The R. S. Thomas Centenary

In Neb, his autobiography written in Welsh in the third person, R. S. Thomas, the Welsh poet-priest, describes himself “gazing on the pre-Cambrian rocks in Braich y Pwll” at the tip of the Llŷn peninsula in North Wales and asking himself, “Who am I?” His answer “came more emphatically than ever before, ‘No-one’”—which is the English translation of the Welsh word neb. The use of this word (which intriguingly enough could equally well be translated as someone) is characteristic of Thomas, who, in referring to himself throughout his essay as R. S., may be suggesting simultaneously his self-importance as well as his insignificance. Such seemingly contradictory tactics were typical of Thomas when he talked about his life and his work, and such seeming contradictions are immediately evident when one considers not only Thomas’s life but his career as a poet. A priest of the Church of England in Wales and a Welsh speaker throughout much of his adult life, Thomas felt forced to write his poetry in the thin language (yr iaith fain) of English because it was the language he was born into. A lover and constant celebrant of the natural beauty of Wales, he was often extremely critical of her people (“Men of the hills, wantoners, men of Wales, / With your sheep and your pigs and your ponies, your sweaty females, / How I have hated you …” (“A Priest to His People”). An outspoken passivist, he nevertheless advocated using violence to keep the English from usurping Welsh land.

Thomas was born in 1913 and died in 2000. In a poetic career that spanned more than half a century, earned him numerous awards, and included more than twenty books of poetry, as well as other books and editions, Thomas’s presence on the poetic scene, especially in the U.K. but increasingly worldwide, has been conspicuous. In this, his centenary year, there have been numerous tributes and testimonials, and a number of new books have already been published, with more to come. To date there have been R. S. Thomas: Serial Obsessive, an omnibus collection of essays by M. Wynn Thomas, R. S.’s literary executor; Imagined Greetings: Poetic Engagements with R. S. Thomas; A Masterwork of Doubting-Belief: R. S. Thomas and His Poetry; and R. S. Thomas: Uncollected Poems, a selection of the best remaining published but uncollected Thomas poems, “lost” or overlooked during the course of his long career. While the publication of these previously uncollected poems appears to suggest that Thomas’s canon is now nearing completion, what is still needed is a comprehensive collection of his poetry. What we have now are Collected Poems 1945–1990 (which excludes more than two hundred poems from the previously published individual volumes); Collected Later Poems 1988–2000; Residues, a collection of some of Thomas’s hitherto unpublished poems; and now these additional Uncollected Poems.

The poems rescued or resurrected in Uncollected Poems provide the basis both for the continuing completion of Thomas’s canon and for a filling in (or out) of the most pertinent and persistent themes and theses already known from what has been available to date. Among the 139 newly recovered poems in this collection (an additional 49 are listed only by title) are fascinating examples of the thematic, metaphoric, and stylistic fingerprints to which readers have become accustomed throughout Thomas’s long career: “Life like a stubbed fag relit / Each day” (“Work to Do”), and “We mend the edges of / Our amens” (“Vocation”). This collection also provides poems that revisit Thomas’s early poetic protagonist and sometime alter ego...