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Peter on tour and his work abroad

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A Walking Guide of Dylan Thomas's Greenwich Village (New York)

Peter has been commissioned (with Aeronwy Thomas, Dylan Thomas's daughter) by the Wales International Center, New York , to write a Walking Guide of Dylan Thomas's Greenwich Village (New York) , which will appear on their website and major American and British tourism/websites this summer.

Potential tourists to New York will be able to download (PDF - 1540Kb) and print it and use as a practical Guide to "follow in Dylan's footsteps".

It will contain essential biographical material on Dylan, information on his American tours, information - literary and basic facts - on each place connected with Dylan, and an Addenda: brief notes on other people and places mentioned throughout the Guide, such as Swansea, Laugharne, American novelist Norman Mailer and John Malcom Brinnin, Dylan's Tours' organiser.

The publication coincides with the release of a new film about the life of Dylan Thomas called The Edge of Love , which stars Matthew Rhys, Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller. Catrin Brace, who works for the Welsh Assembly Government in New York said: "Fifty years after his death, there is still a huge interest both in Wales and the USA in Dylan Thomas and his work. Visitors will be able to gain a strong sense of the real man behind "the brassy orator" with "the lovely gift of the gab", as well as giving people a real feel for the Greenwich Village of the 1950s."

Catrin Brace of the Wales International Center, New York, with those who participated in the inaugural Walking Tour of Dylan Thomas's Greenwich Village, New York . The group includes Guide writers Peter Thabit Jones and Aeronwy Thomas, Stanley H. Barkan, American poet and publisher, his wife Bebe Barkan, Thomas Keith of New Directions Publishers, America, Thomas Bird, and Western Mail journalists Karen Price and Carolyn Hitt.

Find out more / Download Dylan Thomas Walking Tour PDF

www.dylanthomaswalkingtourmp3.com (Audio Version)

USA Tour

(DYLAN THOMAS TRIBUTE TOUR)

In March 2008 Peter toured America for six weeks, with Aeronwy Thomas, poet and daughter of Dylan Thomas, on the Dylan Thomas Tribute Tour, organised by Stanley H. Barkan, in consultation with Vince Clemente.

He and Aeronwy read their own poetry, performed a section from UNDER MILK WOOD and gave talks on Dylan Thomas at many venues, including Wellesley College, Knox College, Iowa International Writers Workshop, Walt Whitman Birthplace, University of Michigan, University of Colorado, Salem State College, Chicago Vitalist Theatre, California's Monterey College, The Grolier Bookshop in Boston, New York's National Arts and Film Club, Long Island's The North Sea Poetry Scene, Long Island's The Stevenson Academy, the Mid-Manhattan Library, New York Public Library, The Poetry Center at Passaic College in New Jersey, the Wales International Center in New York, The White Horse Tavern in New York and many more. They were interviewed for American radio stations and national newspapers.

Publicity materials, DVDs and photos of the Tour will be permanently archived at the Mid-Manhattan Library, New York, the Wales International Center, New York, and at Rochester University, New York.

Creating paths with poets of the world

Past Events and Tour history...

With his travels to the literary places of the world, Peter has not only put himself on the poetry map but his hometown of Swansea as well.

In November 1997, he visited America for ten days to give readings to organisations and schools in New York and New Jersey. One of his readings was with New York's Raymond R. Patterson, a Blues poet and a lecturer on the Blues form at New York University.

He was commissioned by the WESTERN MAIL, the national newspaper of Wales, to write pieces entitled POSTCARD FROM NEW YORK. They covered his schedule and his stay at the Chelsea Hotel, where Dylan Thomas stayed prior to his death, and an interview with David Slivka, the sculptor who made the death mask of his friend Dylan Thomas.

His long correspondence with Vince Clemente, American poet, biographer and Emeritus Professor of English New York University, is deposited, along with their poem manuscripts and their books, in THE VINCE CLEMENTE PAPERS Archive in Rochester University, New York. New York's Vince Clemente is The Seventh QUARRY's Consulting Editor, America. Vince has been awarded the WALT WHITMAN BIRTHPLACE 2007 POET OF THE YEAR AWARD (U.S.A.).

A collection of his poems, THE LIZARD CATCHERS, was published by Stanley H. Barkan's New York-based /international publisher CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATIONS in 2006. It was nominated for the long list for the 2007 WELSH BOOK OF THE YEAR. A third edition will be published in 2008 and the book will be put on-line by EBSCO of America. He is the newly-appointed editor of CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATIONS Welsh Poets Series and its representative in the UK. His poem I WANT TO BE AN ASTRONAUT was used in the U.K. Government's English Curriculum for all SECONDARY SCHOOL ANNUAL EXAMINATIONS 2006. His poem, LAVACOURT, WINTER:1881, about the painter Monet, is used on a Poetry and Art course at North Michigan University, U.S.A.

He was invited to Serbia, in September 2006 and September 2007, by the Serbian Writers' Association, to participate in the 43RD and 44th INTERNATIONAL MEETING OF WRITERS in Belgrade.

His poems have been translated into Russian, Catalan, Serbian, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Persian, Portuguese, Hebrew, Spanish, Turkish, Tagalog (Philippine language), Dutch, Bengali, French, German, Sicilian, and Romanian.

A bilingual collection, THE NEWSPAPER BIRDS, his Selected Poems, is being translated into Romanian by Dr. Olimpia Iacob, for a Romanian publisher. Some of her translations of Peter's poems have already been published in CONVORBIRI LITERARE and others are forthcoming in POESIS, ACOLADA and NORD LITERARE. A bilingual Russian/English chapbook will be published by Cross-Cultural Communications, his New York publisher, in late 2008.

His poem PEACE has been awarded First Prize in the first International Festival of Peace Poetry 2007, organised by academic and leading Persian poet Dr. Rira Abbassi. It has been translated into Persian and published.