Dylan Thomas Festival

Arts Festival

Dylan

Based at Swansea's Dylan Thomas Centre, the annual Dylan Thomas Festival is an eclectic mix of exhibitions, performances, films, talks, music, lectures, discussions and readings, which attracts international performers and visitors from all over the world. Top poet and performer John Hegley is one of this year's star guests, and other events will involve Wales' own Gillian Clarke, Stevie Davies, Barbara Hardy and Stephen Knight. We celebrate the publication of Wales Half Welsh, a groundbreaking anthology of short stories edited by John Williams, launch an extraordinary new work by Swansea University poet and Dylan scholar John Goodby, and welcome Caribbean poet Lorna Goodison and American poet and scholar William Greenway.

Aeronwy Thomas will read from her recent collection Rooks and Poems and discuss her own work and her father's influence. There will be new drama from the prolific Phil Bowen, and another chance to see Peter Read star in the incredible one man play Dylan Thomas in America, fresh from its triumph at the Edinburgh Fringe. Guy Masterson will return with his legendary solo Under Milk Wood, and there will be a reading of David Wilson's new play, which features Dylan, Caitlin, and the Marx Brothers! Continuing the Bob Dylan - Dylan Thomas connection, Swansea's David Boucher looks at Dylan and his fellow troubadour, Leonard Cohen.

Other highlights are Ignite, a day for writers, with guest speaker Trezza Azzopardi, and the showing of Greendale, a film by Neil Young which has been likened to Under Milk Wood. The BBC's Any Questions? will be broadcast live from the Centre with Rhodri Morgan as a panelist, and events organised with the Dylan Thomas Society include their Birthday Lunch, and a tribute to the late John Ackerman. There will be a series of events and exhibitions celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Under Milk Wood, and we continue to focus on Dylan's friend and fellow poet Vernon Watkins with a new exhibition and launch of a specialist publication by the Old Stile Press of a Watkins poem with illustrations by Glenys Cour.

We also look at Dylan's friend Richard Burton, and David Rayvern Allen will explore Dylan's love of cricket and his close friendship with broadcaster and commentator John Arlott. We reprise the Dylan Thomas Jazz Suite, composed by Jen Wilson to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Dylan's death, and the festival will close with Stan Tracey's celebrated Under Milk Wood Jazz Suite with Philip Madoc.

Full details of the programme are available at www.dylanthomas.org, or please contact the Dylan Thomas Centre on 01792 463980 or email dylanthomas.lit@swansea.gov.uk for more information and tickets.

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