Ffeil NLW MS 24198i-iiD. - Vernon Watkins letters to Francis Dufau-Labeyrie

Vernon Watkins (1906-1967), poet, was the second of three children of William and Sarah Watkins. He was born in Maesteg, Glamorgan, on 27 June 1906 but grew up in Swansea, Glamorgan, and on the Gower. He attended Repton School, Derbyshire, 1920-1924, then (for one year) studied modern languages at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was briefly a clerk at Lloyds Bank in Cardiff but after a breakdown he returned home to Swansea and moved to the Lloyds Bank branch in St Helens. He served with RAF Police and Intelligence, 1941-1946, but otherwise remained with Lloyds for the remainder of his working life. In 1941 he published his first collection of poems, Ballad of the Mari Lwyd (London, 1941), followed by The Lamp and the Veil (London, 1945), Selected Poems (Norfolk, Conn., 1948), The Lady with the Unicorn (London, 1948), The Death Bell (London, 1954), Cypress and Acacia (London, 1959), Affinities (London, 1962), and Fidelities (London, 1968) which appeared posthumously. As a poet he was scrupulous, working through numerous drafts to reach a final version and often undertaking further revision after publication. In addition to original poetry he translated European verse into English, including Heine's The North Sea (London, 1955), and wrote essays on other poets. He corresponded widely with literary figures and became friends with the likes of W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Philip Larkin and, in particular, Dylan Thomas. In 1944 he married Gwendoline (Gwen) Mary Davies (b. 1923), a colleague at RAF Intelligence, and they had five children. Following his retirement in 1966 he lectured at the University College of Swansea. He was then appointed Visiting Professor of Poetry at the University of Washington but died on 8 October 1967, shortly after arriving in Seattle to take up his post. Some of his previously unpublished and uncollected works appeared in Uncollected Poems (London, 1969), Selected Verse Translations, ed. by Ruth Pryor (London, 1977), The Breaking of the Wave (Ipswich, 1979), and Ballad of the Outer Dark, ed. by Ruth Pryor (London, 1979).

Francis Dufau-Labeyrie (1916-1992) was born in Dax, France. As part of his studies at the Sorbonne he worked as an assistant lecturer in Swansea, 1936-1937, Bristol, 1937-1938, and Beckenham, 1938-1939. He returned to Paris to complete his studies and taught there until 1947, when he moved to Montreal, Quebec, to work for the International Civil Aviation Organization, being head of the language department from 1952 to his retirement in 1976.
While at Swansea he was introduced to Dylan Thomas and Vernon Watkins, becoming friends with both; he accompanied Watkins on a visit to Dublin to meet W. B. Yeats in 1938. He translated into French Thomas's 'A Prospect of the Sea' (L'Arche, 1946) and 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog' (as Portrait de l'artiste en jeune chien (1947)); his translations of several of Watkins's poems were published in 1949.