Adelaide Festival. Ayers House. 9 Mar 2015

 

Hello Dylan Thomas in the body of Mr Bob Kingdom.

 

It was very special to sit there in the Ayers House state dining room amid an audience of gentle literary minds and let your wonderful descriptives wheel around in mind's eye.

 

It is a while since I have read Thomas but he is embedded in my memory and my spirit.

 

It was my father, Max Harris, now recognised as "the father of Modernism in the Australian arts", who first published Thomas in Australia. 

 

It was the poem "The hunchback in the Park", which appeared in Angry Penguins no. 4, early in 1943 and Max wrote:

"...In this romantic poetry of the forties, Dylan Thomas is the most considerable figure to have arisen from English writers... We reprint this new poem by Dylan Thomas from an advance blurb of "New Directions" sent to us by the editor, James Laughlin, in the belief that it may be quite some time before the poems of Dylan Thomas as recent as this become available in Australia."

So it was to be.

 

By the time I was born, Dylan Thomas was well and truly available and in my world he was much read and adored. 

Thus was my childhood a veritable Milkwood of mellifluous Welsh intonations and ravishing language.

 

Now comes Bob Kingdom and one could almost believe that Thomas was alive again.

 

With wiry sandy-coloured hair almost vertical, and wearing a suit with crumpled dress shirt, bow tie and running shoes a la Thomas on his last lecture tour, Kingdom assumes a world-weary expression as he attends the lectern. "A poor man's Charles Laughton," says he. He's rather better looking than Thomas, but when he opens his mouth, we forgive him. It is Dylan Thomas which comes out - laconic, droll and, oh, so lushly lyrical.

 

The words roll forth in a Welsh sea swell.

 

The pace of their rhythmic sway allows one to savour their beauty and ponder their originality.

 

There's a "gossip of neighbours" and the castle, "brown as owls", those partying Swanseaites who "hymned and rumpused", those who “lumbered out in a grizzle", things "smooth as a moth's nose"....

 

It is stories he tells, of childhood immersion in an adult world, of wild Welsh characters, larger than life. Kingdom voices them.

 

He, the actor, has a sore throat and he is protecting it. So, there is no booming, just the flows of narrative, the lilts of poetry, the ebb and flow of Welshness, the sublime eloquence of Thomas.

 

From time to time, Kingdom moves his position, giving relief to those with sightline problems.

 

He changes mood from colourful descriptives to lamentations of mortality. Every breath comes as from a perfect time capsule of Thomas.

 

There in the sweet late summer afternoon, fans whirring softly, beads of sweat forming, packed tight in that handsome old room, a little sea of Adelaide poetry-lovers swayed both in emotion and tempo - and nothing much else existed until Mr Kingdom picked up his papers and glass of water and modestly walked out the door, once again actor with a sore throat.

 

Samela Harris

 

When: 8 to 14 Mar

Where: Ayers House State Dining Room

Bookings: bass.net.au