Description

Graham’s work was published by T. S. Eliot in the 1940s and 50s, but as a major post-war poet, his work has received astonishingly little critical attention given its prestige and influence. This collection of essays covers all aspects of Graham’s work – its critical reception, recent influence and its relations with other developments in the arts, in particular the work of the St Ives School of visual artists. It includes some biographical material (brief reminiscences by and interviews with those who knew him) and discussions of the material contained in several collections of manuscripts. Nothing so far published has paid attention to these manuscript collections or to the large number of uncollected poems published since his death. Neither has enough been written about Graham’s importance to poets of the 1980s and 1990s. ‘I first read a W. S. Graham poem in 1949. It sent a shiver down my spine. Forty-five years later nothing has changed. His song is unique and his work an inspiration.’ Harold Pinter Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1. Introduction: Contacting Graham - Ralph Pite and Hester Jones Listen. Put on Morning 2. ‘Listen’: W. S. Graham - Ian Sansom From The White Threshold 3. Graham and the 1940s - Tony Lopez From The Nightfishing 4. ‘Roaring between the lines’: W. S. Graham and the White Threshold of Line-Breaks - Adam Piette Fromm The Dark Dialogues 5. Abstract, Real and Particular: Graham and Painting - Ralph Pite From Implements in their Places 6. Syntax Gram and the Magic Typewriter: W. S. Graham’s Automatic Writing - Matthew Francis From To My Wife at Midnight 7. Dependence in the Poetry of W. S. Graham - Peter Robinson From Dear Bryan Wynter 8. Achieve Further through Elegy - Fiona Green Letter X – My Dear So Many Times 9. Graham and the Numinous: The ‘Centre Aloneness’ and the ‘Unhailed Water’ - Hester Jones From Johann Joachim Quantz’s Five Lessons 10. The Poetry of W. S. Graham - Edwin Morgan Further Reading General Index Index of Graham’s Works