Editing Dylan Thomas (section)

===Welsh poet===
{{Quote box |width=300px |align=right |quoted=true |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right
 |quote =<poem>
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon, I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.
</poem> |source =From "[[In my craft or sullen art]]" <br/> ''[[Deaths and Entrances]]'', 1946<ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178640|title=In my Craft or Sullen Art|publisher=Poetry Foundation|access-date=27 July 2012 |url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120623170252/http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178640 |archive-date=23 June 2012|df=dmy-all}}</ref>}}  Thomas disliked being regarded as a provincial poet and decried any notion of 'Welshness' in his poetry.{{sfnp|Ferris|1989|p=115}} 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."{{sfnp|Ferris|1989|p=115}} 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".<ref>{{cite journal|title=Cultural policy and place promotion: Swansea and Dylan Thomas|first1=Helen|last1= Watkins|first2=David|last2=Herbert |date=2003|journal=Geoforum |volume=34 |issue=2003 |page=254|doi=10.1016/S0016-7185(02)00078-7}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Welsh Dylan: An Exhibition to Mark the Twentieth Anniversary of the Poet's Death|first1=John|last1= Ackerman|year=1973|publisher=Welsh Arts Council|location=Cardiff|page=27 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=obbyAAAAMAAJ}}</ref> 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."{{sfnp|Ferris|1989|p=176}}

Head of Programmes Wales at the BBC, [[Aneirin Talfan Davies]], who commissioned several of Thomas's early radio talks, believed that the poet's "whole attitude is that of the medieval bards." [[Kenneth O. Morgan]] counter-argues that it is a 'difficult enterprise' to find traces of ''[[cynghanedd]]'' (consonant harmony) or ''[[cerdd dafod]]'' (tongue-craft) in Thomas's poetry.<ref name="Morgan-2002">{{cite book |last1=Morgan |first1=Kenneth O. |title=A Rebirth of a Nation |year=2002 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |pages= [https://archive.org/details/wales18801980reb0000morg/page/263 263–265] |isbn=978-0-19-821760-2 |url= https://archive.org/details/wales18801980reb0000morg/page/263 }}</ref> Instead he believes his work, especially his earlier more autobiographical poems, are rooted in a changing country which echoes the Welshness of the past and the [[Anglicisation]] of the new industrial nation: "rural and urban, chapel-going and profane, Welsh and English, Unforgiving and deeply compassionate."<ref name="Morgan-2002"/> Fellow poet and critic [[Glyn Jones (Welsh writer)|Glyn Jones]] believed that any traces of ''cynghanedd'' in Thomas's work were accidental, although he felt Thomas consciously employed one element of Welsh metrics; that of counting syllables per line instead of [[Foot (prosody)|feet]].{{refn|{{harvp|Jones|1968|pp=179–80}}, notes that in Thomas's early work, such as ''Eighteen Poems'', the [[Iamb (foot)|iambic foot]] was the rhythmic basis of his line, while in his later work a count of syllables replaced a count of [[Accent (poetry)|accents]].|group="nb"}} [[Constantine Fitzgibbon]], who was his first in-depth biographer, wrote "No major English poet has ever been as Welsh as Dylan".{{sfnp|FitzGibbon|1965|p=19}}

Although Thomas had a deep connection with Wales, he disliked [[Welsh nationalism]]. He once wrote, "[[Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau|Land of my fathers]], and my fathers can keep it".{{sfnp|FitzGibbon|1965|p=10}}<ref>{{cite news |url= https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2003/oct/25/unitedkingdom.guardiansaturdaytravelsection |title=To begin at the beginning… |date=25 October 2003|access-date=27 July 2012|first1=Nick|last1=Wroe|work=guardian.co.uk}}</ref> While often attributed to Thomas himself, this line actually comes from the character Owen Morgan-Vaughan, in the screenplay Thomas wrote for the 1948 British melodrama ''[[The Three Weird Sisters]]''. Robert Pocock, a friend from the BBC, recalled "I only once heard Dylan express an opinion on Welsh Nationalism. He used three words. Two of them were Welsh Nationalism."{{sfnp|FitzGibbon|1965|p=10}} Although not expressed as strongly, Glyn Jones believed that he and Thomas's friendship cooled in the later years as he had not 'rejected enough' of the elements that Thomas disliked&nbsp;– "Welsh nationalism and a sort of hill farm morality".{{sfnp|Jones|1968|p=198}} Apologetically, in a letter to [[Keidrych Rhys]], editor of the literary magazine ''[[Wales (magazine)|Wales]]'', Thomas's father wrote that he was "afraid Dylan isn't much of a Welshman".{{sfnp|FitzGibbon|1965|p=10}} Though FitzGibbon asserts that Thomas's negativity towards Welsh nationalism was fostered by his father's hostility towards the Welsh language.<ref>{{cite magazine |url= http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1966/feb/03/dylan-thomas/?pagination=false |title=Dylan Thomas, in response |first1= Constantine |last1=FitzGibbon |magazine=The New York Review |date=3 February 1966 |access-date=28 July 2012}}</ref>