In recognition of the London screening of 'Love Somehow', a film about the relationship between Dylan and Caitlin Thomas, I have decided to write a blog about my grandmother. It's slightly different (hopefully not too cheesy!) as I've expressed my thoughts and feelings through a letter to her. I always called her Nonna (Nanny in [...]
Last week our family was joined at Westminster Abbey by the Dylan Thomas Society to lay a wreath on my grandfather’s plaque and to mark sixty-three years since his death. Seeing him in Poet’s Corner surrounded by the likes of Lord Byron, George Eliot, DH Lawrence and Henry James reminds me of his high status [...]
“I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies – I think that’s a record!” said Dylan Thomas to his young and attractive lover Liz Reitell just before collapsing into a fatal coma following a mammoth drinking session in his favourite New York bar. Sounds good doesn’t it? Just the way the first rock and roll poet should go. [...]
Over the last few weeks I have intensely followed the media coverage of the 50th anniversary of Aberfan. I have been so terribly moved by what I have learnt that I would very much like it to be the subject of this blog. I will not attempt to find a tenuous link to Dylan Thomas [...]
This week I want to stop and take a step back. I feel I may have been a little pretentious in assuming that people would want to read a blog written by Dylan Thomas’s granddaughter. I’m not an expert on poetry or on Dylan Thomas in fact - many, many, many people know more than [...]
Last week in celebration of National Poetry Day’s theme of messages I delved into Dylan’s letters but I ended my blog with the need to write so much more. I wanted to look at his poetry and prose and find the hidden messages he had left us - clues from beyond the grave you could [...]
National Poetry Day is on Thursday and the theme this year is Messages. Now, there really is so much I want to write on this one, but, as always, there are very few words to do it in. So let’s get going and begin with Dylan’s letters. There are hundreds upon hundreds to choose [...]
Last week marked sixty years since Under Milk Wood opened in the New Theatre in London’s West End. This original piece captivated and amazed (or shocked– dependent on the audience) the crowds, in equal measure. Many regard Dylan’s ‘play for voices', as his ‘pièce de résistance’. It was finished - well, in as much as [...]
As I tentatively, after a number of years away, poke my toes back into the shark-infested waters of the teaching world and start some private tuition next week, I’m surrounded by what feels like hundreds of documents from the new national curriculum – it focuses on a more ‘traditional’ approach apparently. As I update myself [...]
This week I came across a really interesting website about Placing Literature and it got me thinking. I wondered if place could have an influence on our understanding of literature. Can a visual and sensory experience help you connect with a poem or piece of prose? Look, I’ll come clean…I already believe it can. I [...]
