Dylan Thomas: Need We Say More?

We have the pleasure of welcoming Dr Dai George, author of How To Think Like a Poet (Bloomsbury 2024). Dai will speak about his new project on Dylan Thomas. He will be joined in conversation by Mererid Puw Davies, a poet, Professor of German Studies and co-convener of the Creative Critical Writing PhD program at UCL.

Dylan Thomas is one of the few celebrity writers who can command widespread interest beyond academic or literary circles. His authorial brand of the drunk Celtic bard, living fast and dying young, continues to sell his works and his life story to a broad public. Dai George is at the beginning of a new biographical project about Thomas and will talk to ARIEL about the challenges – and opportunities – of finding something compelling, new and scholarly responsible to say about a writer who has been done to death. In a biographical field saturated with cradle-to-grave accounts and tallies of his final drinking session, perhaps it is precisely the creative-critical angle that we need to (re)discover with Thomas, a great writer hiding behind his own outsize posthumous reputation.

The event will take place on Teams. See the joining details below.

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Attribution: Ymlacio, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Dylan Thomas Memorial Stone inscribed with lines from 'Fern Hill' at Cwmdonkin Park, Swansea

ARIEL is a hub for intellectual exploration and exchange between academics of all disciplines and artists of all genres in the creative and cultural industries. ARIEL is a collaboration between UCL Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) and UCL School of Creative and Cultural Industries (SCCI).