Choosing his vocation as a poet, Dylan Thomas often reflected on the nature of his calling, as here:
I labour by the singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
‘In My Craft or Sullen Art’
It’s not that he didn’t want to earn his bread by his craft, and he was certainly not immune to the temptation to ‘strut’ on the ‘ivory stages’. But those ‘common wages’ were his core motivation and the driving force of his vocation as a poet, writing of course for himself who had no choice, but also for ‘the lovers ….. their arms/Round the griefs of the ages,/Who pay no praise or wages/Nor heed my craft or art.’
It was for them that he sang. But, in spite of his ostentatious rejection of the religion of his upbringing, he also said, in the Introduction to his Collected Poems, the following:
I read somewhere of a shepherd who, when asked why he made, from within fairy rings, ritual observances to the moon to protect his flocks, replied: “I’d be a damn’ fool if I didn’t!” These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn’ fool if they weren’t.
We write as we need to. But, whether we publish or not, who we write for is as important as why we write. God, the gods, the Muses, the awen,; we write out of ourselves because we are in the world and need to share something of ourselves in the world’s public space, to return the gift with which we feel either cursed or blessed!
greghill 