Dylan Thomas remains one of Wales' best听known听poets more than 50 years after his death in New York at the age of 39.
The latest incarnation of his most famous听play, Under Milk Wood, is being performed at the Tricycle Theatre on 12 May.
For the play's opening, Dylan Thomas' daughter Aeronwy Thomas is giving a talk on her father's life and work.
As the daughter of one of Wales' favourite sons, Aeronwy is never far from the shadow of her father.听
A poet herself, many of her works deal with听her memories听of a childhood听on the Welsh coast听dominated by Dylan's presence.听
Read two of her poems below:
听
Later than Laugharn by Aeronwy Thomas
Herons, mussel pools, gulls and pipers,
encircle our 鈥渉ouse on stilts high among
beaks and palavers of birds鈥. Cormorants
scud and gulls glide in my memory.
The stones, washed by the tide, which I
would turn looking for blue and white,
or floral pieces of china for our crockery
houses鈥nd the fish my mother would
catch and I throw back into the swirling
waters of the estuary all around us鈥
I remember them well.
鈥nd high tide covering our back garden
through a hole in the stone wall which
embraced our home. The tide carrying our
makeshift boats on its back, pieces of lumber,
an old zinc bath, and I can still recall
the envy I felt when they bought my brother
a boat called The Cuckoo鈥
The names come tumbling back -
鈥nd I remember the hole in the wall was
called grandly by all, The Harbour.
鈥nd who could forget sliding down the
mudbanks at low tide into the rivulets
left by the receding water, or running along
the cliffwalk and stirring up a din outside
the shed that was my father鈥檚 writing den.
The memories race back -
鈥nd the thrill of peeping through
the keyhole (I was always the most naughty)
to see my father writing his poems about
gulls, hills and cormorants on estuaries
which he saw through his wide-vista window,
as he sat, bent, writing in crabbed letters,
pressing against the hard surface of the
kitchen table that was his desk鈥
We were poor those days -
Though I can鈥檛 remember being poor
in Laugharne, in those balmy,
never-to-be-forgotten days,
green and golden鈥︹.
Herons, gulls and pipers still encircle
our house on stilts,
and the cormorants still scud and glide
in my memory鈥︹.
Drowning by听Aeronwy Thomas
Left on the seashore
we look at the carcass
stripped of all meat
bones blanched by the wind
and sometime sun.
I want to touch it
to bring back life
what was,
to hear the mew of a sheep鈥檚 cry
the other side of the estuary
where animals graze near the water鈥檚 edge
the turning tide picking out one
to trap and turn in its pull and swirl,
water spiralling down.
This time it was a sheep
Other times fishermen
mewl in distress
at the turn of tide
dumped at the edge
of mud flats
once the waters cease foaming
a short-lived rage.
Sheep and men
caught in the tide
resurface in my dreams.
