W. S. Graham: Approaches

W. S. Graham: Approaches—

David Nowell Smith, Guest Editor, Introduction

When W. S. Graham died in 1986, he died in neglect. And yet in 2018, his centenary year, Graham’ s reputation seems assured. Over the three decades since his death, it has been a commonplace to lament, and express incredulity, that his work had never reached a larger audience, that he had remained a “poet’ s poet. ” Read any obituary from 1986, or any of the reviews that greeted the posthumous publications of Uncollected Poems (1990), Aimed at Nobody : Poems from Notebooks (1993), and his New Collected Poems (2004), and you’ ll ﬁnd the same refrain: underread, undervalued, understudied. But in Britain, he is increasingly recognized as one of the major lyric poets of the twentieth century, and a series of publications and exhibitions have meant that he is being read like never before. 2018 has also seen an increased reception of Graham in the US: a special feature on “W. S. Graham at 100 ” in Poetry appeared in January, and an NYRB Classics volume of Graham’ s Selected Poems, edited by Michael Hofmann, was published in November. This Chicago Review special issue seeks to kick-start Graham’ s posthumous critical reception in the US.

Read the full introduction.

W. N. Herbert, Seven Words for Sydney Graham

John Wilkinson, The Weight of Words: W. S. Graham’s Lyric Poetry

Lavinia Singer, Significant Shapes: W. S. Graham’s Painting Poems

Denise Riley, “And as I sit I feel the gaze”

Eric Powell, W. S. Graham’s Syntax

Sam Buchan-Watts, “Nostalgia of a form”: W. S. Graham’s Self-Conscious Ballads

Hannah Brooks-Motl, Going Back to Greenock

Gavin Selerie, Night-stepper

Jeremy Noel-Tod, Yet More Shots of Mister Simpson

Calvin Bedient, W. S. Graham, Dramatist of the Beast in Language

Rachael Boast, Across the Listening Void

David Lewis, Sydney Graham and THE CONSTRUCTED SPACE

As well as a large selection of previously unpublished work by W. S. Graham, and an extensive visual portfolio that presents Graham in an entirely new light, focused on his graphic drafts, notebooks, drawings, watercolors, homemade postcards, and so on.

Contemporary British and Irish Poets—

Editorial Headnote

The following feature brings together a range of poets from the UK and Ireland, from emerging poets who have yet to publish a first collection to established writers with many books to their name. Our goal in assembling the selection is to give US and North American audiences a sense of the exciting and various writing being pursued by contemporary British and Irish poets. It is by no means representative of a particular school, place, community, or tendency; instead, we hope to highlight writers working across and within myriad styles, commitments, and traditions of poetry.

Sean Bonney, from Cancer: Poems after Katerina Gogou

Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Zero; A Series of Unfortunate Inheritances

Callie Gardner, Unmanuscript; The Bone Folder; For the Abolition of Parliament; Modest Witness (for the abolition of the university); For the Abolition of Gender

Ian Heames, [I who exist]; [Melancholy]; [Non-hummingbirds,]; [Lockheed swanling]; [But most of all, knowledge is itself]

Doug Jones, from Posts

Fran Lock, from Fear Death by Water

Cris Paul, Cas; Valdes Shape Poem; Score for Many Voices: “Give us bread, but give us roses too”; Poem for Video: Map of South America, Each Line Gets Shorter and Shorter

Nisha Ramayya, Futures Flowers; Following the Event

Connie Scozzaro, Home Is Where We Can’t Start From; Sex, OK, the Sea Is Boundless; Upstairs and First on the Left (Chockerlebnis)

Dorothea Smartt, All Those Attempts in the Changing Room: Looking at Maud Sulter’s Les Bijoux I-IX [Detail]; Hey Lara; On the Panama Canal, Found Poems; Poem Beginning with a Line from Claudia Rankine

Paige Smeaton, Collision Theory; Horology

Verity Spott, Elegy

Catherine Walsh, from Barbaric Tales