Ffeil / File 2/23 - Dylan Thomas 50th Anniversary: Dylan Thomas Jazz Suite 'Twelve Poems'

Some Welsh.

The Anglo-Welsh poet and writer Dylan Marlais Thomas was born in Swansea on 27 October 1914. In 1937, he married Caitlin Macnamara and, the following year, the couple settled in the Welsh fishing village of Laugharne, where they would bring up their three children. Thomas gained a popular reputation during his lifetime, though he was obliged to augment his often insufficient and sporadic earnings with reading tours and radio broadcasts. A heavy drinker for much of his life, Thomas's health, never robust, deteriorated until, on a trip to New York City in November 1953, he fell into a coma, from which he did not recover. He was buried in St Martin's churchyard, Laugharne. One of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, Thomas is noted for his ingenious and original use of words and imagery, a probable legacy of the cynghanedd which characterises Welsh strict-metre poetry. Many of Thomas's works, which include the 'play for voices' Under Milk Wood, the autobiographical prose piece A Child's Christmas in Wales and poems such as Fern Hill and Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, have become widely-known and well-loved favourites.