Dylan Thomas in San Francisco

 

The Irish Literary & Historical Society of San Francisco sponsored a lecture by Nerys Williams, who had a Fulbright to Berkeley in 2007.  She is a poet and lectures on American poetry in University College, Dublin.  She is the author of two academic works: Reading Error:  The Lyric and Contemporary American Poetry(Peter Lang, 2007)   and Contemporary Poetry (Edinburgh Critical Guides, Edinburgh University Press, 2011)  She speaks Welsh and English and is based in Ireland.   Dylan Thomas, like Amy Lowell, was interested in poetry "as performance".  She plays some recordings of Thomas reading.  She presents her own view of Thomas, and never really gets round to America. I went to meet her before the talk, and she said she was not a biographer, but hoped people in the audience might have heard Dylan Thomas read in San Francisco. Looking in "Literary Hills of San Francisco", I find no mention of Dylan Thomas.  I am wondering why she titled her talk, or perhaps, she did not title, it, "Dylan Thomas in America.".  She focussed on Thomas as a war poet.