Lost Dylan poems found in Tesco bag to be heard
AS FAR as jobs go they don’t come much better for a Dylan Thomas expert and enthusiast.
Professor John Goodby was tasked with going through a rare notebook, complied by a young Dylan Thomas, that was discovered hidden away inside a paper Tesco bag in a drawer for years, before being sold to Swansea University at auction by Sotheby’s in London.
The notebook, which will be kept in the University’s Richard Burton Archives, is believed to have cost around £100,000 in all.
The previously unknown and unrecorded notebook contains a series of poems written during an urgent burst of the poet’s creativity in the 1930s.
The scratchings-out, doodles and revisions that mark the pages offer a unique insight into the creative process of one of the world’s most loved poets.
Thomas appears to have left the book behind during a stay at the Hampshire house of his mother-inlaw, Yvonne Macnamara, during the 1930s.
Professor Goodby, who will read from the work at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival on May 6, said: “The poems themselves have all been published before, but this notebook has earlier versions and they have lines and stanzas that have never been shared before.
“The notebook was started in April 1934 and carried on to August 1935, so Dylan would have been 19 years old when he started it and almost 20 when it was finished. It’s something that was left at his mother-in-law’s house and later given to the maid to put in the boiler’s furnace. Thankfully, she had the sense to save it and it remained in her family for years until it was put up for auction in Sotheby’s. “It was bought by the university in 2014 so its been here for the last couple of years and I had the responsibility of going through it.” Professor Goodby, who described his task as “a terrific privilege” will also release a new book, Discovering Dylan Thomas: A Companion to the Collected Poems and Notebook Poems, at the world-renowned poetry festival. Another new work, The second is of the US edition of the centenary edition of the Collected Poems, which he edited and published back in 2014, will be released later in the year in America.
Jeff Towns, a former Dylan Thomas Society of Great Britain chairman, who bid at the auction on behalf of the university, said at the time: “To bring this lost notebook – so telling and poignant – back to Swansea; to keep it in Wales for future generations is a huge achievement and I am overwhelmed to have been a small part of it.”
A festival spokesman said: “Dylan Thomas’ first four notebooks, covering April 1930 to April 1934, were sold by him ‘for the price of a few pints and a packet of Players’ to an American university library in 1941.
“Ever since then there has been speculation about whether there were any others.
“The fifth notebook turned out to have been kept in a paper Tesco bag hidden in a drawer by a former servant of Dylan’s mother in law.”
Professor Goodby, who is the director of the Dylan Thomas Research Project, will also display newly discovered Dylan material, correspondence and photographs.
The spokesman said: “Highlights of the event also include a reading of a mysterious unknown letter, and an intriguing account of the Thomas family written by their GP which provides a fascinating insight into life within the Thomas household and includes stories of a pig called Wallace – the porker who Dylan bought, and fattened up for Christmas 1951.
“John will also talk about Dylan’s recently-discovered poem The Dream of Winter – and the haunting photos that accompany it. A must for every Dylan fan!”