Fluellen Theatre Company takes an affectionate look at “Swansea’s other great poet”, Vernon Watkins, in The Tongue Of The Wave in the Dylan Thomas Centre’s series of Summer Lunchtime Theatre events.
Vernon Watkins lived nearly all his life in Swansea and wrote some of the finest poetry to come out of Wales. 9 volumes of his poetry were published, he won several major poetry prizes and he was being considered as Poet Laureate before his death. He was friends with W B Yeats, T S Eliot, Philip Larkin, R S Thomas and, of course, Dylan Thomas.
Happily married, working as a clerk at Lloyds Bank in St Helens Road his lifestyle was the antithesis of the self-styled “beast, angel and madman”, Dylan Thomas. Yet a tremendous bond was formed between these two great writers. Dylan called him “The most profound and greatly accomplished Welshman writing poems in English”.
The Tongue Of The Wave travels through his life and poetry using the words of his friends, colleagues and family and places him firmly in the pantheon of great twentieth century writers.
