Watkins, Vernon Phillips

(1906-1967)

   English-speaking Welsh poet, born at Maesteg, Glamorgan, but brought up in Swansea, where his father was a bank manager. He was educated at Repton School, Derbyshire, and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read modern languages, developing an interest in French and German poetry. Except for military service in World War II-when he was at Bletchley Park as part of the cryptographic team - he worked in the St. Helen's branch of Lloyds Bank in Swansea. He lectured at the University College Swansea (Calouste Gulbenkin Fellow in Poetry), and won several major poetry prizes. He was a visiting professor of Poetry in America and died in Seattle. He was a major figure for the AngloWelsh poetry tradition; his poems were included in major anthologies, and he was being considered for poet laureate. Some of his publications: Ballad of Mari Lwyd, 1941. The Lamp and the Veil, 1945. The Lady with the Unicorn, 1948. The Death Bell, 1954. Cypress and Acacia, 1959. Affinities, 1962. Some of his poems: "Ballad of the Two Tapsters," "Fatherland in the Heights," "Returning to Goleufryn," "Taliesin and the Mockers," "The Collier."

   Sources: Anglo-Welsh Poetry, 1480-1980. Raymond Garlick and Roland Mathias, ed. Poetry Wales Press, 1984. Anglo-Welsh Poetry, 1480-1990. Raymond Garlick and Roland Mathias, ed. Poetry Wales Press, 1993. Archives Network Wales, Vernon Watkins (http://www.archivesnetworkwales.info/cgi-bin/anw/fulldesc_nofr?inst_id=35&coll_id=11890&expand=). Bloomsbury.com-Research Centre; Vernon Watkins (http://www.bloomsburymagazine.com/ARC/detail.asp?entryid=109648). Dylan Thomas's Choice: An Antholog y of Verse Spoken by Dylan Thomas. Ralph Maud and Aneirin Talfan Davies, eds. New Directions, 1963. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. In Quest of the Miracle Stag: The Poetry of Hungary. Adam Makkai, ed. Atlantic-Centaur, Corvina, 1996. Modern Ballads and Story Poems. Charles Causley, ed. Franklin Watts, 1965. The Collected Poems of Vernon Watkins. Brian Keeble, ed. Golgonooza Press, 2000. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The New Yorker Book of Poems. The New Yorker editors. Viking Press, 1969. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).