Create your own Llareggub
In honour of International Dylan Thomas Day, we’ve designed a fun creative activity inspired by Under Milk Wood, as we celebrate the 68th anniversary of its performance in New York in 1953.
When Dylan was writing Under Milk Wood, he drew a map of Llareggub to help him plan and plot the day in the life of the residents of a small Welsh sea town. To help you create your own story, play or poem, we invite you to imagine and create a map of your own town or special place. It might be a street map, a treasure map, or map of fantastical things! Have a look at our prompts for inspiration – all of them are from Under Milk Wood – or print off our own imaginary map to colour in and get you started.
If you’d like to create some characters for your own play, we’ve got some prompts for that, too. Under Milk Wood is full of amazing people, and they can inspire us to develop the inhabitants of our own imaginary worlds.
Don’t forget to share your finished creations with us! We’re @DTCSwansea on Twitter and at www.facebook.com/DylanThomasCentre. Otherwise, email us at dylanthomas.lit@swansea.gov.uk
Landscape
First of all, think about what the landscape is like. Here are some of the places and features in Under Milk Wood – will any of them appear on your map?
- fishingboat-bobbing sea
- Up in the quarry
- at the top of the town
- Salt Lake Farm
- in a cave in a waterfall in a wood
- you can see all the town below you
- Less than five hundred souls inhabit the three quaint streets
- few narrow bylanes and scattered farmsteads
- its cobbled streets and its little fishing harbour
- neglected graveyard
- Over the hills and far away
- to the field with the nannygoats
- The sea lolls, laps and idles in
- musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row
- winding through the Coronation cherry trees
- the sun springs down on the rough and tumbling town
- the hedges of Goosegog Lane
- the streets, fields, sands and waters
- Donkeys angelically drowse on Donkey Down
- Too rough for fishing today
Buildings
Your residents have to live somewhere! What buildings and shops are there?
- chill, squat chapel
- in the pink-eyed cottage next to the undertaker’s
- Bay View, a house for paying guests
- humble, two-storied houses
- run to the Cockle Street sweet-shop
- window thrown wide to the sun
- The windy town is a hill of windows
Residents
Who lives there? You can use our character generator to help!
- the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners
- cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican
- drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman
- Oh, what’ll the neighbours say
- He hasn’t got a leg
- Talking to the lamp-post
- People are moving, now, up and down the cobbled street
- waltzing up the street like a jelly
- There’s a nasty lot live here when you come to think.
- The town’s as full as a lovebird’s egg
What can you see and hear?
- The town smells of seaweed and breakfast
- the voices of children and the noises of children’s feet on the cobbles
- The quick footsteps hurry on along the cobbles
- the clip clop of horses
- herring gulls heckling down to the harbour
- The afternoon buzzes like lazy bees round the flowers
- the larrupped waves
- A breeze from the creased water sighs the streets
- wind-shaken wood
We’ve had a go at making up some place names for our map, and we’ve tried to use sounds and images like Dylan does in Under Milk Wood. You can use these, or make up your own!
- Billy Broga Bridge
- Sunny Sky Swing
- Ponky Pond
- Rainbow River
- Welly-gog-bog
- Jackdaw Woodstore
- Rabbit Row
- Above Bard’s Blossom
- Treasure Trove Grove
This post is also available in: Welsh
