The Dymock Poets Re-imagined

In 2023 I was commissioned by Hereford Chamber Choir to compose a new work with the brief to set any of the Dymock Poets, the group of friends who lived in and around the village of Dymock in the time leading up to the First World War. 

I had read the biography of Edward Thomas and I researched a whole range of texts from Thomas and the other authors. Finally I came across the poem Rain written in 1916, and I was struck by its dark summoning up of a stormy night with the ominous shadow of death looming large. Thomas was shot in action in France at Arras on Easter Monday, 9 April 1917.

My setting of Rain will next be performed on 25th May, 7pm, at St Mary's Church, Hay-on-Wye.

One of the other commissioned composers for Dymock Poets Reimagined was Dr Susanna Self, and here is a conversation we had about the composing of our new works for the project:

Musical Opinion review

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain

On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me

Remembering again that I shall die

And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks

For washing me cleaner than I have been

Since I was born into this solitude.

Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:

But here I pray that none whom I once loved

Is dying to-night or lying still awake

Solitary, listening to the rain

Either in pain or thus in sympathy

Helpless among the living and the dead,

Like a cold water among broken reeds,

Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,

Like me who have no love which this wild rain

Has not dissolved except the love of death,

If love it be for what is perfect and 

Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

First page of Rain