R. S. THOMAS - The Bard of Wales

R.S. Thomas – a great Anglo-Welsh poet and a priest of different parishes of Wales witnessed the movements of the fellow countrymen and their surroundings with a peasant’s eye and recorded them tremendously in fine poetry. Many composite figures who stand for the endurance and simplicity of the ordinary farm laborers in such a ‘hard land’ make Thomas’ enigmatic attitude towards the present age and the peasant life a bitter and haunting pang in the hearts of the poetry lovers. This book embarks its journey on the attributes in attitudes and sensibilities of the poet with a special reference to the motif of his poor countrymen’s power and glory. No literary investigation of Thomas is complete without dribbling through the theme of the subaltern lives and the woes of the Welsh characters portrayed by him foregrounding the elements of alienation and marginalization. This journey stumbles upon the aspects of nationalistic utterances – both the liberally humanistic and the theoretically problematized binaries of Nationalism. Even though the elements of spirituality and religious conviction predominate in the compositions of his poetic musings there is a hidden skepticism too.