Vernon Watkins

Vernon Watkins
Born (1906-06-27)27 June 1906
Maesteg, South Wales, UK.
Died 8 October 1967(1967-10-08) (aged 61)
Seattle, USA.
Spouse Gwendoline Mary Davies

Vernon Phillips Watkins (27 June 1906 – 8 October 1967) was a British poet, translator and painter.[1] He was a close friend of Dylan Thomas,[1] who described him as "the most profound and greatly accomplished Welshman writing poems in English".

Early life and studies

Vernon Watkins was born in Maesteg in Glamorgan, and brought up mainly in Swansea.[1] His birth coincided with slight earth tremors; another baby born that night was christened John Earthquake Jones. His mother was Sarah ("Sally") daughter of Esther Thomas and James Phillips of Sarnau, Meidrim. Her father, a Congregationalist, was reputed to know most of the Welsh bible by heart. Sarah had a love of poetry and literature, her headmistress arranged for her to spend two years as a pupil-teacher in Germany. Sarah married William Watkins in 1902 they had three children, Vernon, Marjorie and Dorothy. William was a manager for Lloyds Bank in Wind Street, Swansea, and the family lived at "Redcliffe", a large Victorian house about four miles from Swansea, at Caswell Bay.

Watkins read fluently by the age of four, and at five announced that he would be a poet, although he did not wish to be published until after his death. He wrote poetry and read widely from eight or nine years of age and was especially fond of the works of Keats and Shelley.[2]

Vernon was educated at a preparatory school in Sussex, Repton School in Derbyshire, and Magdalene College, Cambridge.

While at Repton his quiet, gentle character provoked regular bullying from older boys in his early years at the school, though in his last years he attained more popularity as he was able to show capacity in tennis and cricket. After he died, in 1968, the school wrote that he was "perhaps the best poet Repton has had".[7]

His headmaster at Repton was Geoffrey Fisher, who became Archbishop of Canterbury.[1] Despite his parents being Nonconformists, his school experiences influenced him to join the Church of England. He read modern languages at Cambridge: but left before completing his degree.

Career

Dylan Thomas and the Swansea group

He met Dylan Thomas, who was to be a close friend, in 1935 when Watkins had returned to a job in a bank in Swansea. About once a week Dylan would come to Vernon's parents' house, situated on the very top of the cliffs of the beautiful Gower peninsula. Vernon was the only person from whom Dylan took advice when writing poetry and he was invariably the first to read his finished work. They remained lifelong friends, despite Thomas's failure, in the capacity of best man, to turn up to the wedding of Vernon and Gwen in 1944. Dylan used to laugh affectionately at his friend's gossamer-like personality and extreme sensibility. A story is told that one evening in Chelsea, during the war time blackout, they were walking along and Vernon tripped over something and fell to the ground. Dylan looked with a torch to see what the offending object was and to his delight all that they could find was a small, black feather (FitzGibbon 1966). Vernon was godfather to Dylan's son Llewelyn, the others being Richard Hughes and Augustus John. Letters to Vernon Watkins by Thomas was published in 1957.[1] The 1983 book Portrait of a Friend by Watkins' wife Gwen(doline) (née Davies) deals with the relationship.

Others in the Swansea group known as the "Kardomah boys" were the composer Daniel Jenkyn Jones, writer Charles Fisher and the artists Alfred Janes and Mervyn Levy. Vernon wrote the obituary for Dylan Thomas and when he died, Philip Larkin wrote his obituary.

Bletchley Park and marriage

Watkins met Gwen, who came from Harborne, Birmingham, at Bletchley Park, where he worked during the Second World War as a cryptographer.[1] They were married at the Church of St Bartholomew the Great in London on 2 October 1944. The couple had five children.

Poetry

His ambitions were for his poetry; in critical terms they were not to be fulfilled. On the other hand, he became a major figure for the Anglo-Welsh poetry tradition, and his poems were included in major anthologies. During the war he was for a time associated with the New Apocalyptics group. With his first book Ballad of the Mari Llwyd (1941) accepted by Faber and Faber, he had a publisher with a policy of sticking by their authors. In his case this may be considered to have had an adverse long-term effect on his reputation, in that it is generally thought that he over-published.

He wrote poetry for several hours every night and by way of contrast, Caitlin, Dylan Thomas's wife, could not recall her husband staying in even for one night during their whole married life. Vernon knew W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot and Philip Larkin. He was awarded a University of Wales honorary Doctorate of Literature in 1966 after retiring from his job at the bank. He was being considered for Poet Laureate at the time of his death.[1]

That July morning when the poet's widow
Stayed here, at breakfast looking through the window
We saw young rabbits leap, and in a pother
Frisk, dance and scurry, dodging one another,
Returning always to the selfsame corner
Between low beech-trees and the grassy border.
They scattered when my children running out
Found a young Redpoll injured on the ground.
This sacrifice had made the rabbits dance.
It had fallen from the fuchsia bush or branch
Of beech that shook down dewdrops on my head.
I for a moment thought the brilliant red
Of breast and crest had come from a hawk's wound,
But found no blood. The heart beat faintly. Soon
We had laid it in a box, propped upon silk.
I touched the twig-like leg. White bread and milk
We gave it, but the beak at once refused,
After one drop, to drink, and the eyes closed.
It woke when my warm hand, encircling, took it,
Straining to perch; but whether claw was crooked
Or the wing hurt, it could not fly or stand.
We left it where life's ember might be fanned
By sunlight through a window. It revived
A little. But the warmth on which it lived
Diminished then, in the late afternoon.
It was so small, so quiet in my room,
That when I turned to lift it from the sill
And feel its weight upon my fingers, still
I counted to awaken it, nor saw
What breath had chilled the feathers, gripped the claw;
Nor did the dainty bird with that red stain
Seem dead at all, until I looked again.
Watkins, The Redpoll, a later poem, never fully revised.

A poem by Watkins from The Anglo-Welsh Review; the widow mentioned may be Caitlin Thomas.

Death and memorial

Watkins had developed a serious heart condition, which he made light of, insisting on playing his beloved tennis and squash with his usual vigour. He died on 8 October 1967, aged 61, playing tennis in Seattle, where he had gone to teach a course on modern poetry at the University of Washington.[1]

His body was returned to Britain, and was buried in the Gower, at St Mary's Church, Pennard. A small granite memorial to him stands at Hunt's Bay, Gower, on which are inscribed two lines from his poem "Taliesin in Gower": "I have been taught the script of stones, and I know the tongue of the wave."

A portrait of Watkins by his friend Alfred Janes may be seen in the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea. A group portrait of the Kardomah Boys by Jeff Phillips was unveiled at Tapestri Arts Centre in Swansea in June 2011. Featured in the painting are Vernon Watkins, John Pritchard, Dylan Thomas, Daniel Jones and Alfred Janes. The picture is based on a BBC Radio Times front cover from October 1949.

In March 2012, in the BBC Radio 3 programme Swansea's Other Poet, Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, presented a portrait of Watkins. Williams regards Watkins as "one of the 20th century's most brilliant and distinctive yet unjustly neglected voices".[3]

Most of Watkins's manuscripts are held by the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Published works

References

Notes
  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Welsh Biography Online Retrieved : 27 February 2011
  2. ↑ Evans
  3. ↑ Laura Chamberlain. "Blogs – Wales – Vernon Watkins, Swansea's Other Poet". BBC. Retrieved 20 May 2014.

Further reading

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