New Collected Poems

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). Matthew Francis is the author of four Faber collections, most recently Muscovy (2013). He has twice been shortlisted for the Forward Prize, and in 2004 was chosen as one of the Next Generation poets. He has also edited W. S. Graham's New Collected Poems, and published a collection of short stories and two novels, the second of which, The Book of the Needle (Cinnamon Press), came out in 2014. He lives in West Wales and is Professor in Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University.