Pod Academy

To begin at the beginning: It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and- rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. [Under Milk Wood] 2014 is the centenary of the birth of the poet Dylan Thomas. Scarlett MccGwire went to talk to Dr. Leo Mellor who writes and teaches about 20th century literature, particularly Anglo Welsh Literature and modernism, at Murray Edwards college Cambridge, where he is the Roma Gill Fellow in English. She started by asking him what’s so special about Dylan Thomas that the centenary of his birth is being celebrated around the world? Dr.Leo Mellor: I think it is to do with the way he brings a particular intensity to language. To the way he writes poems, that force or push language into moments of unexpected power and beauty and strangeness. He makes us see everyday things as strange again and he helps us see a beauty in things one woul