Thomas was born on 27 October 1914 in Swansea and died in New York on 9 November 1953.
This year’s Dylan Thomas 100 festival will celebrate the poet’s rich legacy and influence, with events, exhibitions, mini-festivals and commissions across South Wales and beyond.
Thomas was fascinated by language and wordplay but also loved music, art and cinema, and the centenary celebrations of his birth will reflect these passions.
The festival will not only bring fresh perspectives on his life and writing, but will also create opportunities for contemporary writers, artists, musicians and performers to interpret his work in new ways.
The festival is led and largely funded by the Welsh Government, which has made grants available for festival events and projects, with input from the Arts Council of Wales, Carmarthenshire County Council and the City and County of Swansea.
The British Council Wales will promote Thomas internationally, with poetry, drama and musical performances planned for the US, India, Australia, Argentina and Canada.
Thomas-themed events
Welsh museums and galleries will take centre stage, working together and with other cultural venues, visitor attractions and creative individuals on projects.
These include A Dylan Odyssey, by literature development body Literature Wales, which incorporates 23 events, both sedentary and active, including kayaking and pony trap rides in Laugharne, where Thomas and his family lived for the last four years of his life. There is also jazz and beat poetry in Oxford and behind-the-scenes tours of the National Museum Cardiff.
Prints based on Thomas’s poem Especially When the October Wind are available in a special edition box set by Swansea Print Workshop; there will be performances of A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Thomas’s memoir, at the Grand Theatre, Swansea; a new play, Good Cop Bad Cop, at Cardiff’s Chapter arts centre explores Wales’s history of spoken word performance; and Ffotogallery is presenting Bedazzled, a Welshman in New York, a series of performance-based events set in disused pubs and bars in Cardiff, Swansea and New Quay.
And with patrons as varied as Thomas’s granddaughter Hannah Ellis, singers Bryn Terfel and Cerys Matthews, and Prince Charles, who recorded Thomas’s popular 1945 poem Fern Hill for National Poetry Day, the festival aims to inspire creativity in everyone.
Most importantly for those involved, lasting relationships will be formed that will yield new projects and partnerships beyond the centenary year.
Thomas also produced manuscripts, notebooks, word lists and correspondence that are now dispersed in libraries, archives and collections around the world. Many of these are winging their way to Wales to be exhibited, some for the first time, in the place where they were written.
Four notebooks written by Thomas between the ages of 15 and 19 will be on loan from the Poetry Collection held at the University of Buffalo in New York and displayed in turn at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea and the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.
“We are very excited to be borrowing the four surviving notebooks,” says Jo Furber, the literature officer at the City and County of Swansea.
“This is our major event, and a second exhibition uses material from our own and the National Library of Wales’s collection, with items such as his rhyming word lists and a facsimile of Fern Hill.”
Outreach work
The Dylan Thomas Centre has the largest collection of Thomas memorabilia in the world, including manuscripts, first editions, photographs, his suit from the fatal 1953 New York trip and the original door to his writing shed in Laugharne.
“Our annual Dylan Thomas festival is held in October and November and this year kickstarts our centenary activities,” says Furber.
“We want to provide a platform for writers, musicians and artists using the artefacts from our exhibitions as inspiration. The sound and imagery of Dylan’s writing lends itself wonderfully to other art forms and there are so many contemporary interpretations to explore.”
Furber says that Swansea is planning to extend activities beyond the centre, for example working with people such as poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke, the National Poet of Wales, and community groups such as the YMCA and the Cyrenians, a charity that helps vulnerable people.
The aim is to explore new ways of harnessing the creativity of Dylan’s work in contemporary forms such as rap and video.
“The centenary is wonderful but we are also interested in the legacy and how partnerships can be developed,” Furber says.
“We are here permanently and it’s important for us to continue as a hub to support new writing. We are looking to develop long-term relationships with new partners such as the University of Buffalo and we have applied for funding for new posts of education officer and outreach officer.”
Change preconceptions
The most high-profile exhibition is not in Thomas’s birthplace of Swansea, however, but at the National Museum Cardiff. Llareggub, an exhibition of drawings and paintings by Peter Blake, launched the festival in November last year and will run until 16 March.
Blake has spent 25 years illustrating Under Milk Wood and its fictional village of Llareggub (read it backwards) and the exhibition presents, mostly for the first time, portraits of the characters and paintings and collages of the dream sequences and locations in the poem.
One aim of the festival is to decouple the man and the myth. “Dylan Thomas had a rich life and met everyone from Stravinsky to Shelley Winters,” says Jeff Towns, a Swansea-based antiquarian bookseller and Thomas expert, who has worked with museums and galleries to develop exhibitions. “But he died very publicly in America.
This was at a time when many university libraries were starting up, often with big endowments, and they were in a position to buy his correspondence and notebooks.
“The centenary offers chances to display some of this material and help play down the Chinese whispers about his drinking and wild lifestyle,” Towns adds. “He was a prolific letter and note writer, and getting the notebooks to Wales is a major coup; it’s like the Elgin Marbles returning home.”
‘We aim to bring him back to life’
Swansea was one of the four shortlisted cities for the 2017 UK City of Culture, and the Dylan Thomas legacy was a major element of the bid. In the end, Swansea lost out to Hull, but those working in the city still have high hopes for the centenary.
“The local festivities will show that the city is a creative, edgy place buzzing with grassroots arts, as it was during the cultural renaissance of the 1930s with Dylan and the Kardomah Gang,” says Steph Mastoris, the head of the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea.
“Our approach has been twofold,” explains Mastoris. “First, to facilitate the work of others, for example working with Literature Wales on the Dylan Odyssey; and second, preparing our own projects.
Throughout next summer there will be a trail of quotations, taken from Thomas’s writings and chosen by poet and Thomas scholar Peter Thabit Jones, that are relevant to our subject matter of Welsh maritime, industrial and cultural history.”
The National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth also holds a wealth of Thomas-related items, many of which will go on display in a multimedia exhibition running through the second half of 2014.
Exhibits will include audio and video clips, photographs and interactives spread across four exhibition spaces in the library. There will also be accompanying modern dance, music and art events.
“People don’t realise we have so much material,” says Mari Elin Jones, the interpretation officer at the library.
“With the manuscripts, drafts of poems and rhyming lists we aim to show the way he worked, and we also have his passport, visa and last airline ticket, and his hand-drawn map of Llareggub made while he was writing Under Milk Wood.
“The aim is to bring him back to life, but with the focus on his work rather than his private life,” she adds. “We want to reclaim him in order to show that he was much, much more than the standard portrayal of poet and drunk.”
Deborah Mulhearn is a freelance journalist
The stylish and accessible Dylan Thomas 100 website, created by digital agency Precedent, acts as a portal to the venues and events, with a map and timeline.
“We didn’t want it to be an exhaustive Dylan Thomas resource, as there is so much great content about him already out there,” explains James Downes, the director of user experience. “But in terms of the official festival, it’s the main website.”
Precedent provided the framework for its client, South West Wales Tourism Partnership, to enable content to be collated from the broad range of stakeholders, including local councils, tourism alliances, museums, libraries, booksellers and businesses.
“We reciprocate with links to their sites giving more in-depth information about their events and venues,” Downes says.
“Content will continue to arrive over the next 12 months, often from collectors and members of the public – for example, we have a blog from a well-established and respected Thomas expert who runs a news site.
"We want people to be able to record their experiences and responses to the festival, so it’s important to create a lasting digital legacy. We also aim to create a tangible souvenir of the festival, possibly in the form of a coffee-table book.”
www.dylanthomas100.org
Dylan Thomas’s secluded writing shed above the Boathouse in Laugharne, which he rented with his wife Caitlin and their four children, is an iconic writer’s retreat, where visitors can peer through the window to see the dishevelled, homely interior where he wrote Under Milk Wood.
For the duration of the festival, a replica of the shed will tour Wales and beyond with a resident poet, Emily Hinshelwood.
“The shed will visit schools, museums and galleries, venues and festivals such as Hay-on-Wye and the Southbank Centre in London,” says Eleri Retallick, the principal arts officer at Carmarthenshire County Council.
“But we also want to reach different audiences, so we will go to the Royal Welsh Show and farming communities too.
Some people may not think of themselves as creative, so we are creating a Dylan Dictionary and asking people to contribute their own made-up words. We all have words that are unique to ourselves and our families, and we want to create something of contemporary relevance.”
Martin Daws, the young people’s poet laureate for Wales, will also host a poetry takeaway for events such as Mother’s Day. The pop-up writing shed can also double as a theatrical backdrop and will be bookable.
This year’s Dylan Thomas 100 festival will celebrate the poet’s rich legacy and influence, with events, exhibitions, mini-festivals and commissions across South Wales and beyond.
Thomas was fascinated by language and wordplay but also loved music, art and cinema, and the centenary celebrations of his birth will reflect these passions.
The festival will not only bring fresh perspectives on his life and writing, but will also create opportunities for contemporary writers, artists, musicians and performers to interpret his work in new ways.
The festival is led and largely funded by the Welsh Government, which has made grants available for festival events and projects, with input from the Arts Council of Wales, Carmarthenshire County Council and the City and County of Swansea.
The British Council Wales will promote Thomas internationally, with poetry, drama and musical performances planned for the US, India, Australia, Argentina and Canada.
Thomas-themed events
Welsh museums and galleries will take centre stage, working together and with other cultural venues, visitor attractions and creative individuals on projects.
These include A Dylan Odyssey, by literature development body Literature Wales, which incorporates 23 events, both sedentary and active, including kayaking and pony trap rides in Laugharne, where Thomas and his family lived for the last four years of his life. There is also jazz and beat poetry in Oxford and behind-the-scenes tours of the National Museum Cardiff.
Prints based on Thomas’s poem Especially When the October Wind are available in a special edition box set by Swansea Print Workshop; there will be performances of A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Thomas’s memoir, at the Grand Theatre, Swansea; a new play, Good Cop Bad Cop, at Cardiff’s Chapter arts centre explores Wales’s history of spoken word performance; and Ffotogallery is presenting Bedazzled, a Welshman in New York, a series of performance-based events set in disused pubs and bars in Cardiff, Swansea and New Quay.
And with patrons as varied as Thomas’s granddaughter Hannah Ellis, singers Bryn Terfel and Cerys Matthews, and Prince Charles, who recorded Thomas’s popular 1945 poem Fern Hill for National Poetry Day, the festival aims to inspire creativity in everyone.
Most importantly for those involved, lasting relationships will be formed that will yield new projects and partnerships beyond the centenary year.
Thomas also produced manuscripts, notebooks, word lists and correspondence that are now dispersed in libraries, archives and collections around the world. Many of these are winging their way to Wales to be exhibited, some for the first time, in the place where they were written.
Four notebooks written by Thomas between the ages of 15 and 19 will be on loan from the Poetry Collection held at the University of Buffalo in New York and displayed in turn at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea and the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.
“We are very excited to be borrowing the four surviving notebooks,” says Jo Furber, the literature officer at the City and County of Swansea.
“This is our major event, and a second exhibition uses material from our own and the National Library of Wales’s collection, with items such as his rhyming word lists and a facsimile of Fern Hill.”
Outreach work
The Dylan Thomas Centre has the largest collection of Thomas memorabilia in the world, including manuscripts, first editions, photographs, his suit from the fatal 1953 New York trip and the original door to his writing shed in Laugharne.
“Our annual Dylan Thomas festival is held in October and November and this year kickstarts our centenary activities,” says Furber.
“We want to provide a platform for writers, musicians and artists using the artefacts from our exhibitions as inspiration. The sound and imagery of Dylan’s writing lends itself wonderfully to other art forms and there are so many contemporary interpretations to explore.”
Furber says that Swansea is planning to extend activities beyond the centre, for example working with people such as poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke, the National Poet of Wales, and community groups such as the YMCA and the Cyrenians, a charity that helps vulnerable people.
The aim is to explore new ways of harnessing the creativity of Dylan’s work in contemporary forms such as rap and video.
“The centenary is wonderful but we are also interested in the legacy and how partnerships can be developed,” Furber says.
“We are here permanently and it’s important for us to continue as a hub to support new writing. We are looking to develop long-term relationships with new partners such as the University of Buffalo and we have applied for funding for new posts of education officer and outreach officer.”
Change preconceptions
The most high-profile exhibition is not in Thomas’s birthplace of Swansea, however, but at the National Museum Cardiff. Llareggub, an exhibition of drawings and paintings by Peter Blake, launched the festival in November last year and will run until 16 March.
Blake has spent 25 years illustrating Under Milk Wood and its fictional village of Llareggub (read it backwards) and the exhibition presents, mostly for the first time, portraits of the characters and paintings and collages of the dream sequences and locations in the poem.
One aim of the festival is to decouple the man and the myth. “Dylan Thomas had a rich life and met everyone from Stravinsky to Shelley Winters,” says Jeff Towns, a Swansea-based antiquarian bookseller and Thomas expert, who has worked with museums and galleries to develop exhibitions. “But he died very publicly in America.
This was at a time when many university libraries were starting up, often with big endowments, and they were in a position to buy his correspondence and notebooks.
“The centenary offers chances to display some of this material and help play down the Chinese whispers about his drinking and wild lifestyle,” Towns adds. “He was a prolific letter and note writer, and getting the notebooks to Wales is a major coup; it’s like the Elgin Marbles returning home.”
‘We aim to bring him back to life’
Swansea was one of the four shortlisted cities for the 2017 UK City of Culture, and the Dylan Thomas legacy was a major element of the bid. In the end, Swansea lost out to Hull, but those working in the city still have high hopes for the centenary.
“The local festivities will show that the city is a creative, edgy place buzzing with grassroots arts, as it was during the cultural renaissance of the 1930s with Dylan and the Kardomah Gang,” says Steph Mastoris, the head of the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea.
“Our approach has been twofold,” explains Mastoris. “First, to facilitate the work of others, for example working with Literature Wales on the Dylan Odyssey; and second, preparing our own projects.
Throughout next summer there will be a trail of quotations, taken from Thomas’s writings and chosen by poet and Thomas scholar Peter Thabit Jones, that are relevant to our subject matter of Welsh maritime, industrial and cultural history.”
The National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth also holds a wealth of Thomas-related items, many of which will go on display in a multimedia exhibition running through the second half of 2014.
Exhibits will include audio and video clips, photographs and interactives spread across four exhibition spaces in the library. There will also be accompanying modern dance, music and art events.
“People don’t realise we have so much material,” says Mari Elin Jones, the interpretation officer at the library.
“With the manuscripts, drafts of poems and rhyming lists we aim to show the way he worked, and we also have his passport, visa and last airline ticket, and his hand-drawn map of Llareggub made while he was writing Under Milk Wood.
“The aim is to bring him back to life, but with the focus on his work rather than his private life,” she adds. “We want to reclaim him in order to show that he was much, much more than the standard portrayal of poet and drunk.”
Deborah Mulhearn is a freelance journalist
Digital Dylan
The stylish and accessible Dylan Thomas 100 website, created by digital agency Precedent, acts as a portal to the venues and events, with a map and timeline.
“We didn’t want it to be an exhaustive Dylan Thomas resource, as there is so much great content about him already out there,” explains James Downes, the director of user experience. “But in terms of the official festival, it’s the main website.”
Precedent provided the framework for its client, South West Wales Tourism Partnership, to enable content to be collated from the broad range of stakeholders, including local councils, tourism alliances, museums, libraries, booksellers and businesses.
“We reciprocate with links to their sites giving more in-depth information about their events and venues,” Downes says.
“Content will continue to arrive over the next 12 months, often from collectors and members of the public – for example, we have a blog from a well-established and respected Thomas expert who runs a news site.
"We want people to be able to record their experiences and responses to the festival, so it’s important to create a lasting digital legacy. We also aim to create a tangible souvenir of the festival, possibly in the form of a coffee-table book.”
www.dylanthomas100.org
A shed of one’s own
Dylan Thomas’s secluded writing shed above the Boathouse in Laugharne, which he rented with his wife Caitlin and their four children, is an iconic writer’s retreat, where visitors can peer through the window to see the dishevelled, homely interior where he wrote Under Milk Wood.
For the duration of the festival, a replica of the shed will tour Wales and beyond with a resident poet, Emily Hinshelwood.
“The shed will visit schools, museums and galleries, venues and festivals such as Hay-on-Wye and the Southbank Centre in London,” says Eleri Retallick, the principal arts officer at Carmarthenshire County Council.
“But we also want to reach different audiences, so we will go to the Royal Welsh Show and farming communities too.
Some people may not think of themselves as creative, so we are creating a Dylan Dictionary and asking people to contribute their own made-up words. We all have words that are unique to ourselves and our families, and we want to create something of contemporary relevance.”
Martin Daws, the young people’s poet laureate for Wales, will also host a poetry takeaway for events such as Mother’s Day. The pop-up writing shed can also double as a theatrical backdrop and will be bookable.
