R.S. Thomas to Rowan Williams: The Spiritual Imagination in Modern Welsh Poetry

The great religious poetry of R. S. Thomas and the poetry of the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is rooted in a remarkable late-twentieth-century tradition of spiritual poetry in Wales that includes figures as different as Saunders Lewis and Vernon Watkins, Waldo Williams and Bobi Jones. This study examines this body of work in detail, demonstrating how the different theological outlooks of the poets was reflected in their choice of form, style and vocabulary. It thereby highlights a literary culture that was highly unusual in its rejection of the secularisation that prevailed during that period in the UK, Western Europe and the USA.