Two of Sally Roberts Jones' poetry collections.
It was only while researching Real Port Talbot that I began to fully appreciate the town's connections to modern and contemporary poetry: Sally Roberts Jones, Gwyn Williams and Ruth Bidgood, who grew up and went to school in Port Talbot while her father was vicar at St Mary’s in Aberafan between 1929 and 1945. I omitted to mention the poet and accomplished wood sculptor, John Davies, who was also brought up in Port Talbot and now lives in Prestatyn, North Wales.
But it seems Port Talbot can even boast links to Wales's most famous poetic son, Dylan Thomas, whose aunty, Sarah Jones, married a Port Talbot boy, Daniel Thomas Evans in 1926. He was the son of a draper, David Charles Evans, originally from Whitchurch but who was living in Bryn in 1901 and in Taibach in 1911, having married a Margam girl, Jennet Thomas in 1898.
And there's more. Dylan Thomas's paternal uncle, Arthur Thomas, moved to Port Talbot to work on the railways, lodging at Llewellyn Street and later living in Beverley Street until his death in 1947.
(If anyone would like to help the writer and researcher, David Thomas, solve a little Dylan Thomas family mystery related to the people his Uncle Arthur was living with in Beverley Street, Port Talbot - Ken and Hettie Owen nee Phillips - then please click this link.)
One of Dylan Thomas's most memorable poems is his villanelle, 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night', written for his dying father. The line, 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light' somehow manages to encapsulate the fire of grief.
And 'dying' is on my mind at the moment as I'm researching my own family history, my great grandmothers, from the 18th and 19th centuries who lived and worked on farms in West Wales.
I've always been a supporter of cremations, or at least I believed I was until I started this research project. Standing in front of their weathered, mossy graves, reading their names, cut into stone, and sometimes the names of their children who died before them, feels like holding onto a rope that connects me to the past. All I have to do is pull to get closer to the women who made me.
What connects you to your past? Gravestones? Letters? Artefacts handed down through the family? Perhaps even a poem? Here's Dylan Thomas's villanelle.
But it seems Port Talbot can even boast links to Wales's most famous poetic son, Dylan Thomas, whose aunty, Sarah Jones, married a Port Talbot boy, Daniel Thomas Evans in 1926. He was the son of a draper, David Charles Evans, originally from Whitchurch but who was living in Bryn in 1901 and in Taibach in 1911, having married a Margam girl, Jennet Thomas in 1898.
And there's more. Dylan Thomas's paternal uncle, Arthur Thomas, moved to Port Talbot to work on the railways, lodging at Llewellyn Street and later living in Beverley Street until his death in 1947.
(If anyone would like to help the writer and researcher, David Thomas, solve a little Dylan Thomas family mystery related to the people his Uncle Arthur was living with in Beverley Street, Port Talbot - Ken and Hettie Owen nee Phillips - then please click this link.)
One of Dylan Thomas's most memorable poems is his villanelle, 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night', written for his dying father. The line, 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light' somehow manages to encapsulate the fire of grief.
And 'dying' is on my mind at the moment as I'm researching my own family history, my great grandmothers, from the 18th and 19th centuries who lived and worked on farms in West Wales.
I've always been a supporter of cremations, or at least I believed I was until I started this research project. Standing in front of their weathered, mossy graves, reading their names, cut into stone, and sometimes the names of their children who died before them, feels like holding onto a rope that connects me to the past. All I have to do is pull to get closer to the women who made me.
What connects you to your past? Gravestones? Letters? Artefacts handed down through the family? Perhaps even a poem? Here's Dylan Thomas's villanelle.
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