BAD-TEMPERED OLD MAN WRITING FROM THE PERIPHERY: THRESHOLDS IN R.S. THOMAS’S POEMS

R. S. Thomas relates the story of a person who cannot feel at home in the established
institutions of the society. This study starts with a brief explanation of Welsh poetry
and Thomas’s place in it. Then the study analyses the selected poems of R.S Thomas
from his early and later collections in order to trace the emotional breaking points in
the poems. The study also attempts to read Thomas’s poetry with respect to the
nomadic subjectivity and nomadic time sense. Deliberately choosing to be at the
margin, the poetic persona walks on the borders of reality and illusion by trying to find
an outlet that would let him out of the long-felt restlessness. By discovering the
impossibility of such an option, he turns back to the temporality of the order, but he
grasps the glimpses of what he yearns for in the flux and reflux.