New Selected Poems of W. S. Graham

One hundred years after his birth, W. S. Graham's words seem more awake than ever. His subtle exploration of the paradoxes of language, his passionate conviction of the importance of art and the love he expresses for the people and landscapes of his native Clydeside and adopted home of Cornwall attract more readers each year. In startlingly original poems, he celebrates family and friendship and probes the limits of our understanding of the world and our place in it. Graham's New Collected Poems (2004) marked a crucial point in the growth of his reputation, bringing together for the first time all the poems of his seven collections as well as some of the unpublished material that had come to light since his death in 1986. Now, as we honour his centenary, this New Selected Poems presents his best and most characteristic: from his epic seafaring masterpiece 'The Nightfishing' to the quirky metaphysics of 'Implements in their Places', as well as a selection of his early neo-romantic poems, which Graham himself believed were essential to a full understanding of his oeuvre, and some remarkable uncollected work. There is no better way to make the acquaintance of one of the greatest British poets of the twentieth century.

William Sydney Graham (1918-1986) was born in Greenock, Scotland, and trained as an engineer. He settled in West Cornwall where a growing colony of experimental artists came to respect the determination and acute self-criticism with which he pursued his poetry. He wrote widely anthologised elegies for three of his artist friends, Roger Hilton, Peter Lanyon and Bryan Wynter, and is now widely viewed as one of the key UK poets of the late twentieth century. Graham's main collections are The Nightfishing (1955), Malcolm Mooney's Land (1970) and Implements in their Places (1977), all of which can be found in New Collected Poems (2004).