6 days ago
A Wild Corner of Ireland, Through the Eyes of Dylan Thomas
We drive up through the steep Glengesh Pass, or Glen of Swans, in smooth, switchback turns. The pass, a short distance from the town of Ardara, in County Donegal, also marks the threshold to the Glencolumbkille Peninsula, a bulge of backcountry that's rimmed with sandy beaches, sea cliffs and caves that boom in a thrashing tide.
In 1935, the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas made his way to this same forgotten corner of Northwest Ireland with his literary editor for an extended summer vacation. They rented a stone cowshed converted a decade before by the American artist Rockwell Kent, who used it as a place to stay and paint.
For some time, I've been dipping in and out of a book idea about the travel writing of the 1930s, when poets, novelists and journalists were using foreign journeys to try and make sense of (or escape) their restless times. I've followed W.H. Auden and Louis MacNeice to Iceland, and J.B. Priestley up the spine of England. I'm following Thomas here — and, like him, I'm also traveling with a friend, the photographer Michael Turek. We're lodging in the nearest habitable cottage to Thomas's former abode — 'the hourless house,' as he called it, and now a ruin.
A Ragged Edgeland
With Ardara behind us, we follow a spur leading off the Wild Atlantic Way — the popular tourist coastal route running the country's length — and head for a former fishing hamlet called An Port. As we crest barren moorland, a shadow looms to our left: the rising slopes of Slieve League, the highest marine cliffs in Europe.
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