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in pitch darkness at the point of death. He was rushed to hospital where he died within an hour. While we waited for an ambulance he fainted and knocked out the oil lamp – he had refused electricity – but recovered and was perfectly sensible when it arrived’ (Poetry and Experience). ‘Hunt’s Bay’ (1952) ‘Hunt’s Bay is about a mile from my home. It is one of the rockiest bays on the coast, a crescent, or, at low tide, a dark half-moon of rocks, bounded on either side by steep cliffs and jutting boulders of whitish rock’ (‘Introduction to Three Ballads’). ‘Trust Darkness’ (August – December 1953) Begun shortly before Dylan Thomas’s final trip to America in November 1953; finished shortly afterwards. ‘The Exacting Ghost’ (1955) The poem describes ‘the effect on Vernon of a dream about Dylan which came to him in, I think, February or early March of 1954… It caused him great uneasiness, because, unlike most dreams, it had a quality of extreme reality. Every outline appeared solid… He even saw a small mole on the side of the jaw which he did not remember having seen in Dylan’s life-time… he was never able to decide whether this was an unusually vivid dream or an actual visit from the dead’ (Dylan Thomas: Portrait of a Friend, Gwen Watkins, p.166). ‘The Curlew’ (1956) Originally formed part of one of Watkins’s earliest elegies for Dylan Thomas, ‘Elegy for the Latest Dead’ (1954). ‘The Tributary Seasons’ (1955) This poem won the first Guinness Prize in 1957. Affinities (1962) Affinities contains poems completed between 1950 and 1961. Many, though by no means all, of its poems are about poetry and other poets, offering a glimpse into Watkins’s own creative processes and sources. 108 New Selected Poems
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‘The Precision of the Wheel’ (22 October 1959) On the night Watkins’s first son was born he had completed ‘The Lady with the Unicorn’, leading to the book bearing that name. Twelve years later, to the day, he received his first copy of Cypress and Acacia. The coincidence occasioned this poem. ‘Affinities’ (1959) Stanza 8. In a talk to the Poetry Society in 1966, Watkins said of Dylan Thomas: ‘His poetry is ancient, as it is always dealing with first things. I remember, after reading my poems at Oxford in 1952, acknowledging my great debt to him. I had introduced the poems briefly and said among other things that a poet cannot learn a true style from a contemporary, and that he must relate himself to ancient and dead poets, and be influenced by those alone. At the end I was challenged and asked to reconcile this statement to my other one about the influence of knowing Dylan Thomas. I said, “Dylan Thomas is an ancient poet. He happens to be alive”’ (Poetry Wales, Vol. 12, No. 4, Spring 1977). ‘The Childhood of Hölderlin’ (1953) This nine-part poem, prefaced by a translation from Hölderlin, forms a section of its own within Affinities. ‘Music of Colours: Dragonfoil and the Furnace of Colours’ (1961) Watkins’s third ‘Music of Colours’ poem. ‘One of the most vibrant evocations of summer in English poetry’ (John Ackerman, ‘Visionary glimpses of eternity’, The New Welsh Review, No. 28, Spring 1995). Fidelities (1968) Fidelities contains sixty-one poems, completed between 1959 and 1967. The volume’s flyleaf states: ‘Fidelities was completed by Vernon Watkins shortly before his sudden death in Seattle – where he was Visiting Professor of Poetry at the University of Washington – on 8th October, 1967 at the age of sixty-one.’ ‘The Sibyl’ (1961) A rare glimpse, perhaps, into Watkins’s self-estimation as a poet. Among those who visited Watkins’s small house on the cliffs of Gower were Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, R.S. Thomas and Pablo Neruda. The last two lines clearly refer to Dylan Thomas. Notes 109

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in pitch darkness at the point of death. He was rushed to hospital where he died within an hour. While we waited for an ambulance he fainted and knocked out the oil lamp – he had refused electricity – but recovered and was perfectly sensible when it arrived’ (Poetry and Experience).

‘Hunt’s Bay’ (1952) ‘Hunt’s Bay is about a mile from my home. It is one of the rockiest bays on the coast, a crescent, or, at low tide, a dark half-moon of rocks, bounded on either side by steep cliffs and jutting boulders of whitish rock’ (‘Introduction to Three Ballads’).

‘Trust Darkness’ (August – December 1953) Begun shortly before Dylan Thomas’s final trip to America in November 1953; finished shortly afterwards.

‘The Exacting Ghost’ (1955) The poem describes ‘the effect on Vernon of a dream about Dylan which came to him in, I think, February or early March of 1954… It caused him great uneasiness, because, unlike most dreams, it had a quality of extreme reality. Every outline appeared solid… He even saw a small mole on the side of the jaw which he did not remember having seen in Dylan’s life-time… he was never able to decide whether this was an unusually vivid dream or an actual visit from the dead’ (Dylan Thomas: Portrait of a Friend, Gwen Watkins, p.166).

‘The Curlew’ (1956) Originally formed part of one of Watkins’s earliest elegies for Dylan Thomas, ‘Elegy for the Latest Dead’ (1954).

‘The Tributary Seasons’ (1955) This poem won the first Guinness Prize in 1957.

Affinities (1962) Affinities contains poems completed between 1950 and 1961. Many, though by no means all, of its poems are about poetry and other poets, offering a glimpse into Watkins’s own creative processes and sources.

108

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