Professor John Goodby Inaugural Lecture: ‘A saint about to fall’: reflections on poetry and the study of Dylan Thomas – Wednesday 14 May 2025

Join Hallam’s Professor of Arts and Culture John Goodby, as he explores the vivid life and legacy of Dylan Thomas, one of the twentieth century’s most memorable and compelling lyric poets.

Thomas is still best known for his wild lifestyle and as the author of lyrics such as ‘Fern Hill’ and ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’, and of Under Milk Wood. Yet his popular reputation is in many ways a partial and misleading one, disguising the true scope and nature of his achievement.

Tracing his own personal journey through Thomas’s work over more than two decades, John will reveal Thomas’s roots as a radically experimental artist, and examine their relation to the maverick persona of legend. Thomas’s unique versatility in elite and popular cultural forms, and his gifts as both a serious and comic writer, will be related to his hybrid Anglo-Welsh origins and troubled, often apocalyptic times.

In doing so, John will draw out some of the parallels between Thomas’s historical contexts and his literary concerns – with revolution, gender roles, surrealism, the threat of fascism and war, ecological destruction – and those of our own era, in order to suggest what significance his potent example might have for us today. Don’t miss this opportunity to deepen your understanding of Thomas and his impact on literature and culture.