A few days ago I received a second hand copy of the 'Selected Poems of RS Thomas' from a well known pre-owned book supplier. I could see no evidence of its having been read or perhaps even opened, so I count it as almost brand new, even though it was printed 20 years ago.

Thomas is a very interesting and a very good poet, an Anglican priest whose parishes ranged the Welsh countryside. He learned to speak his native tongue so he could better talk with his parishioners and understand their lives. His writing has the very blood and bones of the Welsh countryside in its making, peopled with lean, lonely but determined characters. I am half-way into the volume, and I am left, quite often, with a sense of the grim, the sparse, the forgotten.

Consider this stanza from 'The Welsh Hill Country' and you will see what I mean.

'Too far for you to see
The moss and the mould on the cold chimneys,
The nettles growing through the cracked doors,
The houses stand empty at Nant-yr-Eira,
There are holes in the roofs that are thatched with sunlight,
And the fields are reverting to the bare moor.'

It is not that Thomas does not love Wales and its people, but rather, that this is the truth of what he sees.