Welcome to the DTSA online website
It is with great regret that the DTSA acknowledges the death of John Notary, the Public Officer of the society, at the age of 83. John was the only member of our society to have met and spoken to Dylan Thomas. He battled recurring forms of cancer with enormous courage before succumbing on 22 July. Our thoughts are with his widow, Pamela, and his children and grandchildren. A memorial function will be held on the Central Coast and the DTSA will be represented.
2010 COMMITTEE
President: Clive Woosnam
Vice-president Will Christie
Secretary: Gina Ryman
Treasurer Kay Hardman
Public Officer John Notary
Committee Malcolm Brown, John Davies, Emyr Evans, Ann Fisher, Noel Hardman, Ian Lewis, Vicki Partridge, Annie Schlebaum, Helen Woosnam. Helen will also be editor of Down Under Milk Wood.
We began the year with a highly succesful AGM at the Mosman Club, and followed up in April with a new-look Legend and Poet event. As our past venue of Berkelouws was no longer available, and as no other bookshop was keen to take over, we chose to go to the Julian Ashton Art School centre at Headland Park, Mosman. It proved to be an excellent choice and we enjoyed a great afternoon. Go to Page 2 (Jan 2008 to now) for further details of that event.
At the end of June we enjoyed our Dylan's Alpine Christmas in the Southern Highlands, meeting at the cafe at the Sturt Gallery, Mittagong, for coffee or morning tea. The weather was so perfect that our DTSA contingent chose to sit outside in the sunshine and the beautiful rural setting, before taking a peek at the impressive arts and craft display and moving on to Bill and Gina's lovely home of Balaton, in nearby Alpine. There we had a real Christmas atmosphere, a mouth-watering Christmas lunch, communal readings of Dylan's words about Christmas and snow, Clive's tried and tested version of 'A Child's Christmas in Wales', and a DVD version in the home cinema.
Many thanks go to Gina and Bill for their kindness in letting us use their house and all the hard work they put in to make the day a success. Thanks also to Helen, Avril, Joy and Ian and all the others who helped get all the jobs done in such an unobtrusive way. Our professional wordsmith, Malcolm Brown, who prizes economy of language, summed up the day in three words: The Best Ever!
The reading of Under Mulga Wood ( written by Will Christie, directed by Elias Greig, and performed by a cast drawn from the DTSA) has been postponed from Friday 3 September to a date yet to be fixed.
The next major event will take place at:
6.00pm Friday 8 October at the British Consul-General at Circular Quay, with its wonderful views over the Harbour Bridge and Opera House:
Views from the British Consulate
A reception given by the DTSA for all other Sydney literary societies based on British writers. Richard Morris, the British Consul-General, will be in attendance. He is a graduate in English literature so this function is very much to his liking. So far we have had a great response to this reception from the committees of other literary societies - we even have people coming from Melbourne especially to this event. We will not be charging members or guests for entry to this event, but there will be a capacity limit at the consulate of 80 people.
At a date to be fixed in November or early December: a DTSA end of year lunch, probably at the Mosman Club.
Further details of the later activities will be given in the second issue of the DTSA newsletter, to be sent out later in July.
The next committee meeting will take place on Tuesday 27 July on the 3rd floor of the NSW Sports Club in Hunter St. at 6.30pm.
Six committee members in relaxed mood after the last meeting of 2009
The Dylan Thomas Society of Australia (Inc)
The Dylan Thomas Society of Australia was formed in March 1995, largely through the initiative of Robert Jones, the Society’s first president, who had organised a weekend celebration of the poet's eightieth birthday in Bowral, NSW, five months earlier. We now boast members from many walks of life and from several states of Australia, though our program of events is still largely Sydney-based. Our Society is separate from the Dylan Thomas Society of Great Britain, but does have occasional contacts with it, with the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea, the Dylan Thomas Circle in Vancouver and the Thomas family itself. While the Society includes literary scholars and a keen Welsh contingent, it has resolved to remain non-academic and international in approach.
Photos of the three DTSA presidents (L-R): Founding President Robert Jones; 2nd President Will Christie; current President Clive Woosnam
We organise a number of events each year, largely in recognition of the fact that, for Dylan, "the poem on the page is but half a poem". These events usually include a core of four held every year. In March or April, we hold an evening of readings entitled The Legend and the Poet, where members of the Society and other enthusiasts read aloud works by Dylan or linked to him in some way, and set to a different theme each year. Around June or July, we hold either The Outing to Swansea (NSW), reliving Dylan’s famous story of that name, or celebrate a Dylan Thomas Christmas in the wintry surroundings of the Southern Highlands. In August we hold the Dylan Thomas lecture, panel discussion or performance of some aspect of the writer’s life and works. Some time between October 27 and November 9, the anniversaries of Dylan's birth and death, we hold a celebration dinner in his honour. Additional events occur to commemorate special dates: in 2003, for example, we held a festival to honour the fiftieth anniversary of Dylan’s death. This involved a choral concert including special settings of Dylan’s works, a public reading of Under Milk Wood (with genuine Welsh accents) and the first ever performance of Under Mulga Wood, written by the Society’s second president, Will Christie.
The Society publishes a newsletter, titled Down Under Milk Wood, three times a year (March, July and November). The Annual General Meeting, which is as much a social event as a business meeting, is usually held in early February. Once the executive positions have been filled, other members are invited to become part of the committee by attending the regular committee meetings.
THE LIFE OF DYLAN THOMAS 1914-1953
Self-titled "the Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive", Dylan Marlais Thomas was born on 27 October 1914 in suburban Swansea, South Wales, and educated at Swansea Grammar School, where his father was the senior English master. After leaving school at the age of sixteen in 1931, Dylan worked as a journalist for a Swansea evening newspaper and acted in a local theatre company before attempting to make a living out of his writing. His late teenage years were to prove unquestionably his most productive. In 1934, Dylan’s first book of poems was published, and he moved from Swansea to London. There he cultivated his bohemian reputation at the expense of his literary output, before embarking on the gypsy life he would later share with his wife, Caitlin Macnamara, whom he married in 1937, and with their three children, Llewelyn, Aeronwy, and Colm. Dylan found money hard to earn and easy to spend, depending for his family’s survival on the goodwill of friends and benefactors, one of whom bought the Boat House in his favourite village of Laugharne as a home for his family. The nearby garage became an inspirational writing hut.
The same Boat House in Laugharne has since become identified with his name and is now the site of a museum in his honour, while the former Guildhall in Swansea now houses the impressive Dylan Thomas Centre.
The war years were spent largely in London, with Dylan writing scripts for documentaries and some feature films and writing and broadcasting for BBC radio. It was during this time that he acquired a reputation for reading over the air in what he called his “cut-glass accent”, at once precise and yet richly resonant - a reputation that only added to those he had acquired already for his bold poetry and heavy drinking. Later, during his first three notorious lecture tours of America undertaken in the early 1950s to make money, that reputation for reading aloud was confirmed before huge audiences.
It was in New York at the beginning of a fourth tour of America that on 9 November 1953, having barely reached the age of thirty-nine, the poet Dylan Thomas died. He had just signed a contract promising him $1000 a week for future American lecture tours, his celebrity status was growing in Britain, and his new writings in lighter vein had greatly increased his already considerable earning potential. Even given his proven inability to manage money, his financial problems seemed to be over. He was also looking forward to staying with Stravinsky in California to write the libretto of a new opera. At the same time, he had frequently claimed that he did not want to live to the age of 40. In the end, medical malpractice, coupled with his heavy drinking and smoking and underlying health problems, saw that death wish fulfilled.
AN OVERVIEW OF THE WORKS OF DYLAN THOMAS
by William Christie
Thomas had begun writing poetry as a child and was especially prolific during his adolescent years, filling many notebooks that would continue to furnish him with material for his poems until he chose, wisely as it turned out, to break with his past and sell them in 1940. Thomas's first published volume, 18 Poems, appeared in 1934, the same year he quit his parents' house in Swansea to live in London. By 1936 and the publication of his second volume, Twenty-five Poems, his assured and unmistakable style had attracted the attention both of influential eccentrics like Edith Sitwell and of major critics and poets, including William Empson and T. S. Eliot, and had made a number of his early poems the compulsory anthology pieces they have remained ever since: "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower"; "Before I knocked"; "The hand that signed the paper"; "And death shall have no dominion". Less successful was the selection of poems published along with some stories as The Map of Love in 1939, so that the critical renown and more extensive readership that came with a confirmation of his gifts had to wait until the publication of Deaths and Entrances in 1946, which contained such perennial additions to the Thomas canon as "A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire of a Child in London", "Poem in October", "This side of truth", "The hunchback in the park", "In my craft or sullen art", and "Fern Hill". His last volume of original poems, In Country Sleep (1952), added "Over Sir John's Hill' and the inimitable "Do not go gentle into that good night".
By the time Thomas brought out his Collected Poems 1934-1952 there were few, if any, doubters amongst reviewers, critics, and the poetry reading public. They would come later, and largely from within the academy, when Thomas became the whipping-boy for a number of ethico-critical evangelisms. Their main focus was on the earlier, always elaborate and frequently obscure poems – poems influenced by the Metaphysicals Donne and Herbert, by Blake and by Hopkins, amongst others; poems combining bardic self-consciousness and intricate prosody in a way characteristic of the Welsh poetic tradition (though Thomas neither read nor spoke Welsh himself). Influenced also by Freud and Jung and, to a lesser extent, by surrealism, these early poems deploy a strange fusion of archetypal Christian symbolism with biological or bodily and sometimes industrial imagery, appearing to celebrate and simulate vital (and mortal) energies in a way that has often been described as 'Romantic'. The Romanticism is at times subtly ironized, however, occasionally even openly mocked, and along with his obscurity it was the mocking, 'nogood boyo' persona relished by Thomas in literature as in life that provoked censure. (The later more accessible poetry, on the other hand, was dismissed by some critics as popular and sentimental only.)
In spite of the critical reaction, however, the minutely, indeed obsessively crafted "accidental magic" of his best poems - for which, as with all poets, the failures are the price he paid - has secured Thomas a place in Keats's “Immortal freemasonry" of major poets. And this, even without taking into account his most famous single work, the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood composed over the final years of his short life and still being amended when Thomas died.
DTSA: PRESIDENT’S REPORT for 2009, presented February 2010
2009 was an important year for the DTSA, as fully paid up membership reached 100 for the first time. It was also a year of interesting and well-supported events and entertaining committee meetings.
The AGM took place on 8 February, 2009, the day when the enormity of the Victorian bushfires was becoming known, and a day when extreme heat was forecast for Sydney. As a result of the threatened conditions, the AGM reception and lunch was moved from the Julian Ashton Art School in Georges Heights to the nearby Mosman Club, where we held our November DTSA celebration. Despite the many late withdrawals, 24 members were rewarded for their bravery in the face of the elements by enjoying excellent food, good company and a pleasant atmosphere.
The AGM was held in the main auditorium. Will received special acclamation for his work as founding editor of Down Under Milk Wood, prior to standing down after the tenth anniversary edition at the end of 2008. Everything went to plan and a new, large committee was elected. Helen's offer to take over as editor of Down Under Milk Wood was eagerly accepted. We listened to some tracks of a possible DTSA CD incorporating excerpts from the 2003 production of Under Milk Wood, and enthusiasm was shown for a revival of the DTSA version. A positive atmosphere prevailed throughout the meeting, providing an excellent start to 2009.
The annual Legend and Poet night was held on 3 April 2009, once again at Berkelouws Bookstore in Norton St Leichhardt. The evening was successful in every way. We had more space to use than usual but the setting retained its appropriately bookish charm. The food, produced by Helen and Kay, was magnificent, and took many first-time visitors by surprise. Noel was a most professional barman, and the atmosphere was one of total conviviality.
The theme of the night was Dylan and the Elements, using both the classical meaning of the term (earth, air, fire & water) and the colloquial meaning of extreme weather conditions. I acted as main reader and wrote the script which was read by Helen as narrator. There were 22 readings in all, including four poems by Dylan Thomas and several prose excerpts from his letters and stories. Other poets represented included Coleridge, Shakespeare, T S Eliot, Ted Hughes, Theodore Roethke & Vernon Watkins, while Australia was represented by Dorothea Mackellar, John O'Brien and Henry Lawson. All the readings fitted into the framework of the script. Other readers were Will Christie, Elias Grieg, Isobel Kirk, Dan Lewis, Annie Schlebaum and Adrian Bitel, while Dylan himself and the inimitable Richard Burton delighted us with CD renditions.
The next event was the famous biennial OUTING to Swansea, Caves Beach and Catherine Hill Bay, on 14 June. Despite several last-minute withdrawals at the onset of the 'flu season, the day was a huge success, with members enjoying the excellent Dylan DVDs on the charabanc itself, the stop at “Doylo’s” and the story of The Outing, followed by lunch in the main dining room of Swansea RSL Club, where 47 people celebrated Noel’s 75th birthday and enjoyed Dylan’s coastal poems. Then came the trip to Caves Beach with readings of Dylan’s coastal stories and finally a relaxing drink in the atmospheric Wallarah Hotel in Catherine Hill Bay before the return journey to Sydney. Malcolm Brown wrote an article on the trip and an SMH photographer took an eye-catching shot to give us good publicity on page 3 of the paper.
The next event was the performance of THE HIGHLIGHTS OF UNDER MILK WOOD on August 14. Six readers joined me onstage: Olwen Morris, Carey Lewis, Margaret Hughes, Diane Stanford, Paul Nicholas and Jan Penhorwood. I began with the First Voice descriptions of the Bible Black town, fast - and slow - asleep, as well as of the Rev Eli Jenkins' morning prayer. There followed the fifteen best scenes in the play for voices, all carried out by a highly talented cast with authentic Welsh accents. Not only were characters brought to life by the range of voices, depth of feeling and precision of timing, but we were also given a musical treat with Polly Garter's song (Olwen), Rosie Probert's poem (Diane) and the Evening Prayer, sung by the whole cast. A DVD was made of the performance. Though the recording is not of a truly professional standard, it clearly shows the high quality of the acting and the enthusiastic response of the audience
The evening was a great success despite some technical problems and showed once again the camaraderie of the DTSA. DVDs were used to show the ways that Under Milk Wood had been treated in previous productions and I paid a tribute to Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis, Dylan's only daughter, who had died recently from leukaemia. A video interview with Aeronwy was also shown. As usual, the food and drink were amazing in both quantity and quality, and sincere thanks must be paid to Helen's organisation of the catering and to the hard work of Kay, Noel, Ian and Olwen, who had travelled all the way from Merimbula to take part.
Forty-nine members and guests attended the celebration lunch at the Mosman Club on November 7. The views were glorious, we had the main dining room (The Harbour View Room) all to ourselves and most people seemed to enjoy the food on offer. The speaker was one of our society's new members, Patrick Milligan, a man of many artistic skills and attainments. He spoke to us about growing up with brother Spike, of Goon Show fame, and touched on some aspects of his varied life in art, journalism and the theatre. His speech was very well received and he was bombarded with questions at its conclusion.
At the beginning of the year Helen took over as editor of Down Under Milk Wood, and we now have colour versions of the newsletter being sent out to most members every March, July and November. I spent a lot of time near the end of the year revamping the website because of changes forced on us by our hosting company, Talkspot. The result has been a much improved website, but a decision has to be made whether to continue with our current address or move to a new address of DylanT.talkspot.com.
We had a large committee in 2009 which made for a reasonable turnout at meetings even though individual attendances were less than ideal. Plenty of ideas were discussed at meetings but we really do need committee members to take the lead in attending events and in assisting with organisation. I am very grateful to Gina for her work as secretary, Kay for her work as treasurer and Helen for her work as editor of the newsletter. Will was overseas for much of the year so he was not able to contribute as much as usual. At our events we depended a great deal on Helen and Kay’s catering and Noel’s practical assistance, while Annie Schlebaum’s photography has been vital for the website and Down Under Milk Wood.
Overall, the DTSA is in a good position to make further progress in 2010, and we trust the AGM will provide a suitable springboard for the year’s activities.
Clive Woosnam
January 2010