'In Search of Something Chance Would Never Bring': The Poetry of R.S. Thomas and Edward Thomas

Abstract

This article argues that, at two distinct stages of R.S. Thomas's life, Edward Thomas's poetry had an enabling influence upon his writing. There is considerable evidence that, at the beginning of the 1940s, Edward Thomas's verse contributed to the evolution of R.S. Thomas's aesthetic, offering him an instructive example of how he might begin to get beyond the rather cliched and often excessively sentimental verse he had been producing in the Georgian style and towards a much more tactile poetry, characterised by close and often deeply unromantic observation. As well as identifying a number of significant biographical connections between the two poets, the essay examines the impact that the task of editing and introducing Faber's Selected Poems of Edward Thomas (1964) had upon R.S. Thomas's writing, locating his re-engagement with Edward Thomas's work during the 1960s within the context of his search for new ways of exploring and expressing personal feeling.