Dylan Thomas Folio

Dylan Thomas Folio
['In my craft or sullen art']
Letterpress and woodcut, 8.75 x 11.25"
Edinburgh, 1964

I did this one-color woodcut specifically as an illustration of the Dylan Thomas poem and experimented with printing it, along with the text, on various kinds and colors of paper.  This version (the only one that survives) is on purple tissue paper, folded around an orange paper liner and stapled into the cover.  Unable to find the precise color I envisioned for the cover, I used a sheet of white charcoal paper, which I stained brown with artist's oil colors.  This one-of-a-kind work served as the prototype for a later project, the "Nine Author Portraits" booklet (Ed. Note - we will post that work as well as other woodcuts by David May in the future).

'In My Craft or Sullen Art'

Dylan Thomas, 1946 

In my craft or sullen art

Exercised in the still night

When only the moon rages

And the lovers lie abed

With all their griefs in their arms,

I labour by singing light

Not for ambition or bread

Or the strut and trade of charms

On the ivory stages

But for the common wages

Of their most secret heart. 

Not for the proud man apart

From the raging moon I write

On these spindrift pages

Nor for the towering dead

With their nightingales and psalms

But for the lovers, their arms

Round the griefs of the ages,

Who pay no praise or wages

Nor heed my craft or art.