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‘Trees in a Town’ (1963) Occasioned by the felling of two chestnut trees outside Lloyds Bank, St Helen’s Road, Swansea, where Vernon Watkins worked. ‘The Snow Curlew’ (January 1963) Gwen Watkins writes: ‘“The Snow Curlew” brings full circle the sequence of elegies which began with “The Curlew”’(Poems for Dylan, ed. Gwen Watkins). ‘To A Shell’ (1965) The last poem about Dylan Thomas included by Watkins in one of his own collections. The ‘house facing the sea’ is Sea View, Laugharne. ‘The Beaver’ (1964) Written after a visit to W.H. Auden in America in 1964. ‘Triads’ (1962) The poem with which Watkins concluded his final volume. Some of the earliest Welsh literature was composed in ‘Triads’. Watkins said of his links with early Welsh poetry: ‘Although I do not often read Aneurin, Taliesin and Llywarch Hen, because I have not learnt enough Welsh, I think their poetry is the finest early poetry in Britain, and unsurpassed, in its kind, since. Even through translation the force of this poetry makes itself clear. I feel the affinity with these poets which does not come from study, or history, but from instinct. Their roots go very deep; their truth is unmistakable’ (letter to Meic Stephens, 29 January 1967, NLW MS 22464E). Uncollected Poems (1969) Selected and introduced by Kathleen Raine. All except one of the poems are dated 1966 or 1967. The three included here are among the last Watkins wrote. The Ballad of the Outer Dark (1979) Poems written between 1944 and 1967. (The title-poem, ‘The Ballad of the Outer Dark’, not included here, begins where ‘The Ballad of the Mari Lwyd’ ends, just after midnight.) 110 New Selected Poems
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‘A Dry Prophet’ (1967) Inspired by the character of R.S. Thomas, who stayed with Watkins in Gower, and gave the address at Watkins’s Memorial Service. ‘Rhadamanthus and the New Soul’ (1967) A conversation between Rhadamanthus, the judge of the dead (Stanzas 1, 3, 5, 7), and a new soul in that realm (Stanzas 2, 4, 6), who has witnessed the horrors of the twentieth century. Watkins wrote in his notebook (22 February 1966): ‘Rhadamanthus. All I know is that this is a permanent poem. I can’t exhaust its meaning or isolate one completely.’ The Breaking of the Wave (1979) Most of the poems in this collection are undated. Rarely Published and Unpublished Poems ‘True Lovers’ (1926) Written when Watkins was nineteen, in February 1926, and published in the London Mercury in May 1929 – just before his decision no longer to publish. ‘Sonnet of Resurrection’ (7) Watkins originally wrote eight ‘Sonnets of Resurrection’, six of which were published in The Lady with the Unicorn: ‘Four Sonnets of Resurrection’, ‘The Sinner’ and ‘The Necklace of Stones.’ This one exists in a single draft in the British Library (BL MS 54159), and has not previously been published. It is one of the very few poems that treats directly of the experience he underwent in 1928/9. ‘Untitled’ A single undated draft, previously unpublished; not in a finished form. Probably written in 1956, when Watkins revisited Nuremberg after the war, on a travelling scholarship. ‘Parable Winkle’ (1964) First published in Temenos 8, London, 1987. An example of Watkins’s light verse, sent from America in 1964 to his godson Richard Hamburger, who ‘was in hospital for nine months, encased in plaster from his feet to his chest’. Michael Hamburger, Richard’s father, wrote: ‘To me, Vernon’s humanity – attested here Notes 111

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‘Trees in a Town’ (1963) Occasioned by the felling of two chestnut trees outside Lloyds Bank, St Helen’s Road, Swansea, where Vernon Watkins worked.

‘The Snow Curlew’ (January 1963) Gwen Watkins writes: ‘“The Snow Curlew” brings full circle the sequence of elegies which began with “The Curlew”’(Poems for Dylan, ed. Gwen Watkins).

‘To A Shell’ (1965) The last poem about Dylan Thomas included by Watkins in one of his own collections. The ‘house facing the sea’ is Sea View, Laugharne.

‘The Beaver’ (1964) Written after a visit to W.H. Auden in America in 1964.

‘Triads’ (1962) The poem with which Watkins concluded his final volume. Some of the earliest Welsh literature was composed in ‘Triads’. Watkins said of his links with early Welsh poetry: ‘Although I do not often read Aneurin, Taliesin and Llywarch Hen, because I have not learnt enough Welsh, I think their poetry is the finest early poetry in Britain, and unsurpassed, in its kind, since. Even through translation the force of this poetry makes itself clear. I feel the affinity with these poets which does not come from study, or history, but from instinct. Their roots go very deep; their truth is unmistakable’ (letter to Meic Stephens, 29 January 1967, NLW MS 22464E).

Uncollected Poems (1969) Selected and introduced by Kathleen Raine. All except one of the poems are dated 1966 or 1967. The three included here are among the last Watkins wrote.

The Ballad of the Outer Dark (1979) Poems written between 1944 and 1967. (The title-poem, ‘The Ballad of the Outer Dark’, not included here, begins where ‘The Ballad of the Mari Lwyd’ ends, just after midnight.)

110

New Selected Poems

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