The Nightfisherman: Selected Letters of W.S. Graham

by W.S. Graham

William Sydney Graham (1918 - 1986) was born in Greenock, Scotland, ‘beside the sugar house quays’ – a setting open to the sea. He remained a Celt, moving from Scotland to Cornwall where he found seascapes without urban clutter, just an occasional ruined tin-mine with its human echo. In the 1950s and 1960s he became a key member of the artistic scene in St. Ives. A friend of T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Edwin Morgan, Roger Hilton, Peter Lanyon and many others, he could be demanding, but he gave back generously.

A prolific letter-writer, he is first heard here in the passionate apprentice years, then writing from and of Fitzrovia, the Apocalypse, and his years in Cornwall after The Nightfishing (1955). We come at last to his apotheosis in the brilliance and wry wisdom of his late work.

Dedication and commitment to his craft produced an extraordinary body of work during a life lived wildly and to the full. These letters (interspersed with poems and drawings) are a testament to the close intellectual and spiritual bonds with nourished his writing over many years.

Genres: Poetry

422 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1999

About the author

William Sydney Graham was a Scottish poet who was often associated with Dylan Thomas and the neo-romantic group of poets. Graham's poetry was mostly overlooked in his lifetime; however, partly thanks to the support of Harold Pinter, his work was eventually acknowledged. He was represented in the second edition of the Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse (1962) and the Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (2001).

Graham left school to become an apprentice draughtsman and then studied structural engineering at Stow College, Glasgow. He was awarded a bursary to study literature for a year at Newbattle Abbey College in 1938. Graham spent the war years working at a number of jobs in Scotland and Ireland before moving to Cornwall in 1944. His first book, Cage Without Grievance was published in 1942.

The 1940s were prolific years for Graham, and he published four more books during that decade. These were The Seven Journeys (1944), 2ND Poems (1945), The Voyages of Alfred Wallis (1948) and The White Threshold (1949).

Reviews

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

a much needed FULL reread I dip this a lot, but I just felt it was time and go cover to cover. these letters are so so rich. Yes I'm an obsessive of a sort, but I've also read prose before and I think this is a very good prose. & what a complicated troubled masculinity arises



2021:
Okay this was the carefulness I needed at this time so perhaps this will be a long one. Am I predictable?

To get the ordinary nonsense out of the way - it's an excellent collection that chooses to focus on WSG's more poetic letters, whether they be verse or more general musings. This makes sense as I expect that's what just about everybody is most interested in. There are 400 pages of material here so no issues.

Casparism from here: I wasn't aware that he lived down Pengersick lane in the 40s. Conscious that means nothing to just about anybody but it's nice for me. Perhaps Sydney G looked up from his writing desk to see my granddad rumble down the road on his bike. Probably not. It's a fiction I'll allow myself.

Was absolutely delighted by style! So many of these letters are Joycean. I think that's a description with baggage so I must qualify that when somebody describes a piece of writing as stylistically 'Joycean', the image that arrives is a hideous stereotype of impenetrability. Graham is more sensitive than that. There are private letters here that match some of the best of Joyce's natural cadence in Ulysses or Portrait of the Artist as an et cetera. Graham makes a point early on about the use of cliché as a poetic form. I think he's playing on that remarkably too.

I think it was inevitable that I would come to this book eventually, but a big draw for me was learning what WSG read. He doesn't wear his influences on his sleeve like others. I really didn't know what to expect but I am impressed. Of course we have an impressive variety of literary influences - Yeats, Joyce, Burns, Blake, Donne, Hopkins, Rimbaud, Keats, not to mention a pleasant appreciation of Plath and Stevie Smith. There's also a remarkable philosophical background - the mad bastard mentions how much he enjoys (re)reading Hegel.

I know that I'll be coming back to this one for years and years. It's really been popping with inspiration all over the place, made plenty use of already. Here I am speaking out of a hole in my leg. Try To Be Better.

TTBB

[ciel]

thank you, graham 💙

Somewhere our belonging particles
Believe in us. If we could only find them.

[Andrew Darling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sydney Graham's letters were almost as good as his poems, which means they are very fine indeed. His crabbiness, his eccentricity, his irascibility, are all evident. But over and above that, so is his extraordinary creativity and his exuberant and breathtaking mastery of the language. These collected letters are a kind of masterclass in the art of making poetry; poetry, which as Harold Pinter rightly said, sends a shiver down the spine.

[Eamonn O'Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

simply brilliant reading

[Bettie · Rating 1 out of 5]

WS Graham's poem adapted for radio by Jonathan Davidson. With Siobhan Redmond and David Rintoul.

Blurb - An attempt to make some sense of a difficult and elusive modern masterpiece. The poem was published in 1955. It tells of a fishing trip after herring but much else including the difficulties of writing and of turning experience into words. Its fresh-made language has found it many admirers but it also kept it from many other readers. Perhaps a radio adapatation can unlock it.