Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914–1953) was a Welsh poet and writer who — along with his work — has been remembered and referred to by a number of artists in various media.
In art
Alfred Janes' 1934 portrait of Thomas is held by the National Museum of Wales. Janes, like Thomas was a member of The Kardomah Gang or The Kardomah Boys, a group of bohemian Swansea friends who met at the Kardomah Café, in Castle Street, Swansea. Janes created three portraits of Thomas, the first of which, painted in Coleherne Road in 1934, is oil on canvas and displays Janes's technique at this period of cutting lines into the paint with his pen-knife, to provide relief and focus. Between 1937 and 1938, Augustus John produced two portraits of Thomas. One of these is held by the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, acquired in 1942. Two portraits of Thomas by the artist Rupert Shephard, who would in later life marry Nicolette Macnamara, an elder sister of Caitlin Thomas, are in the National Portrait Gallery collection.
In literature
The poem "Thou Shalt Not Kill" by American poet Kenneth Rexroth bears the subtitle "A Memorial for Dylan Thomas". In issue #26 of the Vertigo Comics series Preacher, Thomas is depicted as a previous acquaintance of the character Cassidy. Cassidy is with Thomas when he collapses outside the White Horse Tavern, Thomas's last words being "The trouble with you fuckin' Irish is, you don't know how to drink..." In his 1963 book Hopscotch, Julio Cortázar makes several references to Thomas. In Charles Bukowski's short story This is what killed Dylan Thomas from 1973 book South of no North, the protagonist makes several references to Dylan Thomas. The 1986 Kingsley Amis novel The Old Devils features frequent references to "Brydan", a thinly disguised characterization of Thomas. In her 2010 book Matched, Ally Condie references Thomas' poem "Do not go gentle into that good night". In Chapter 13 of his 2012 novel All I Did Was Shoot My Man (A Leonid McGill mystery) crime novelist Walter Mosley recounts a street poet's talk in a New York bar: "....among many of the recognised and lauded lights of the New York poetry scene the allure of Dylan Thomas has faded... They criticise everything from his depth of linguistic complexity to the obvious melodrama of his most well-known works. But what these poetry pontiffs fail to understand was that Thomas was a people's poet, a man that connected song and metre and the concerns of every human being living their lives and suffering the consequences. His work, in its every repetition, fights for the survival and lifeblood or a form that most so-called great poets have moved beyond the reach of the common man ..."