File NLW MS 24151B. - Diary

Diary of Raymond Garlick, Blaenau Ffestiniog, for 1956, with one day to a page, containing entries for 1 January-3 May (ff. 2-62 verso), with occasional scattered entries thereafter, mostly concerning personal and family matters, his writing and broadcasting, teaching at Ffestiniog County School and his activities in the Catholic Church.
There are references throughout to Garlick's literary and other friends, most notably John Cowper Powys and his wife Phyllis Playter (ff. 3-27 verso passim, 39 verso, 42 verso, 53, 55, 59 verso, 151 recto-verso, 158 verso). Among the school pupils mentioned are the lexicographer Bruce Griffiths (ff. 7, 33 verso) and the actor Grey Evans (f. 16 verso). The volume contains drafts and fair copies of several poems, including thirteen stanzas of 'Blaenau Observed', the poem for radio, transmitted 14 June (ff. 36, 52 verso, 53 verso); the unfinished 'Octave of a sonnet on the Scourging of Our Lord' (f. 44 verso); the sonnets 'The Crowning with Thorns' (f. 45 verso), 'The October Risings' (f. 153) and 'The November Suppressions' (ff. 155 verso, 158); eleven stanzas of a poem concerning a pilgrimage to Lourdes (ff. 12 verso, 13 verso-14 verso); and a single verse (f. 56 verso). 'Blaenau Observed' was published as a pamphlet in 1956, reprinted by the Dock Leaves Press in 1957 and was included in A Sense of Europe: Collected Poems 1954-1968 (Llandysul, 1968); 'The November Suppressions' was published in The Welsh Nation, 10 November 1956, p. 1 (see cutting on f. 158).