Wales: A Writer's Cauldron

If you are even remotely stalking seeking the spirit of Dylan Thomas, to not go to village of Laugharne ("Larn") is like going to Mars and not getting out of the rocket. Certainly, the man had his formative years in Swansea, but it was in Laugharne that he, in the legendary Writing Shed, applied all those lessons into the works that be his hallmarks.

And boy, you could drive right by this place--it is small. But for writers, it is perfect. It is the kind you can come to, sit down, and think. The hills are ancient, the River Taf rolls on heedless of the tiny lives along its banks--it was there first, after all. And all along the ridgetops are the spirits of barbarian kings singing savage verses to winds and fairy fire.

Romantic, eh? Surely Thomas thought so. And while the Normans and Celts before them would claim to have put Laugharne on the map, it was Thomas that waved the magic wand. So much so that it is widely thought that the town featured in Under Milk Wood, Llareggub, served as the prototype for the play's setting. And why not? St. John's Head, a large promontory pushing into the tidal flats of the Taf, is Milk Wood, standing a silent sentinel to the town under it. 

And it struck me that all those plays and passions of Thomas were done in this landscape. Standing in his shed (which, unpoetically, he set up shop in to get away from the ruckus of his kids), I saw the land he saw, the tide he watched pulse and ebb. Much of the shed is now a reproduction; even the shed itself had to be replaced as it was rotted through. But the landscape beyond, what Thomas contemplated when the muse capriciously skipped away, is as constant as the stars above and the bedrock beneath.

What did he see? I wonder. Or rather, how did he see it?