#the poems of r.s. thomas

[llovelymoonn]

favourite poems of september

robin blaser the holy forest: collected poems of robin blaser: "[dear dusty moth]"

robin ekiss the mansion of happiness: "the bones of august"

e.e. cummings complete poems 1904-1962: "[anyone lived in a pretty how town]"

daisy fried econo motel, ocean city

david campos guilt shower and bad catholic

deborah a. miranda the zen of la llorona: "advice from la llorona"

v. penelope pelizzon blood memory

aimee nezhukumatathil invitation

jeffrey jullich portrait of colon dash paranthesis: "some materials may be inappropriate for children"

karina borowicz september tomatoes

patricia kirkpatrick survivor's guilt

kamau brathwaite born to slow horses: "i was wash-way in blood"

leslie adrienne miller the resurrection trade: "weaning"

allen edwin butt if briefly

gerrit lansing a february sheaf: selected writings, verse and prose: "how we sizzled in the pasture"

jayne cortez on the imperial highway: "in the morning"

stephen yenser preserves

ethan gilsdorf the imprint of september second

kathryn maris abc

paul zarzyski the antler tree

judith goldman vocoder: "rotten oasis"

tato laviera benedición: the complete poetry of tato laviera: "latero story"

tim seibles mosaic

ethan gilsdorf the imprint of september second

lucy wainger jiro dreams of sushi

robert duncan ground work: before the war: "a little language"

r.s. thomas the poems of r.s. thomas: "forest dwellers"

anthony wrynn saint john in the wilderness

reginald gibbons bear

walt whitman "are you the new person drawn toward me?"

kofi

[headlightsforever]

R.S. Thomas

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

Some ask the world  and are diminished in the receiving  of it. You gave me only this small pool  that the more I drink from, the more overflows  me with sourceless light.

-R.S. Thomas, "Gift"

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Cr. 1875 - Ethiopian Madonna

* * * *

Praise by R. S. Thomas I praise you because you are artist and scientist in one. When I am somewhat fearful of your power, your ability to work miracles with a set-square, I hear you murmuring to yourself in a notation Beethoven dreamed of but never achieved. You run off your scales of rainwater and sea water, play the chords of the morning and evening light, sculpture with shadow, join together leaf by leaf, when spring comes, the stanzas of an immense poem. You speak all languages and none, answering our most complex prayers with the simplicity of a flower, confronting us, when we would domesticate you to our uses, with the rioting viruses under our lens.

[kimbazee]

Evening Poetry, October 9

The Bright Field by R.S. Thomas I have seen the sun break throughto illuminate a small fieldfor a while, and gone my wayand forgotten it. But that was thepearl of great price, the one field that hadtreasure in it. I realise nowthat I must give all that I haveto possess it. Life is not hurryingon to a receding future, nor hankering afteran imagined past. It is the turningaside like Moses to the…

[beguines]

R.S. Thomas, Poems of R.S. Thomas

[shadderssss]

An illustration based on a poem - Reflections by R.S Thomas. (yes the one that was in Disco Elysium)

[georgieluz]

Juleeees, how are you? I'll go with 4, 10, 11, 21 and 28 for the "not from the US" ask set

jess! hello!! i'm not too bad, thanks! just got back from braving the rain to buy christmas jumpers (it's christmas jumper weekend at work on friday so had to go searching), how about you?

4. favourite dish specific for your country?

probably glamorgan sausage, which isn't made of actual sausage. it's made of cheese, but it's a vegetarian alternative to normal sausage. but yeah, usually made with cheese and leek.

i do also love a slice of bara brith, but specifically the one served in the restaurant at my workplace!

if we wanna be really basic then welshcakes are always a good shout and i have one every friday with a cup of tea in work!

crempogs are soo very good also!!

10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language?

ooh okay so i don't know if it would necessarily be the most enjoyable but it's the one my friends and i used most whilst growing up and that's "cachau bant" which is a way of saying "fuck off" but if you translate it literally it's "shit away".. and then i can't not include "cont" which i imagine you can guess the translation of (we use it affectionately here though, so it's more like "alright, cont?" or "shwmae cont" when you greet your friend)

11. favourite native writer/poet?

okay, it's probably very predictable to choose dylan thomas but i do love his poems and his poetry is loved for good reason! he didn't write in cymraeg, only saesneg, but he's welsh and wrote about wales and life here, and i think the fact that he wrote in english and not welsh speaks a lot about the journey our language unfortunately went on

also r.s thomas' poems about wales are always interesting to study, in particular welsh history, which has the ending lines:

when we have finished quarrelling for crumbs under the table, or gnawing the bones of a dead culture, we will arise and greet each other in a new dawn

his other poems a welsh testament, welsh landscape, the village and sorry are all really interesting as well!

niall griffiths is a great welsh author too. his books set in aberystwyth are really really good!

oh and richard king!! both his books about music and his oral histories of wales book are 11/10!!

menna gallie's work is awesome as well, i loved 'the small mine' which explores how a fictional welsh village comes together after a mining tragedy. it focuses a lot on how women in the community deal with the loss. her other books are great too and she has a really witty writing style that i enjoy a lot

a few others: owen sheers, gillian clarke and sarah waters!

not quite relevant, but still worth a mention, is the story of the soldier-poet known as hedd wyn and the eisteddfodd of 1917!

21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be?

ohhhh this is really hard.. does it have to be an object or can it be like just a welsh tradition or?? oH WAIT I KNOW i'd send mari lwyd up there!!! to maybe freak out all the aliens. it's one of my favourite welsh customs and traditions for christmas! this is what it looks like:

28. does your country have a lot of lakes, mountains, rivers? do you have favourites?

oh boy! it does indeed... if you wanna know how many mountains wales has, it's better to just look at this topography map

there aren't any genuinely flat areas of wales. my high school was near the top of a mountain, and my house growing up was halfway up the same one. we hated having to walk up it every morning, and yet, we still went down to the village on our lunch hour. maybe that's why we were all fucking tiny bc we trekked up a mountain twice a day.

here's one of our rivers, which we similarly have a fuck ton of

so yeah. a shit ton of rivers and a shit ton of mountains. my favourite mountains are the brecon beacons bc we used to go there so much when i was growing up. it's like a tradition for welsh people to climb there and hike there as soon as the weather gets milder!

oh wow, sorry this was SOOOO long but it was fun to talk about these things so thank you for asking!!

for this ask game!

[hoursofreading]

While I was at St Beuno’s, I was told not to spend too much time in the library—because when I arrived I had big ambitions like reading the entire Old Testament or getting really into Augustine. I didn’t entirely take this advice, but I did try to focus on poetry—which requires a different, more attentive kind of reading. One of the poets I read was R.S. Thomas, a Welsh priest who spent most of his life in the same hills and valleys of North Wales. He was a grumpy, often fed-up man, whose twin passions were hating technology and England. But many of his poems are about the kind of love that proceeds from attention: how his rough, uneducated parishioners irritate him until he really takes time to pay attention to them. And then he sees in them something of the wonder of God’s creation, the outpouring of love. Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. It’s an act of giving that directs us away from our petty hang-ups and bitterness, towards love. In Thomas’s poem The Moor, he writes: It was like a church to me. I entered it on soft foot, Breath held like a cap in hand. It was quiet. What God was there made himself felt, Not listened to, in clean colours That brought a moistening of the eye, In movement of the wind over grass. There were no prayers said. But stillness Of the heart’s passions — that was praise Enough; and the mind’s cession Of its kingdom, I walked on, Simple and poor, while the air crumbled And broke on me generously as bread.

attention is the beginning of devotion - by rose lyddon

[thegildedcentury]

R.S. Thomas’ poem Reflections from the collection No Truce With The Furies.

[nudeartpluspoetry]

"Cat and Sea," by R.S. Thomas

[yr-bed]

The furies are at home in the mirror; it is their address. Even the clearest water, if deep enough can drown. Never think to surprise them. Your face approaching ever so friendly is the white flag they ignore. There is no truce with the furies. A mirror’s temperature is always at zero. It is ice in the veins. Its camera is an X-ray. It is a chalice held out to you in silent communion, where gaspingly you partake of a shifting identity never your own.

“Reflections” by RS Thomas

[fromtheabundance]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

R.S. Thomas

[exhaled-spirals]

— R.S. Thomas, “Other”, from Collected Poems: 1945-1990

[lionofchaeronea]

“Farm Wife” - R.S. Thomas (1913-2000)

Hers is the clean apron, good for fire Or lamp to embroider, as we talk slowly In the long kitchen, while the white dough Turns to pastry in the great oven, Sweetly and surely as hay making In a June meadow; hers are the hands, Humble with milking, but still now In her wide lap as though they heard A quiet music, hers is the voice That coaxes time back to the shadows In the room’s corners.O, hers is all This strong body, the safe island Where men may come, sons and lovers, Daring the cold seas of her eyes.

A Shady Spot, Houghton Farm, Winslow Homer (1878)