daily headspa

This week we play with novel.

Today is St David’s day, the national day for Wales, my home country. It’s not much of a novel idea; St David lived in the sixth century, the great age of the Celtic saints and he’s been the patron saint of Wales for at least a millennia. And, as us Welsh are never tired of pointing out, Dewi Sant (that’s Welsh for all you poor unfortunate souls who have never heard the language of heaven) is the only one of the British patron saints to have been born and bread in the land for which he is the patron.

Since it is our national day, it’s a great day to remember Dylan Thomas, perhaps the patron saint of modern Welsh poetry. Yes he wasn’t a novelist but, as William Faulkner once famously said, ‘'I’m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.”

So, on Dewi Sant’s Day, with just the most tenuous link to the idea of novel, here’s a photo of where Dylan loved to write, his Boat Shed on the banks of the Taf in Laugharne, South Wales. And here’s a poem written following my pilgrimage there more than a decade ago. 

The Day I Went to Look for Dylan Thomas

It was freezing cold

and the sun was shinning

the day I went to look

for Dylan Thomas

The Taf estuary sang

silent as a chapel

on a Monday morning

The robins and the

gulls and the herons

watched the Boat House

where I wandered  to the

sound of the ebbing tide

sucking at the sand

and the loud voices of two

Cardiff girls planning Christmas

dinner and drinking coffee

with the postman

The Writing Shed nested

on the cliff defying

anyone standing there

who had eyes or ears

or nose to not be a poet

I walked to the Browns

where he loved to drink

for a half of Buckleys

and a piece of history

there were just two small

photographs of he and Catlin

The bar was filled with

young Welshmen all built like

rugby playing bankers gone

to seed they were listening to

Bruce Springsteen sing about

New Jersey and they were

drinking Fosters beer

and they didn't know of

Sir John's Hill of the hawk

on fire of the hunchback

in the park and they did not

give a toss for Captain Cat

But they liked a drink