dylan Thomas literary pub crawl was a success with 7 people turning up. Starting promptly at 6.30, I finally left the group still drinking and having an enjoyable chat after 9.30. 

The walk took in the Queen's Hotel, Cross Keys Pub and the No Sign Wine Bar. Those on the walk included visitors from Spain and American together with local Swansea folk.

 

 Why not join us next week outside the No Sign Wine Bar at 6.30pm. See you there.  "marble town, city of laughter, little Dublin"  Swansea as described by Dylan Thomas to Vernon Watkins, a description of the town pre-war.

To begin at the beginning

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.

opening words from Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas  

"I liked the taste of beer, its live white lather, its brass-bright depths, the sudden world through the wet brown walls of the glass, the tilted rush to the lips and the slow swallowing down to the lapping belly, the salt on the tongue, the foam at the corners."  

Join us every Thursday evening at 6.30 outside The No Sign Wine Bar on Wind Street when we visit for pubs used by Dylan Thomas. Hear about his connections and the wonderful history of each pub. You'll even have time for drink, whether beer or something none alcoholic.

 Come on this walking tour that takes you back into an age gone by. Between the two world wars before plasma screens and washing machines in every home: when a family car or phone was a luxury; when locking the doors at home was unusual: when the pub was the social hub.

 It is often commented that Thomas was indulged like a child and he was, in fact, still a teenager when he published many of the poems he would become famous for: “And death shall have no dominion" “Before I Knocked” and “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower". "And death shall have no dominion", appeared in the New English Weekly in May 1933[4]and further work appeared in The Listener in 1934 catching the attention of two of the most senior poets of the day T. S. Eliot and Stephen Spender. His highly acclaimed first poetry volume, 18 Poems, was published on 18 December 1934, and went on to win a contest run by The Sunday Referee, netting him new admirers from the London poetry world, including Edith Sitwell. The anthology was published by Fortune Press, which did not pay its writers and expected them to buy a certain number of copies themselves. A similar arrangement would later be used by a number of other new authors, including Philip Larkin.

His passionate musical lyricism caused a sensation in these years of desiccated Modernism; the critic Desmond Hawkins said it was “the sort of bomb that bursts no more than once in three years”. In all, he wrote half of his poems while living at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive before he moved to London. It was also the time that Thomas's reputation for heavy drinking developed.

But was he a regular big drinker or not? Come and listen to my theory on the Dylan Thomas Literary Pub Crawl. Every Thursday from 5th July when we follow in his footsteps and visit pubs he frequented. Pubs that are steeped in history. Pubs that will give you a Welsh welcome. Pubs where you may even have a chance to read some of the Great Man's words, and cetainly listen to some.

Please call 07976 364681 with any query.