under milk wood

This week marks the centenary of the birth of modern Wales' most famous poet:
Dylan Thomas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

His most famous work is beautifully lyrical:
Under Milk Wood - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It is famous for all its colourful characters - and so would be fun to read out loud:
Under Milk Wood

Here is the full text:
gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0608221.txt

And here is the version with Wales' most famous actor:
Richard Burton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



UNDER MILK WOOD. - YouTube

How would you picture your own town or village in words?
How would you paint the characters? What voices would you give them?
How creative would you be with the language?

There's lots of language in the poem for the language learner:

Where shall we start? Where shall we begin? Shall we begin at the start, start at the beginning, start at the start or even begin at the beginning? That last one was good enough for the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas in his famous play for voices, Under Milk Wood first broadcast in February 1954 a few weeks after the poet's death. The actor Richard Burton intoned the lines: 
«To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black…»
I teach ESL. I need to know the real difference between BEGIN and START.?

There's lots of stuff on BBC schools:
BBC - GCSE Bitesize English Literature - Dylan Thomas: Do not go gentle into that good night : Revision

And the BBC has devoted a lot of time to Dylan Thomas this week:
BBC iWonder - Under Milk Wood: how did Dylan make us 'love the words'?
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