About R. S. Thomas
R. S. Thomas was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest born on March 29, 1913 in Cardiff and died on September 25, 2000. His career as a poet really took off in 1955 with the publication by Rupert Hart-Davis of his collection Song at the Year's Turning, with a foreword by John Betjeman, which was awarded the Heinemann Prize by the Royal Society of Literature. He had left Manafon the previous year to become curate of Eglwys Fach, on the Cardigan Bay coast. While continuing to publish verse regularly (he notably won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1964), in 1967 he accepted his last post, that of curate of Aberdaron on the Ll?n Peninsula, where he remained until 1978.Already nominated for the Nobel Prize, he is one of Britain's most respected and important poets. A priest of the Church of England, he has published numerous collections of poems that speak to us of his vision of God. Welsh independence is the other key theme: it is here, above all, that the radical force of his testimony finds expression. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, but lives very simply on Anglesey, where he spends much of his time in close contact with nature.
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