{"id":689,"date":"2014-09-12T07:03:12","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T07:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/?p=689"},"modified":"2014-09-12T07:03:12","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T07:03:12","slug":"r-is-for-r-s-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/?p=689","title":{"rendered":"R is for R S Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\"><!--\nP { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; }P.western {  }\n--><\/style>\n<p>I have just spent a glorious few days at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.woodbrooke.org.uk\/\">Woodbrooke<\/a> immersed in the poetry of R S Thomas. R S was a clergyman and poet who lived and worked and spent his retirement primarily in North Wales. Born in Cardiff in 1913, his was privately educated in English, but money ran short and he entered the church because that gave him the opportunity of a university education. He did his best as a pastor, though it does not seem to have been his natural calling. He always regretted that he had not learnt Welsh as a child (though it was his mother&#8217;s tongue), but learnt as an adult to communicate better with his parishioners. Though he spoke and wrote prose in Welsh, his poetry is written entirely in English. He was a loner, an introvert, a keen bird-watcher and walker. He was a pacifist and campaigned for nuclear disarmament.<\/p>\n<p>Much of the poetry is very bleak, observing the harshness of life in the welsh hills and the loss of the welsh language and culture. But the real attraction for me (and many others) is the poetry where he expresses his searching for God. He grasps the emptiness; the absence that is yet, somehow, also a presence; the tantalising, passing experience that God is there, or was here a moment ago. He glimpses Eternity\/Heaven\/Paradise and then loses it again. And, depending on our backgrounds, the members of our group said &#8216;but clearly he was a Quaker\/ Buddhist\/Sufi\/Mystic.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>As an taster, here is one of his poems that really struck me:<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\"><span style=\"font-family: Nimbus Sans L,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">But the silence in the mind<br \/>\nis when we live best, within<br \/>\nlistening distance of the silence<br \/>\nwe call God. This is the deep<br \/>\ncalling to deep of the psalm-<br \/>\nwriter, the bottomless ocean<br \/>\nwe launch the armada of<br \/>\nour thoughts on, never arriving.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\"><span style=\"font-family: Nimbus Sans L,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">It is a presence, then,<br \/>\nwhose margins are our margins;<br \/>\nthat calls us out over our<br \/>\nown fathoms. What to do<br \/>\nbut draw a little nearer to<br \/>\nsuch ubiquity by remaining still?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"LEFT\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Bardsey.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-697 aligncenter\" alt=\"Bardsey\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Bardsey-300x109.jpg\" width=\"710\" height=\"278\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif,serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">And one that gives some context as well as recounting a fleeting, yet eternal, experience:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<style type=\"text\/css\"><!--\nP { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; }P.western {  }\n--><\/style>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">The Moor<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">It was like a church to me.<br \/>\nI entered it on soft foot, breath held like a cap in the hand.<br \/>\nIt was quiet.<br \/>\nWhat God was there made himself felt,<br \/>\nNot listened to, in clean colours<br \/>\nThat brought a moistening of the eye,<br \/>\nIn movement of the wind over grass.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">There were no prayers said. But stillness<br \/>\nOf the heart&#8217;s passions \u2013 that was praise<br \/>\nEnough; and the mind&#8217;s cessation<br \/>\nOf its kingdom. I walked on,<br \/>\nSimple and poor, while the air crumbled<br \/>\nAnd broke on me generously as bread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have just spent a glorious few days at Woodbrooke immersed in the poetry of R S Thomas. R S was a clergyman and poet who lived and worked and spent his retirement primarily in North Wales. Born in Cardiff &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/?p=689\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=689"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":699,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions\/699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}