RS Thomas

Ronald Stuart Thomas (born March 29, 1913 in Cardiff , † September 25, 2000 in Pentrefelin ( Gwynedd )) was a Welsh poet and Anglican clergyman.

Life

Ronald Stuart Thomas was the only child of the seaman Thomas Hubert Thomas and his wife Margaret, b. Davis, born. He grew up in Holyhead and studied Classical Studies at Bangor University and - on the advice of his mother - theology at St. Michael's College in Llandaff .

He was ordained a Deacon of the Church in Wales in 1936 and a priest in 1937. For 42 years, from 1936 until his retirement in 1978, he worked as a pastor in five rural communities; he preferred the quiet country life to the cities. He was curate or rector or vicar in Chirk ( Denbighshire ) from 1936 to 1940, in Tallarn Green ( Flintshire ) from 1940 to 1942, in Manafon ( Montgomeryshire ) from 1942 to 1954, in Eglwys-fach ( Cardiganshire ) from 1954 to 1967 and in Aberdaron (with the extension Y Rhiw) on the Lleyn Peninsula from 1967 to 1978. After his retirement he settled in a small house in the hamlet of Y Rhiw, on the southwest tip of the Lleyn Peninsula. He spent the last years of his life in Llanfairynghornwy on Anglesey and in the hamlet of Pentrefelin near Porthmadog .

For 51 years, from 1940 until her death in 1991, Ronald Stuart Thomas was married to the painter Mildred (Elsi) Eldridge. A son was born to them. It was his wife who encouraged him to devote himself to poetry. Between 1946 and 1995 he published 26 volumes of poetry as well as several anthologies of previously published poems. Ronald Stuart Thomas is - next to Dylan Thomas - one of the most important Welsh poets.

The themes of his poems are the nature and culture of rural, especially rural Wales, Welsh myths as well as biblical and Christian traditions and the search for the " Deus absconditus ", the hidden God, and his theophany .

As a pastor in predominantly Welsh-speaking communities, Ronald Stuart Thomas learned the Welsh language at the age of 30 . However, he remained convinced that he did not have sufficient command of Welsh to write poetry in that language. So he used Welsh mainly in his prose. Thomas was an ardent advocate for the preservation of Welsh culture.

Honors

• 1955: Heinemann Award from the Royal Society of Literature
• 1963: Cheltenham Prize
• 1964: Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry
• 1968: Prize of Honor of the Cyngor Celfyddydau Cymru (Arts Council of Wales)
• 1978: Cholmondeley Award
• 1996: Lifetime Achievement Award for Poetry from the Lannon Foundation
• 1996: Horst Bienek Prize for Poetry from the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts

In 1996 RS Thomas was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Works

Volumes of poetry

First publications

• The Stones of the Field (1946)
• An Acre of Land (1952)
• The Minister (1953) (originally as a "radio play in verse" for BBC Wales)
• Song at the Year's Turning (1955)
• Poetry for Supper (1958)
• Judgment Day (1960)
• Tares , (1961)
• The Bread of Truth (1963)
• Pietà (1966)
• Not That He Brought Flowers (1968)
• H'm (1972)
• What is a Welshman? (1974)
• Laboratories of the Spirit (1975)
• The Way of It (1977)
• Frequencies (1978)
• Between Here and Now (1981)
• Poets' Meeting (1983)
• Ingrowing Thoughts (1985)
• Destinations (1985)
• Experimenting with an Amen (1986)
• Welsh Airs (1987)
• The Echoes Return Slow (1988)
• Counterpoint (1990)
• Mass for Hard Times (1992)
• Frieze (1992)
• No Truce with the Furies (1995)
• Residues (2002, posthumous)

Numerous other poems appeared in magazines.

Anthologies of previously published poems

• Selected Poems, 1946–1968 (1973 and more often)
• A Selection of Poetry (1983)
• Later poems. A selection, 1972–1982 (1984)
• Poems of RS Thomas (1985)
• Collected Poems, 1945-1990 (1993)
• Collected Later Poems, 1988-2000 (2004)

Translations in German

(all published by Babel Verlag, Schondorf am Ammersee and Denklingen / Fuchstal, as bilingual editions)

• The bright field (1995)
• Deciduous Tree Language (1998)
• The Scarecrow Charity (2003)
• Stone Twitter (2008)
• The Cross (2010)
• With Catches of Fire (2010)
• In delicate loops (2013)
• The Child Rhyming with Heaven (2013)

prose

On poetics and Welsh culture

• Words and the Poet (1964)
• The Mountains (1968)
• Cymru or Wales? (1992)

In Welsh language

• Abercuawg (1976) (lecture at Eisteddfod )
• Neb (1985) (autobiography) - The title translates as “nobody” as well as “someone”.
• Blwyddyn yn Llŷn (1990) (One year on Lleyn)
• Pe Medrwn Yr Iaith ac Ysgrifau Eraill (1990, essays, ed. By Tony Brown and Bedwyr Lewis Jones)

literature

• Sandra Anstey: Critical Writings on RS Thomas . Poetry Wales Press, Bridgend 1982. ISBN 0-907476-11-2 .
• Tony Brown: RS Thomas . University of Wales Press, Cardiff 2006. ISBN 0-7083-1800-2 .
• Damian Walford Davies: RS Thomas . In: The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, Vol. 5, pp. 162-165.
• Damian Walford Davies (ed.): Echoes to the Amen. Essays after RS ​​Thomas . University of Wales Press, Cardiff 2003. ISBN 0-7083-1789-8 .
• William Virgil Davis: RS Thomas: Poetry and Theology . Baylor University Press, Waco 2007. ISBN 978-1-932792-49-2 .
• Anthony Edward Dyson: Yeats, Eliot, and RS Thomas: Riding the Echo . Macmillan, London 1981.
• William Moelwyn Merchant: RS Thomas . University of Wales Press, Cardiff 1979.
• Barry Morgan: Strangely Orthodox. RST Thomas and His Poetry of Faith . Gomer, Llandysul 2006. ISBN 1-84323-682-6 .
• Christopher Morgan: RS Thomas: Identity, Environment, Deity . Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York 2003, ISBN 9780719062483 .
• Sam J. Perry: Chameleon poet. RS Thomas and the Literary Tradition . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013. ISBN 978-0-19-968733-6 .
• Dewi Zephaniah Phillips: RS Thomas, Poet of the Hidden God: Meaning and Mediation in the Poetry of RS Thomas . Macmillan, Basingstoke 1986.
• Byron Rogers : The Man Who Went Into The West: The Life of RS Thomas . Aurum Press, London 2006. ISBN 1-84513-146-0 .
• Elaine Shepherd: RS Thomas. Conceding an Absence: Images of God Explored . Macmillan, Basingstoke 1996. ISBN 0-333-64968-0 .
• Meurig Wynn Thomas: RS Thomas: Serial Obsessive . University of Wales Press, Cardiff 2013. ISBN 978-0-7083-2570-4 .
• Richard George Thomas: RS Thomas . In: Leonard Clark, RG Thomas: Andrew Young and RS Thomas . Longmans, Green & Co., London 1964. (= Bibliographical series of supplements to British book news on writers and their work , Vol. 166)
• John Powell Ward: The Poetry of RS Thomas . Poetry Wales Press, Bridgend 1987. ISBN 0-907476-51-1 .
• Daniel Westover: RS Thomas: A Stylistic Biography . University of Wales Press, Cardiff 2011. ISBN 0-7083-2411-8 .
• Justin Wintle: Furious Interiors: Wales, RS Thomas, and God . HarperCollins, London 1996. ISBN 0-00-255571-9 .

Footnotes

1. ↑ ^{a b c} R.S. Thomas, 1913-2000, from the Poetry Foundation website, accessed March 3, 2014.
2. ^ Damian Walford Davies: RS Thomas . In: The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, Vol. 5, pp. 162-165, here p. 164.
3. ^ Pentrefelin and Porthmadog , accessed March 3, 2014.
4. ^ ^{A b} Damian Walford Davies: RS Thomas . In: The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, Vol. 5, pp. 162-165, here p. 162.
5. ↑ Christian Heidrich : The wings of man. To the new volume of poetry by the Welsh poet RS Thomas . In: Christ in der Gegenwart , vol. 66 (2014), p. 33 f.
6. ^ Periodicals Containing Poems, Essays, and Reviews by RS Thomas , accessed March 3, 2014.
7. ^ Damian Walford Davies: RS Thomas . In: The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, Vol. 5, pp. 162-165, here p. 163.

Web links

• Selection of poems
• Christoph König: No heavier than a feather - the inner prose of poetry in the poems of the English poet RS Thomas , Berliner Zeitung, April 3, 1999.
• Angela Schader: One Mountain Less - Poems by the Welsh poet RS Thomas , Neue Zürcher Zeitung, March 21, 2013.
• Angela Schader: It's cold in Advent - poetry by RS Thomas , Neue Zürcher Zeitung, December 10, 2013.