Edward Thomas
- 2 Hours, in two parts
- A recording is available now
Venue: This recording is now available online. The link giving you access to this lecture will be sent out after your booking has been received.
World Poets - Edward Thomas
“When first I came here I had hope, Hope for I knew not what. Fast beat My heart at the sight of the tall slope Or grass and yews, as if my feet Only by scaling its steps of chalk Would see something no other hill Ever disclosed . . . ” wrote Edward Thomas on moving to a new home in Kent, in lines which catch his wonderful lyrical voice as a poet of nature. But might the ‘what’ and the ‘something’ also be the poetry he had discovered he could write (thanks to the prompting of Robert Frost) only three years before he died in action at Arras? Walter de la Mare said Thomas’s aim had been “to express the truth about himself and his reality”. This throws light on how poetry suddenly surfaced in him: it was there all the time, in the glorious pastoral eloquence of his prose in praise of place and nature.
“Gently as the alighting of a bird, the sunlight dropped among the tops of the oaks, which were yellow and purple with young leaves, and blessed them”, he wrote in The Heart of England. And when he says of W H Hudson that ‘what he reverences and loves is the earth”, he is also talking about himself.
“First soldier, and then poet, and then both/, Who died a soldier-poet of your race”, declared Robert Frost in his tribute poem to Thomas. “I knew”, wrote Frost, “from the moment when I first met him at his unhappiest that he would some day clear his mind and save his life”.
Thomas did indeed save his life by turning from prose to verse. And then, by becoming a soldier at the age of 35 and going to the Front in 1917, he lost it.
To access recordings of all ten lectures in the 2020 online series, click on SCHEDULED EVENTS below
Top picture: John Mann, Adlestrop Replica station sign in field
Lower picture: Unknown photographer, Edward Thomas, The Edward Thomas Fellowship
Tickets £10/$12
online recording
Payment Options
We will gladly accept online payment in the methods below. You don't need a PayPal account.
Have a Question?
Feel free to contact me - I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
Scheduled Events
Check all current events
Contact Us
...if you're interested in an event that isn't scheduled