A short clip from the BBC of Dylan Thomas reading the radio adaptation of In Parenthesis originally scheduled to be aired in 1942, but eventually aired in 1946. 

Listen here: ​www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0211tcq

Full 1965 interview of David Jones by Saunders Lewis (made for BBC by Tristram Powell and Melvin Bragg) now on Youtube: 

​www.youtube.com/watch?v=psQkOT7eNwE&feature=youtu.be

CFP: The Poetics of Faith: Exploring Belief in Modern and Contemporary Poetry
 
12-14 January 2018, University of York




​TS Eliot wrote that ‘[t]he trouble of the modern age is not merely the inability to believe certain things about God and man which our forefathers believed, but the inability to feel towards God and man as they did’. Modern and contemporary poets, faced with the often stark realities of an industrial and post-industrial world, with the two world wars and their moral implications, and with social and economic changes, have found themselves needing to evaluate such new ways of feeling towards God. Grappling with questions of war and exploring the morality of ecology, as Elizabeth Bishop did, seeking the transcendental in the muddy trenches of the First World War, as David Jones did, or sometimes writing with profound awareness of Adorno’s claim that ‘to write poetry after Auschwitz’ is barbaric, modern and contemporary poets have been continuously fashioning new ways to feel and think about God. These new ways of believing and feeling are at times fraught with anxiety, as in the case of Geoffrey Hill, and at times pervaded by a newly discovered doctrinal certainty, as in the case of the Australian poet Les Murray. 
Thus from Hill’s ‘I say it is not faithless to stand without faith’ to Anne Carson’s ‘[m]y religion makes no sense […] therefore I pursue it’, religion and the sacred have been the subject of lengthy poetic explorations, fuelled by continuing social and historical changes, as well as unrest. As contemporary poetry has grown arguably less scripturally prescriptive and didactic than the religious poetry of previous centuries in its approaches to belief, questions about redemption, knowledge of the divine, and the nature of sin have been allowed to surface in new ways.  This conference invites dialogue on the way in which the poetry written since the late nineteenth century and up to the present time engages with questions of faith and theology. Possible topics may include, but are not restricted to:
 

• ‘style and faith’
• poetry as theodicy
• non-orthodox expressions of faith 
• violence, memory, and grace
• doctrinal and social changes 
• Islamic expressions of faith 
• cognition and passion as epistemology
• Judaic poetry
• modern and contemporary responses to canonical religious poetry
• poetic engagements with Hindu spirituality

 
Confirmed speakers:
Professor Hugh Haughton (University of York)
Dr. Laura Kilbride (University of Cambridge) 
Poetry readings by Dr Gail McConnell (Queen’s University Belfast) and Dr Zohar Atkins (The Jewish Theological Seminary).
 
 
Please send your proposals for 20-minute long panel papers in the form of 250-word abstracts to poetryandfaith@gmail.com by 15th August 2017.

Website: ​poetryandfaith.wordpress.com/cfp/

Message from Ian Randall via Anne Price-Owen, DJS Director: 

'Christina (DJ's goddaughter) entered into rest on the 14th of this month ...  Her funeral is this Friday at  Cley.'
For anyone wishing to have details of the funeral, please contact me.

A number of you will have seen Christina's appearance in the second film of Derek Shiel's trilogy on David Jones. She was a founder member of the DJS, and was able to provide unique insights into David Jones, and also had some very interesting photographs of him with the family.

Christina was a very witty individual with a great sense of humour, and an excellent painter. 

Those of us who knew her will miss her patience, kindness and generosity.

May she rest in peace.' 

Message from Anne Price-Owen, DJS Director: 

​'It is with great regret that I announce the death of one of the most loyal and faithful, and a founding member of the DJS: Derek Shiel died peacefully in St Mary's Hospital early this morning.

As most of you know, in his latter years Derek was afflicted with Parkinson's Disease which, although it severely restricted his mobility, had little affect of his enjoyment of hearing about David Jones events. Even though the last Conference he was able to attend was in Oxford in 2014, he actually spoke at Ditching Museum the following year, and continued to take a vigorous interest in all subsequent David Jones events, including the International Conference at York last year, and the commemoration of DJ's war years in March this year.

All people who admire and who are seriously interested in David Jones will value Derek's wonderful contribution to spreading the word about David Jones.'

Wikipedia entry on Derek Shiel: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Shiel
Website about his project, 'Sculpted Sound': www.sculptedsound.com

Bibliography of works about David Jones:  

Shiel, Derek and Jonathan Miles. David Jones: The Maker Unmade. London: Seren, 1995.

Jones, David. Ten Letters to two young artists working in Italy, Juliet Wood and Richard Shirley Smith. Edited by Derek Shiel. London: Agenda Editions, 1996.

Shiel, Derek. 'David Jones: Making Space for the Warring Factions'. David Jones: Diversity in Unity: Studies in Literary and Visual Art. Edited by Belunda Humphries and Anne Price-Owen. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000. 

Shiel, Derek. 'Why and How David Jones Became a Poet'. David Jones: Artist and Poet. Flashpoint Web Issue 13 (Spring, 2010), www.flashpointmag.com/shieljones.htm, accessed 15 July 2017. 

Film Trilogy

In Search of David Jones: Artist, Soldier, Poet (2008), Derek Shiel, The David Jones Society
www.dailymotion.com/video/xu9moy

David Jones Between the Wars: The Years of Achievement (2012), Derek Shiel and Adam Alive, The David Jones Society. 
​www.dailymotion.com/video/x13fk5l

David Jones: Innovation and Consolidation (2015), Derek Shiel.

Exhibition: Arthur and Welsh Mythology
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
22 July - 16 December, 2017 

From the NLW webiste: 
''There is in Wales a long and rich tradition of storytelling. The Mabinogion, folk legends and local myths and tales have formed a part of our cultural inheritance from very early times to the present day.
In our exhibition, 'Arthur and Welsh Mythology', we will meet some of the most colourful characters from our mythology, and present their stories on the pages of manuscripts, on the canvases of artworks and through our vast screen and sound archive.' 

www.llgc.org.uk/en/visit/things-to-do/exhibitions/forthcoming-exhibitions/arthur-and-welsh-mythology/

Tom Dilworth speaks for the London Review Bookshop about the life and work of David Jones. 

Watch here: 
www.lrb.co.uk/2017/07/11/lrb-bookshop-video/video-david-jones

From the Opus Anglicanum website: 
​
MONDAY, JULY 24, 2017
11:00AM  12:15PM
THE BAPTIST CHURCH, WORCESTER, UNITED KINGDOM
THREE CHOIRS FESTIVAL, WORCESTER
Opus Anglicanum's latest sequence features three original commissions from contemporary composers.  It opens with a complete reading of Coleridge's epic Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Zeb Soanes with music by LYNNE PLOWMAN inspired by the twelve engravings by David Jones for the 1929 edition of the poem.
The nautical programme also contains SALLY BEAMISH'S powerful Sea Psalm, setting an account from the only surviving officer of the destroyer HMS Duchess, which was sunk on 12th December 1939.
The concert ends with ALEXANDER CAMPKIN'S By Still Waters - a new work with narration for Opus Anglicanum, to the text ‘Father hear the prayer we offer’ by Love Maria Willis (1864).

​More details and booking at: 
www.opusanglicanum.org/new-events/2017/7/24/three-choirs-festival-the-great-and-wide-sea