A Poem by Zoë Brigley

In Defence of Red Caitlin

i.m. Caitlin Macnamara (later Thomas, wife of the poet Dylan Thomas) 1913–1994

Dear Caitlin, all those things they said when
they reviewed your grim autobiography.
They tell us you are haunted and confused, that
the chapters describing your happy childhood
with your bisexual, bohemian mother are dull,
but you are also outrageous, obnoxious and
irresponsible leading a life of squalor and madness,
neglectful of children, full of hatred and self-loathing,
altogether a sinner. An Australian academic
describes you as a sensualist, passionate and
opinionated, anything but intellectual. A professor
at an elite Canadian university tells us that
the whole of your work has little to sustain
a reader’s interest. A woman journalist, Anglo-
American graduate from Yale, and children’s
book author, describes you as strangely passive
in the face of Augustus John, your father’s
artist friend who raped you when you posed
for a portrait. One Oxford don calls you
sexually precocious, labels your rape an affair.
A reporter for The Times and Oxford
graduate, writing a biography of Dylan’s life,
describes you drinking in the Wheatsheaf
with Augustus, labels him clearly a sugar daddy
she slept with, rather than the rapist she claimed.
The Anglo-American turns to Dylan, notes that
though you had little money, you didn’t just
leave. Fuck them. Not a single one of them
know a thing about Wales, what it is
to be poor or powerless, how without
money, you couldn’t just leave. They say
you are wrong for being as grotesque
as Dylan. But I see you, Caitlin, difficult
to like, our sinister woman, ugly-crying
or shouting, your rape a catastrophe
from which you were ever trying to recover.

Zoë Brigley is a Welsh American poet, essayist, editor, and curator whose work spans poetry, translation, nonfiction, and interdisciplinary art. Her three full-length poetry collections — Hand & Skull, Conquest, and The Secret, published by Bloodaxe — have all been named UK Poetry Book Society Recommendations. She received an Eric Gregory Award for outstanding British poets under 30, was longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and was commended by the Forward Prize. In 2025, she was awarded an Individual Artist Grant from the Arts Council of Ohio, and an Artist’s Project Grant from the Greater Columbus Arts Council.