Re-discovered poems by the friend and contemporary of W B Yeats, T S Eliot, Dylan Thomas and Philip Larkin. Including the editor's introduction and notes, and a foreword by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. This edition is published to mark the centenary of Vernon Watkins' birth.

Cerddi a ail ddarganfuwyd, gan gyfaill a chyfoeswr W B Yeats, T S Elliot, Dylan Thomas a Philip Larkin. Yn cynnwys rhagarweiniad a nodiadau gan y golygydd, a rhagair gan archesgob Caergaint, Rowan Williams. Cyhoeddir y cyfrol i nodi canmlwyddiant geni Vernon Watkins.

For a poet praised not only by his friend Dylan Thomas but also by Eliot, Auden, Raine and Philip Larkin as one of the greatest of his generation, Vernon Watkins’ reputation has been strangely eclipsed over the last 40 years, even in Wales. This selection sets out to remedy the loss and presents poems from his whole body of work (including some not published elsewhere). These are accompanied by a helpful and scholarly introduction and fairly detailed notes by editor Richard Ramsbotham and a brief but enthusiastic foreword by Rowan Williams.

While one cannot deny that many of his poems are ‘difficult’, that is also true of many more popular contemporaries and successors. On the other hand, Watkins shows a lyric gift, a continuity with the great Metaphysical tradition and a facility and command of all kinds of form which should have secured his reputation, if not his popularity.

There are echoes of great forbears such as Coleridge and Yeats in his work and indeed he believed a poet ‘must relate himself to ancient poets’, though Dylan Thomas also had influence both as a stylist and as the subject of several poems. Watkins saw himself as part of the poetic community. His collection Affinities salutes a wide range of heroes, is successful in defining their voices, and offers both homage to the dead and a critique for the living.

However Watkins uses his study of poetic tradition for technique, his subjects and preoccupations are deeply personal. Rowan Williams calls him a ‘celebrant of thresholds . . . seeking to articulate the hidden dialogues . . .between . . . two spheres.’ Land and sea are the most obvious examples and almost all the poetry is rooted in the rock, water and wildlife of the Gower coast. The central threshold, however, is between the living and the dead.

Watkins suffered a mental crisis in 1928 which amounted to the death of his former self. He abandoned the many poems already written and felt he was resurrected, having seen ‘beyond Time’s chain’. He repudiated ambition and wrote only what he felt was valid to him. Having crossed that threshold himself, he was constantly aware of the presence on both sides. If Thomas wrote ‘for lovers’, Watkins wrote for ‘the dead’ (and also expected no wages). That is not to say that his poetry is morbid. ‘The Ballad of the Mari Lwyd’ is an explosion of energy and wild music irresistible to read aloud. Some critics, perhaps hostile to his use of traditional forms, have dismissed him as archaic, but neither his art nor his faith involved hiding from the horrors of the 20th century. In recognising the reality of death and the fragile beauty of the world, his poetry seeks for security by inhabiting the borderland and finding that God is there too.

Although Watkins was from a Welsh-speaking background he does not often show the influence of Welsh poetic patterns but he was intensely Welsh in his overwhelming musicality – ‘working from the ear and for the ear’. The sheer beauty of ‘The Listening Days’, ‘The Shell’, ‘The Curlew’ or ‘Good Friday’ ought to have assured his place beside Vaughan as a great Welsh Metaphysical poet and it is to be hoped that, in his centenary year, this collection contributes to a revival.

Caroline Clark

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgement should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Gellir defnyddio’r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatad Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.