Baxter Reads Thomas

The audience awaited with impatience James K. Baxter's readings from Dylan Thomas's "Deaths and Entrances" but were well rewarded with Mr Baxter's usually-immaculate delivery. His introductory remarks were, in outline—"Dylan Thomas stands much in relation to this generation as did Keats to his. He is intensely original. His themes are pretty primitive ones, and he may be said to start writing where other people normally stop writing." Mr Baxter read two poems from Thomas's first group. Of "Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London" he said, "What is remarkable about his poems is not the statements he makes, but the intensity with which he makes them." He followed this with Thomas's most widely known poem "Poem in October's Tale," according to Mr Baxter "a fantasy rhyming by assonance; not built up in an intellectual manner but it has an organic character—probably one of the best poems to be written this century."

So ended the third poetry reading to be held under the auspices of a joint committee of Training College and Varsity literary figures. It will be followed this term by another later in the year.