After the success of Phil Lynott memoir My Boy, Hot Press’ Jackie Hayden turns his attention to Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. A frequent visitor to the principality, Hayden’s A Map Of Love: Around Wales With Dylan Thomas explores the places and people associated with Thomas and assesses his key works. It combines book and a CD of spoken-word performances by Jim Parc Nest, the Archdruid of Wales. These were recorded in the very room in the house in Swansea where the scribe was born.

Some see him as the first rock ‘n’ roll poet. Bob Dylan even borrowed his name. His image appears on the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album. He has inspired countless song lyrics and album titles, from Donovan (who adapted the Thomas poem ‘Do Not Go Gentle’) to King Crimson (whose Starless And Bible Black is named for a quote from Under Milk Wood). Nick Cave also name-checks the poet in his song, ‘There She Goes, My Beautiful World’.
Thomas died at just 39 in New York on a reading tour. He lived a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle to the end says Hayden. “The writer George Tremlett claims that Dylan Thomas was the first rock star,” he says. “He published the books, did the radio interviews and then went on tour. He was ahead of his time. I’m not conscious of many other writers of that period doing anything like it on that scale. The TS Eliots and the WH Audens of the time didn’t seem to be as active in promoting their work in the way Thomas was.”
Hayden’s passion for Thomas was sparked by the Dylan connection. “I went out and got a copy of a Dylan Thomas miscellany and I imagined a link between the two, in the way they used words and seemed to revel in the sound of those words. Through my music business connections I got hold of copies of Dylan Thomas records from the US and that convinced me even more. There’s a George Martin-produced double album of Under Milk Wood with people like Mary Hopkins and Tom Jones on it, which I have. And I actually have a copy of Under Milk Wood in which Dylan Thomas himself takes some of the roles. I see him as similar to Bob Dylan in the way both appeared to make words seem bigger. I was impressed with the fact that Thomas’ voice stood on its own. I’m not sure if too many rock artists could read any of their lyrics and do that. Dylan Thomas was a performer.” As far back as the ’70s, Hayden decided to go to Wales to explore the places and meet some of the people associated with Dylan Thomas.
“Initially I was a little bit puzzled,” he explains. “I was saying to people in various bed & breakfasts that I was here because I was interested in, quote, ‘your great poet, Dylan Thomas’. And I was meeting people who didn’t approve of Thomas at all. It surprised me but it seems that they wouldn’t have approved of his lifestyle, the fact that he drank a lot and was quite promiscuous. It was felt he didn’t look after his wife and family. They thought he was anti-Welsh too, probably because he didn’t speak the language and, like many of us here, was critical of his own country. I began to feel that was unfair. Reading him, I found he was very Welsh and, in fact, had never lived anywhere else. They just didn’t revere him to any great extent.”
There are surely dozens of books and scholarly studies of Dylan Thomas. How did Hayden decide to approach writing yet another tome about the poet.
“The original idea was to do a CD which would be the spoken word equivalent of a musical tour of Wales, through the words of Dylan Thomas,” he explains. “Then it was felt that people might like to read the script while listening to the CD. There was talk about having a booklet with it. Then it opened up into a book, which meant I could write from a more personal angle. I took a non-academic approach. I don’t claim to know his works inside out or to be able to tell you what every line means.”
As mentioned above the CD features a recording of a script made in the room where Thomas was born. That must have been a poignant moment for such a committed fan?
“It was a strange, almost eerie thing for me to do,” Hayden says. “Having stood outside that house so many times back in the ‘70s, here I am inside in the room Thomas was born and here’s a man revered in Wales reading my script.
“The different approach I took was in focusing on the importance of place in his work,” he continues. “He never owned his own house for example. He was always renting and moving around. He relied on well-wishers so he was quite clearly not very materialistic. His daughter, Aeronwy, who I’ve met, said they had a happy upbringing. When I go to a place like Laugharne, where he lived, and visit the boathouse he worked in, I would then want to go and read the poems that were associated with that place.”
The idea that Thomas was a career drunkard was something else Hayden wanted to challenge: “He did get drunk quite a bit. However I think he exaggerated his drunkenness for effect. In those days whether in London or Wales, the pub was where you met other people anyway, whether you wanted to or not. He did something like 200 broadcasts for the BBC as well as write hundreds of poems, short stories and film scripts. You can’t do that and be permanently drunk.”
There is an Irish connection, in that Dylan’s wife Caitlin was of Irish descent and had spent time in her ancestral home in Ennistymon, Co. Clare.
“Dylan visited Ireland twice,” says Hayden. “He went to Kerry and to Donegal. When he was in Killorglin he drank a lot, which is presumably why the commission he had, which was to write an article on the Puck Fair for Picture Post magazine never materialised (laughs.)”
Thomas died in 1953 in somewhat mysterious circumstances.
“Nobody quite knows how it happened,” Hayden muses. “Was it too much drink? Perhaps. He claimed to have once drunk 18 straight whiskeys. He certainly seemed to drink much more on his American tours than he did at home, where he’d usually have a few pints. Some think his marriage was in trouble, others that he was depressed because he wasn’t writing as much poetry as he had earlier. It was probably a combination of all of those things.”
Did he find any parallels between the lives of Phil Lynott and Dylan Thomas? “Both enjoyed being in the public gaze, and both of them died very young,” he says. “And both lived through times when they had to leave their native countries in order to make a living.”
Hayden feels the poet deserves more recognition than he has had. “I would have thought his life was ready-made for a film. He’s the Jim Morrison of the poetry world and I can’t fathom why it hasn’t been done. Next year is the 60th anniversary of his death and the year after is the 100th anniversary of his birth. So that might trigger some stuff about him.”

A Map Of Love: Around Wales With Dylan Thomas by Jackie Hayden is published by Iconau.