"In my craft or sullen art" is a poem by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, first published in Deaths and Entrances (1946). The poem describes a poet who must write for the sake of his craft rather than for any material gains. The speaker is not Thomas himself; Thomas never wrote at night and performed on TV and tours as his "trade".[1]
Not for the proud man apartFrom the raging moon I writeOn these spindrift pagesNor for the towering deadWith their nightingales and psalmsBut for the lovers, their armsRound the griefs of the ages,Who pay no praise or wagesNor heed my craft or art.
In 2009, the London-based Poetry Society used the poem for their "Knit A Poem" project. Each letter of the poem was charted and knit onto a square by volunteers. More than 850 volunteers from all over the world participated, and the finished poem was unveiled in front of the British Library in London.[2]
The poem has been set to music as a tone poem by Thomas Hewitt Jones (2008)[3] and read in full in the song "Midnight Hour" by Perth County Conspiracy (1970, on The Perth County Conspiracy Does Not Exist).[4] A phrase from the poem was also adopted as the title of the 1971 film The Raging Moon by Bryan Forbes.