The first tv programme I produced after leaving HTV Wales in 1989 was ‘Cyrchfan Cyfiawnder’ (Destination Justice), an hour-long drama doc for S4C. It was made by tv production co-operative, Teliesyn. I had just become a member. I had spent 8 years working for the ITV station in Wales but the shift to an independent company meant learning how to operate without the bureaucracy and the safety net of a national broadcaster.
Continue reading Cyrchfan Cyfiawnder – documentary screening
Finlay James performs my poem
And my article for The Honest Ulsterman on what I learned from watching an actor perform my work.
High Rise: Brutalist Poetry, a slimline anthology that promises to blend the raw, unfiltered essence of Brutalism with the emotional depth and honesty of art brut. Inspired by the architectural starkness of ‘beton brut’ and the visceral expressiveness championed by notable figures such as Charles Bukowski, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton, this collection seeks to explore the profound realities of the human condition through poetry that is both honest and intricately crafted.
My poem ‘Ending The World’ appears in ‘LAST LIGHT’ anthology.
Last Light: Apocalypse Poetry is a compelling anthology edited by Alan Parry, presented by The Broken Spine. This collection offers a haunting exploration of apocalyptic themes through the eyes of diverse, contemporary poets. The works within navigate the fragility of existence, environmental collapse, and the profound sense of finality that marks the end of worlds, both imagined and real.
With contributions from poets like Angela Graham, Clive Matson, and Amaleena Damlé, each poem acts as a poignant reflection on humanity’s role in its own undoing. The collection deftly balances between the personal and the universal, capturing the myriad ways in which individuals and societies confront the spectre of annihilation. From the visceral imagery of environmental devastation to the intimate despair of personal loss, Last Light invites readers to consider the beauty and terror of endings.
Last Light is a powerful testament to the enduring relevance of apocalyptic literature in our uncertain times.
My poem, ‘CAPITULATION’ appears in ‘Reels’
‘Reels doesn’t ask for your comfort, and it won’t offer any. This anthology gathers poets who write with an edge, crafting texts that land like unflinching film cuts, capturing moments that demand to be seen. Born from a passing conversation on the cinematic art of image-shifting, Reels is for readers ready to feel every word, every line, and every collision of light and shadow.
‘Edited by Alan Parry, Reels invites you into poetry as snapshots of raw, untamed experience. Refusing to look away, these poems confront beauty and brutality with unapologetic honesty. Featuring voices like Georgia Hilton, Sue Finch, Katie Manning, and many more—Reels embodies poetry at its most uncompromising.
Published by The Broken Spine, Reels is for those who understand that art lives on the edge, that real poetry is a lens on the world’s harshest truths. Step into these pages if you’re ready to see what these poets lay bare—but leave comfort at the door. This is poetry with teeth, capturing life’s starkest reels.’
I was interviewed about my short fiction by The Broken Spine https://thebrokenspine.co.uk/2022/11/02/brokenasides-with-angela-graham
I was delighted to have the opportunity to introduce my writing self to readers of CAP Arts Monthly December 2024, POETRY and SPOKEN WORD section. It gave me an opportunity to reflect on how a book brews and emerges, within the context of one’s other work.
‘The Monthly is a place for informed opinions and analysis of ideas, issues and news items from across the arts sector —with an emphasis on the issues affecting community arts— in Northern Ireland.
The Monthly editorial bulletin offers all of us in the community arts and indeed, the wider arts sector, an opportunity to reflect on what matters to us, our communities, our organisations and our participating client groups and individuals.’
The Monthly comes in three editions: Community Arts, Dance & Poetry and Spoken Word
In ‘Evidence and Imagination’ I wrote about the genesis of poetry collection ‘STAR: poems for the Christmas season’
As a film maker I have worked on more than a hundred documentaries and factual programmes. The documentary form, no matter how subjective its point of view might be, privileges evidence and witness. I shouldn’t have been surprised that the first book I wrote, a collection of twenty-six short stories, ‘A City Burning’, was found by reviewers to be full of acts of witnessing and, therefore, of moments of choice about what to do in response. I hadn’t realised how deeply ingrained in me that witness/choice dynamic had become, but it came out in the writing nonetheless…
It was a particular pleasure to launch my collection, ‘STAR: poems for the Christmas Season’ at Canton library because it’s my local library in Cardiff. And even more special because some of the poems in the book are set in nearby streets. Plus, I’m honoured to be Author of the Month for Libraries Wales https://libraries.wales/aotm/angela-graham-2
Libraries have been crucial to my development as a person and as a writer. My family couldn’t afford to buy books but the local library and Belfast’s Central Library enabled me to read widely. This is a kind of nourishment and without it my childhood and adolescence would have been stinted and stunted. It’s also, by a kind of osmosis, a lesson in the benefits of sharing resources.
I had the pleasure of doing readings and workshops with ‘STAR’ in 8 libraries in Northern Ireland and, just as here in Wales, that experience showed me time and again how a library sustains a locality.
Librarians deal in more than books. They are sources of information, support and encouragement and, crucially, they help people to help each other through many kinds of groups. Everywhere I sensed the loyalty and affection people feel for their libraries.
At every event people have enjoyed the images I present along with the poems. Martin Erspamer’s 15 beautiful linocuts in the book are always admired. And everyone likes the cover! I also show art works that relate to poems.
Continue reading ‘STAR’ launch at Canton Library, Cardiff
Every day from Monday 16th December till Tuesday 24th December, Christmas Eve, I’ll read a poem on BBC Radio Ulster’s drivetime programme, ‘Evening Extra’.
A bold idea, mixing headlines, weather reports and poetry!
The poems are from my collection, ‘STAR: poems for the Christmas Season’ (Culture and Democracy Press). STAR is available from No Alibis, Belfast; The Secret Bookshelf, Carrickfergus; Little Acorns, Derry or any bookstore. Online up to last posting dates from The Books Council of Wales gwales.com https://tinyurl.com/37f4rruj. ARTWORK copyright Martin Erspamer.
Monday 16th:
Tuesday 17th:
Wednesday 18th:
Thursday 19th
Friday 20th
Monday 23rd
Tuesday 24th
My article for The Honest Ulsterman about ‘STAR: poems for the Christmas Season’
https://humag.co/features/something-new-about-christmas
“Is there anything left to say about Christmas?” exclaimed a fellow writer (not unkindly) when I mentioned that it is the theme of my new book. I was taken aback because it had never occurred to me that this particular challenge existed. My reply was, “Once I started writing I couldn’t stop.”
Responses to the book have shown me that readers are indeed surprised to find in it things that they consider novel or surprising. If I’d been aiming for novelty I’m pretty sure it would have eluded me. The book was prompted, in fact, by something that is more than nine hundred years old; something I’ve seen only in a photograph.
In the twelfth century, Gislebertus, the stonemason/architect of the cathedral at Autun in the heart of France, took advantage of the flat surfaces of the capitals on some of the pillars supporting the building to carve scenes from the bible, including aspects of the Christmas story. The journey of the ‘wise men from the East’(or kings, or magi) took his fancy. He must have asked himself how their story began. How did the notion of following a star to search for ‘the infant king of the Jews’ come to them? He himself had imagined a whole cathedral into being. Perhaps he had explored the genesis of that extraordinary journey of his own.
He depicts that instant of inspiration by placing The Three Kings in bed together. Two are asleep but one has been prodded into consciousness by the finger of an angel. The awakening king has opened only one eye. He hasn’t yet turned to see that the angel is also pointing to a star. As a result of his choosing this moment just before the ‘action’ begins, it’s we who supply what happens next – the groggy coming-to; the search for what has disturbed him; the sight of the wonderful star; the excited rousing of his companions …
Each of us creates within us a unique set of images in response to this one piece of art; each of us has a dialogue with the elements of the story on, and in, our own terms. Our inner world is affected – in my case it has resulted in a poem, and then a book, prompted by that depiction of the moment before the ‘big moment’.
AUTUN CATHEDRAL, MAGI
Does the sky have tent-poles?
And some cathedrals are forested.
God walks in their depths on a December afternoon
while the topmost branches brush the undersides
of planets fixed mid-orbit
– those stained-glass windows fruiting overhead.
Here no one thinks of weight, of downwardness
and how the roof desires it.
God pauses among the pillars
at a carved capital that always lifts his heart:
an artist like himself, from this blunt-cornered oblong stone,
gives us a bird’s view of a bed
draped in a ruched counterpane, three kings tucked in,
but the eyes of one, popped open, register
Why? Who? still unaware
of the angel at his shoulder, stroking his hand,
whose other index finger points at a star.
God sighs, at the weight borne by the moment
after such a moment; at how he waits
for a man to look up at the sky
and recognise and seize
the chance of joy.
I am in awe of the confidence with which Gislebertus takes control of an awkwardly shaped, trapezoid stone facet. He breaks its confines by placing the star both inside and outside the ‘frame ‘ of the piece of stone. He exploits difficulty, turning a blank surface into something beautiful. Isn’t this what writers try to do? I allowed myself to follow his method, to imagine other moments in the story of The Three Kings.
Two aspects of the story struck me particularly: who do they leave behind when they set out on their journey westward and why do they seem so politically naïve?
From the first question came my conception of The Three Queens. Couldn’t there have been women involved in this quest? At the heart of the book is a set of six long poems: one for each of the queens, giving a glimpse into their experience and perceptions; and one for each king, so that the six poems play off each other in terms of content and character.
Secondly, I allowed myself to pull at a thread in the Gospel account (Matthew’s) that has long bothered me. The Kings arrive at Jerusalem, go straight to the palace and expect the incumbent to be pleased that a potential rival has been born. Shouldn’t they have had a plan for coping if he turned out to be eager to get rid of the child? They mis-read the local political scene completely and they endanger everyone they meet.
The Christmas story is shot through with elements we easily recognise: political expediency of a murderous kind and a topsy-turveying of people on the fringes of society and those on its heights. There is violence and exile, heartless exploitation and selfishness here. So you’ll find in the book poems about climate change, refugees, the suppression of women and other aspects of what I call ‘the dark hinterland’ of Christmas.
It is this grounding in the cold realities of life that gives Christmas, for me, its authenticity. The story is one about love and what it costs and what it offers, or even guarantees. It’s not about mere sentiment.
For these reasons I find Christmas an inexhaustible source of inspiration.
Above image, artwork copyright Martin Erspamer
In designing the book I very much hoped to have Gislebertus’s Awakening of the Magi as the cover image. I am thrilled to have Martin Erspamer’s wonderful linocut version and, even more so, to have fifteen of his sensitive images alongside the poems. I especially like what I think of (to myself) as the Awakening of the Family, a sort of companion-piece to the Autun work. It depicts Jospeh, Mary and the baby asleep in a bed just like that of Gislebertus, with the same angel poking Joseph but pointing westward, towards exile.
I have also used this book, my metaphorical block of stone, as a space in which to bring together some of the tongues of the British Isles. You’ll find a poem here in Ulster-Scots, and a little Irish, Welsh and Scots. It’s a small canvas but then a manger is small too.
STAR: poems for the Christmas Season was published August 2024 by Culture And Democracy Press. £10 ISBN 978-1-0686946-0-8
Available from bookshops (including No Alibis and The Secret Bookshelf), Amazon and Books Council Wales https://www.gwales.com/bibliographic/?isbn=9781068694608&tsid=2
At the end of the summer, a book for the depths of winter.
Welsh independent, Culture & Democracy Press, published 22nd August
Here are 32 poems with 15 wonderful linocuts by Martin Erspamer.
Once I started to write about Christmas I couldn’t stop. Far from being a schmaltz fest, I find Christmas to be pulsing with clear-eyed realism. It’s a story of fragility amidst tough circumstances; of people on the edges being brought right into the heart of things; of political ruthlessness and high-minded, clumsy idealism; of flight and terror, as well as peace and joy.
The Three Kings arrive in glamour but they depart in fear and secrecy. Who was waiting for their return, I wondered? Their wives, perhaps. I’ve discovered for these women a presence and charted their influence. The Three Kings and Three Queens are at the heart of the book. We meet them having travelled through the bright lights of the season and we go on into ‘the dark hinterland of Christmas’ of treachery and exile, but hope has survived in the form of a child.
The cover image is Martin Erspamer’s take on a carving I love. In the 12th century, the mason/architect of Autun Cathedral, known as Gislebertus, took the capitals of some of the pillars supporting the Cathedral roof as opportunities to explore the Christmas story (and other biblicial tales). In his ‘The Awakening of the Magi’ Gislebertus imagined a point further back than the gospels record, the moment before the moment when for the very first time one of the Three Kings saw the star that would lead them to Bethlehem.
With wonderful ingenuity, he depicts the three kings in bed, asleep while the star blazes outside. Except that one king has responded to the prodding finger of an angel. He has opened one eye but not yet turned to look.
Gislebertus exploits here the extraordinarily fertile moment before the key action begins. The very threshold of the point of change. In Martin Erspamer’s beautiful linocut I found the ideal cover for this collection.
ISBN 978-1-0686946-0-8 • 22 August 2024 • Pback • Poetry • £10.00
Available from
Books Council Wales https://www.gwales.com/bibliographic/?isbn=9781068694608&tsid=2
Gardners, for booksellers. Good bookshops. Amazon.
For review copies, features, events & interviews please contact:
PHIL COPE • 01656 663018 • [email protected]
It was a great pleasure to be interviewed by writer, Anne McMaster for DoubleBand Films’ hour-long documentary ‘Out Of The Silence’, directed by Jane Magowan and produced by Jonathan Golden. It explores women writing today, and in the past, in Ulster-Scots.
Anne and the crew came recorded me at home in Ballycastle where I delivered my poem, ‘A Heerd Tha Sodjer On Tha Radio’. This poem originated in my kitchen and is set there so what better place to do it?
Wendy Erskine, Dawn Watson and Jan Carson also feature in the documentary. The work of the late Frances Molloy was a discovery for me, prompted by the recording. Her novel, ‘No Mate For The Magpie’ (1985) and short story collection, ‘Women Are The Scourge Of The Earth’ (1989) are memorable, visceral and inventive. As was that of the acerbic, eighteenth-century writer, Olivia Elder.
Anne McMaster’s latest book, ‘Martha And The Vardo’ is out recently. Available from [email protected].
