"The bards of ancient Wales were either master poets patronized at the Welsh courts or minstrels wandering from village to inn, telling their tales for bread and shelter.  The court bards had to undergo a rigorous training in metre and metaphor and Christian allegory;  a restricted official vocabulary, carefully vetted for heresy or indulgence, limited the abundance of the Welsh language. . .Bards competed fiercely for the Chairs of Poetry at the various courts and for the patronage of the Welsh kings; but they were more courtiers than poets, more interested in a safe position than in the dangerous search after poetic truth.  At one period, the court bards accepted a metrical code of writing, which restricted them in practice to writing eulogies of the princes and elegies for their deaths.  The riches of the full Welsh language and its treasure of myths and romances were abandoned to the minstrels or travelling bards."

Last year, 2014, Wales celebrated one of their most famous bards, Dylan Thomas.  His writing and travels, the great Welsh tradition of reading and writing poetry will be the topic in the NEAT LITTLE BOOKSHOP on Third Thursday, January 15 at 1:00 p.m. We are pleased to have Laurie Miller, author of Avro Arrow, who will read and discuss Dylan Thomas.

 

Join us on Thursday, January 15 AT 1:00 p.m.

~ DYLAN THOMAS POET OF HIS PEOPLE Andrew Sinclair, Michael Joseph Ltd, 1975.