Dylan Thomas 27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953

The Secret Gower Surprisingly little has been made of the influence Gower had on Dylan Thomas’ writing. There are constant echoes of the inspiration this beautiful peninsular brought to his life and poetry. In a letter to his potential lover, he wrote

‘There is bay almost too lovely to look at. You shall come and see it with me; we shall both utter words of maudlin wonder; and swoon away on the blasted heath’.

But there is more, far more in his poetry that can be traced back to his childhood and youth visits to this sleepy mystical land just a few miles from his home.

Mumbles with its spectacular lighthouse is the icon of Dylan Thomas’ Swansea and the illuminated gateway to Gower peninsular.

Just nineteen miles long, it is a land of legends, mysterious castles, and prehistoric secrets swept by shifting golden sands. An enchanting rugged interior of dramatic hills, historic woodlands, sweeping moors seems to tumble into the surrounding sea over towering limestone cliffs or flow gently through silent yellow sand dunes. Lost villages are buried somewhere beneath the sands, but other relicts stand proudly as a reminder of the civilisations which existed long before time froze over Gower. A dozen golden sandy beaches and myriads of hidden bays and rocky coves are scattered along miles of unspoilt and truly spectacular coastline, Gower is truly a living Welsh poem. Dylan Thomas’ love of nature and his native countryside is legendary; it comes as no surprise that he used this magnificent land as the inspiration for many of his poems and stories.

About the Poems Since Dylan Thomas’s first poem was published in 1933 readers have speculated on where his inspiration came from. After many years of following in his footsteps, I may have found the answer. To me Dylan was like a photographer without a camera, someone who captured and stored visual images not on film but in his mind. The world he saw was transient; everything came from the womb and ended in the tomb. He became fatalistic at a young age realising that he had been born now he was on his way to death. He had a wonderful ability to recall what he saw and just like a photographer he learnt to see instead of just look. He saw the world as a jigsaw made up of infinite, intricate and ever-changing details. The constant interaction between the sea and the sky, the heron with the crab, man and nature, summer with winter. I has seen what Dylan saw and as a photographer, captured visual images.

But, Dylan Thomas’s true genius lay in his talent at combining what he saw with what he felt, what he experienced with what he remembered and then putting these complex thoughts into scintillating verse. His poems can be difficult to understand because of the very nature of what he is writing about. In this radical collaboration between poet and photographer, image and text have been combined to provide a new way of viewing the poems.

Brian Gaylor

Brian Gaylor’s photographs present visual images drawn from the poetry and prose of Dylan Thomas.

My father was writing about these places and people fifty years ago, Brian has picked out the timeless images of leafy woods and restless seas.

…sourced for their visual imagery, rich in poetic metaphor as might be expected but firmly anchored in real places that still exist.

What gives this collection of photographs such vitality is Brian’s appreciation of my father’s zest for life in which nature in all its moods is paramount.

The poems, which describe in lyrical terms the landscape, sea and rivers of Wales, [Gower] are simply illustrated in the photographs as Brian’s photographic eye selects elements from these same locations.

Every photograph has an evocative quotation.

…the artful photographer has selected and linked an image with words, with word and image each in their own way lend new interest to the other. I have found by looking at a particular image linked with words intriguing and stimulating, prompting me to return to the original poem to read it in its entirety, my interest re-generated by Brian’s densely rich image and his choice of related words to illustrate it.

Each photograph and accompanying text offers the same stimulation: a visual image that can act as an introductory pathway to some of Dylan’s greatest and lesser known works.

Personally, after nearly fifty years of studying my father’s work, I find a new impetus in this exceptional photographic collection to re-examine and enjoy the words and works from which the images took inspiration.

Aeronwy Thomas

1943 – 2009

When the galactic sea was sucked

And all the dry seabed unlocked

I sent my picture scouting on the globe

That the globe itself of hair and bone

That, sewn to me by nerve and brain,

Had stringed my flask of matter to his rib When Once the Twilight Locks No Longer

I have longed to move away

From the hissing of the spent lie

And the old terror’s continual cry

Growing more terrible as the day

Goes over the hill into the deep sea

I have longed to move away

From the repetition of salutes

For there are ghosts in the air

And ghostly echoes on paper

And the thunder of calls and notes I Have Longed To Move Away

A process in the weather of the heart

Turns damp to dry: the golden shot

Storms in the freezing tomb.

A weather in the quarter of the veins

Turns night to day: blood in their suns

Lights up the living worm A Process In The Weather Of The Heart

I have heard may years of telling

And many years should see some change

The ball I threw while playing in the park

Has not yet reached the ground Should Lanterns Shine

The force that drives the water through the rocks

Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams

Turns mine to wax.

And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins

How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks. The Force That Through the Green Face Drives the |Flower

About Brian Gaylor Brian Gaylor’s life has in many ways mirrored his predecessor Dylan Thomas. They grew up in Swansea a short walk across the ugly, lovely town, by the side of a long and splendid curving shore. This sea-town was their world. They both loved and visited the beautiful Gower peninsular as child and adult and both had strolled across the golden sands of the bay almost too lovely to look at.

Over the years Brian has become a renowned photographer of the Welsh landscape and in the last decade developed an interest in the relationships between the visual image and poetry. Now for the first time, there is collaboration between the poet and the photographer showing not only the beauty but also the influence Gower had on Dylan Thomas and his writing. What would Dylan have thought of images being combined with his poetry? Dylan’s daughter Aeronwy, just before her tragic death, told Brian that her father would be “Delighted and tickled pink at the thought.”

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