Why the Dylan Thomas Prize?
As part of her message to the audience at the launch event of the Dylan Thomas Prize, actress Catherine Zeta Jones said the prize had been created in honour of the poet and in “recognition of the way in which his youthful talent was nurtured in his native city of Swansea.” The young Dylan wrote his poems and ideas in notebooks from his mid-teens onward; this proved to be the most prolific period of his life and many of the poems in his first collection 18 Poems (published in 1934 when he was just 20) were written during this period. Literary London in the 1930s was quick to acclaim the energy and innovation of the young poet’s work, much of it written in his bedroom at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, overlooking Swansea Bay. It is therefore fitting that the Dylan Thomas Prize should be awarded to the best published writer in English under the age of 30 from anywhere in the world. The poet’s writings from his youth continued to inspire his work up until the 1940s and the themes he explored in those
