Poetry
His ambitions were for his poetry; in critical terms they were not to be fulfilled. On the other hand, he became a major figure for the Anglo-Welsh poetry tradition, and his poems were included in major anthologies. During the war he was for a time associated with the New Apocalyptics group. With his first book Ballad of the Mari Llwyd (1941) accepted by Faber and Faber, he had a publisher with a policy of sticking by their authors. In his case this may be considered to have had an adverse long-term effect on his reputation, in that it is generally thought that he over-published.
He wrote poetry for several hours every night and by way of contrast, Caitlin, Dylan Thomas's wife, could not recall her husband staying in even for one night during their whole married life! Vernon knew William Butler Yeats, T. S. Eliot and Philip Larkin. He was awarded a degree of Doctor of Literature from Swansea University in 1966 after retiring from the Bank. He was being considered for poet laureate at the time of his death.
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A poem by Vernon Watkins from the Anglo-Welsh Review. The widow mentioned may be Caitlin Thomas.
Read more about this topic: Vernon Watkins
Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“I cannot say what poetry is; I know that our sufferings and our concentrated joy, our states of plunging far and dark and turning to come back to the worldso that the moment of intense turning seems still and universalall are here, in a music like the music of our time, like the hero and like the anonymous forgotten; and there is an exchange here in which our lives are met, and created.”
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“Do you know how poetry started? I always think that it started when a cave boy came running back to the cave, through the tall grass, shouting as he ran, Wolf, wolf, and there was no wolf. His baboon-like parents, great sticklers for the truth, gave him a hiding, no doubt, but poetry had been bornthe tall story had been born in the tall grass.”
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“There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.”
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