Page "Dylan Thomas" Paragraph 51

Thomas disliked being regarded as a provincial poet, and decried any notion of ' Welshness ' in his poetry.

When he wrote to Stephen Spender in 1952, thanking him for a review of his Collected Poems, he added " Oh, & I forgot.

I'm not influenced by Welsh bardic poetry.

I can't read Welsh.

" Despite this his work was rooted in the geography of Wales.

Thomas acknowledged that he returned to Wales when he had difficulty writing, and John Ackerman argues that " His inspiration and imagination were rooted in his Welsh background ".

Caitlin Thomas wrote that he worked " in a fanatically narrow groove, although there was nothing narrow about the depth and understanding of his feelings.

The groove of direct hereditary descent in the land of his birth, which he never in thought, and hardly in body, moved out of.