Madog Center for Welsh Studies
Dr Walford Davies - Visiting Professor
To be a poet is the highest of all callings in Wales, according to Dr.
Walford Davies, a visiting professor from the University of Wales to the
University of Rio Grande. He taught at Rio Grande during winter quarter
2000.
"I
came to the University of Rio Grande because I wanted to help continue
the link already established between the Madog Center for Welsh Studies
and the Welsh culture and heritage that form so much of my life back
home in Wales,"
said Professor Davies. "It
feels like home here,"
he added. This is his fourth visit to the southern Ohio campus.
An international expert on English literature, Dr. Davies advises Rio
students on the nature of our experience when we read poetry. He enjoys
the study of poetry, whether it is Welsh, Irish, English or American in
origin and often refers to poetry as "the
soul of a nation."
In Wales, Welsh-language poetry is highly structured and densely
crafted. "Language
is the expression of a culture,"
said Professor Davies. Whatever struggles a culture endures, poetry
reflects them. The declining coal and steel industries and harsh farming
conditions in Wales over the last century have left their mark on the
Welsh culture.
R.S. Thomas, Wales’
greatest living poet, expressed the Welsh culture in the opening stanza
of "The
Hill Farmer Speaks"
when he wrote:
"I
am the farmer, stripped of love
And thought and grace by the land’s
hardness;
But what I am saying over the fields’
Desolate acres, rough with dew,
Is, Listen, listen, I am a man like you."
Professor Davies speaks Welsh fluently and has published extensively in
English and Welsh about Welsh poets Dylan Thomas and R.S. Thomas. Both
writers offer insight into the Welsh heritage. If there is a constant to
the Welsh experience and culture, it is a love of poetry and its
image-making power.
Poet Dylan Thomas was so expressive in his description of what it feels
like to be an adolescent, according to Professor Davies, that his highly
original poetry was first published when he was only 20 years of age. A
single poem sent to a London magazine started his career as a poet . By
1934, "Eighteen
Poems"
caused such a stir of recognition that Thomas received the encouragement
of famous poet-critics, such as T.S. Eliot and William Empson.
Dylan Thomas’
early poetry describes the human condition from an adolescent’s
point of view. Sometimes described as "tormented,"
he wrote poetry about birth, love, and death with youthful passion. In
the poem "And
Death Shall Have No Dominion,"
he asks the reader to imagine such images from nature as "No
more may gulls cry at their ears. . . "
and "Where
blew a flower may a flower no more /Lift its head to the blows of the
rain . . . "
"We
would not be human without language,"
said Professor Davies. "Poetry
is an image-making power in which words are set unchangeably in order."
Dr. Davies remembered a Welsh-language poem written by a tramp
befriended by Dr. Davies’
grandfather in Wales. It evokes the phenomenon that we call a horizon.
"Look
at this mysteriously vanishing thing all around us . . .an ending that
never ends,"
is the way a Welshman described the intangible sight. The poet’s
name was Dewi Emrys. He survives as a poet, not a tramp.
As Dylan Thomas once said, "I’m
not interested in poetry: only in poems."
The only way one can meet poetry, according to Professor Davies, "is
to be as open as possible to its tones and textures rather than to any
simplistic message we may be looking for."
Dylan Thomas died in 1953, at the age of 39. In contrast to the non-
Welsh speaking Dylan, R.S. Thomas, the other major Anglo-Welsh poet,
learned Welsh, though he spoke only English until the age of 35, even
though he was reared in Wales.
Now, 86 years old, R.S. Thomas pursued his career as a poet while also
being a parish priest in the Church in Wales. He is now considered one
of the most fluent and stylish Welsh speakers and writers within his
native country.
"He
is a major icon and leader of Welsh Wales; the nation looks up to him,"
said Professor Davies. But he still writes his poetry in English!"
A poet writes in his or her first language because, as Professor Davies
believes, "What
goes in first goes in deepest."
But it is an issue that will not be fully answered, or consensus
reached, among the Welsh people.
In the Davies family, Professor Davies wanted his twin sons to
experience the community of their parents’
Welsh heritage. By 1971, he was a Senior Lecturer in English literature
at the University of Oxford. He returned to Wales in 1976 to accept a
professorship at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth.
Now, the whole Davies family, Walford and Hazel Davies and their grown
sons, share the teaching profession at the University of Wales. Welsh is
always spoken in the Davies home, but there is great appreciation for
all literature written in English as well as Welsh. Hazel Davies, as one
example of scholarly achievement in the Davies family, teaches
Shakespeare and American Drama courses at the University of Wales.
Professor Davies has accepted temporary professorships in such locations
as the University of Lecce in Italy, the University of the South,
Sewanee, Tennessee, Wheaton College in Illinois, Calvin College in
Michigan, and The University of Bucharest.
North American universities and colleges he has most recently visited as
an invited guest lecturer include The University of Pittsburgh; Colgate
University in New York; Union College in Schenectady, New York;
Macmaster University in Ontario; the University of British Columbia; and
Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.
He has published many books and articles about Dylan Thomas. A book
entitled "The
Site Inviolate: The Authorized Biography of R.S. Thomas"
is in preparation. He has been awarded several British Academy awards
for research, and has been Chairman of the Literature Committee of the
Welsh Arts Council.
Recently, both he and his wife were elected Fellows of the Welsh
Academy. As an adviser, scriptwriter and presenter for a variety of BBC,
Instructional Television and S4C (Wales’
Welsh-language television channel) Dr. Davies is active in the
development of TV programs in the fields of literature and the arts.
His extensive knowledge about literature is not limited to the home of
his birth. As a scholar, Professor Davies enjoys Irish poet Yeats and
T.S. Eliot’s
poetry. But, on meeting any poem, Dr. Davies asks: "How
does it go?"
- seeking to ascertain how it should sound when read aloud.
Professor Davies was recently invited to be an adjudicator for the
prestigious Cohen Prize, awarded for a lifetime’s
achievement in English literature. He’s
also currently one of three judges for the "Book
of the Year"
Award in Wales.
by
Kathleen B. Gierhart
Madog Center for Welsh Studies
Elizabeth F. Davis House
University of Rio Grande
Rio Grande, OH 45674
Phone number: (740) 245-7186
E-Mail: welsh@rio.edu