The theology and the poetry of Welch poet R.S. Thomas.

This collection of poems by Wales' most famous poet-priest, R S Thomas, is interspersed with short reflections and questions for exploration that connect the timeless poetry to the landscape that inspired it. Originally produced locally for visitors to the North Wales village and church where R S Thomas was the parish priest, its appeal extends to all who know and love the raw honesty and sparse, striking style of the poetry, and whose own faith and questions are mirrored in it. Aberdaron still welcomes streams of visitors, R S Thomas aficionados and pilgrims en route to the nearby holy island of Bardsey. This book brings the poetry alive in a fresh way and provides a pilgrim guide to the locality, along with reflections that enable armchair readers everywhere to enter more deeply into the world of the poems. All royalties will continue to go to maintaining the church at Aberdaron.

R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) is one of the major poets of the twentieth-century, the greatest Welsh poet since Dylan Thomas, and one of the finest religious poets in the English language. This substantial gathering of his late poems shows us the final flowering of a truly great poet still writing at the height of his powers in his 70s and 80s. It begins with his autobiographical sequence, The Echoes Return Slow, unavailable for many years, and also includes, Counterpoint, Mass for Hard Times, No Truce With the Furies, and his final collection, Residues.

RS Thomas was the greatest religious poet writing in English in the 20th century, but the 270 poems he chose for this definitive selection reveal a wide range of themes and concerns. He was a passionate Welsh patriot, but also an outspoken critic of his countrymen. His poems are an expression of his lifelong argument with himself, of his insistent search for God. In them he grapples with ideas of Welshness, with issues of technology, pollution, the decline of culture. He wrote too about love, about landscape, nature and birds. His is an urgent, prophetic and unique voice.

R. S. Thomas writes his often dour lines out of the hard landscape of the Welsh hills. His poems are so much a part of that land that farmers and their families, people he calls by name, walk inside them.

Presents a collection of previously uncollected poems by the Welsh poet.

The award-winning life story of Wales national poet and vicar R.S. Thomas is “a biography touched by genius.” (Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday) R.S. Thomas is widely considered as one of the twentieth-century’s greatest English language poets. His bitter yet beautiful collections on Wales, its landscape, people and identity, reflect a life of political and spiritual asceticism. Indeed, Thomas is a man who banned vacuum cleaners from his house on grounds of noise, whose first act on moving into an ancient cottage was to rip out the central heating, and whose attempts to seek out more authentically Welsh parishes only brought him more into contact with loud English holidaymakers. To Thomas’s many admirers this will be a surprising, sometimes shocking, but at last humanising portrait of someone who wrote truly metaphysical poetry. “A masterpiece.” —Daily Express “A striking, vivid and tender reading of the man . . . Excellent.” —Observer “Riotiously funny.” —Rowan Williams, Sunday Times “It is precisely Byron Rogers’ darkly comic sense of the ridiculous that melts the frost from the head of R.S. Thomas and humanizes a remote and bleakly beautiful writer.” —The Times “A chatty, disorderly but extremely good [biography] . . . A wonderfully comprehensive picture of the man.” —Daily Telegraph “As revealing an account of a severely private person that anyone could hope to achieve.” —Alan Brownjohn, Times Literary Supplement “Engagingly high-spirited and daring.” —Andrew Motion, Guardian Book of the Week “Charming and deftly written. . . . A very funny book.” —Literary Review “As readable and rounded a life of the man as could be written.” —Tablet Winner of the James Tait Black prize for biography

R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) was a major poet of the twentieth century. He was respected by luminaries of the literary establishment, recognized with numerous awards, and nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1996. Thomas was also a priest of the Anglican Communion who wrestled ceaselessly with problems of faith and doubt in his poetry. John G. McEllhenney makes R. S. Thomas' poems, ministry, and irascible character come brilliantly alive in his new book, A Masterwork of Doubting-Belief: R. S. Thomas and His Poetry. McEllhenney, who developed a personal relationship with Thomas during the last decade of the poet's life, draws on his conversations and correspondence with Thomas, as well as his experiences as a clergyman and lover of poetry, and offers readers a unique experience that is part biography, part appreciation, and part religious meditation. A Masterwork of Doubting-Belief is an important new contribution to our understanding of R. S. Thomas and an inspiring source of insights for all who struggle with their faith!

With the season of Advent, the coming of Christ is imminent, and following the contours of the season leads through a rich time of preparation for God-with-us in the Incarnation. R. S. Thomas, a poet of waiting and anticipation, can be a profound guide for this season. His spiritual and poetic trajectory of discovering the presence of God - divine ‘frequencies’ - even in apparent absence, can help lead us into an Advent landscape of surrender, open-hearted discovery, epiphany and encounter. This collection of 28 reflections on Thomas’s poetry travels through the season, and follows one of the traditional patterns of themes explored in each Sunday of Advent: a Carmelite pattern of waiting, accepting, journeying and birthing.

Every new book by R.S. Thomas is a revelation. There is no other voice like his, no other poet who releases the silence out of which language is wrought, and against which its truth echoes. In his eighties at the time of writing, the prophet is not wearied, but still asking difficult questions in his poems. For him, there is no truce with the furies. This collection was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection.