Professor David Peimer
Dylan Thomas: Great Poet or Overrated Alcoholic Wordsmith ?
Summary
By delving into his poems, partly in relation to his life, we will debate whether Dylan Thomas was a ‘serious’ poet or, as Graves and others claimed, not. We will also ask why he resonates so strongly today around the world.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a Professor of Literature, Film and Theatre in the UK. He has worked for the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, New York University (Global Division) and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing in New York, UK, Berlin, EU Parliament (Brussels), Athens, Budapest, Zululand and more. He has most recently directed Dame Janet Suzman in his own play, Joanna’s Story, at London Jewish Book Week. He has published widely with books including: Armed Response: Plays from South Africa, the digital book, Theatre in the Camps. He is on the board of the Pinter Centre (London), and has been involved with the Mandela Foundation, Vaclav Havel Foundation and directed a range of plays at Mr Havel’s Prague theatre.
No, I just, one of my lecturers when I studied at Columbia, used to say, “Originality is merely lack of information.” And he used to talk about how everybody steals from everybody else. And it’s a playful, metaphorical idea of everybody builds on other poets, everybody borrows, steals, adapts from what has gone before. The classic Homer’s “Odyssey,” James Joyce, “Ulysses,” you know. Everybody borrows, adapt, steals, but the trick is how to make it something of their own. And that’s for me, an imaginative intelligence. They’re not just repeating or echoing. They’re able to take it a whole step further, you know.
Well, his father being an English teacher, taught him a lot, and as I said, he left school at the age of 16. So it was through his father. And you know, his mother was a seamstress, but his father loved, and his parents loved reading rhymes, children’s rhymes to him, and the rest I think, he taught himself. That’s it.