Category Archives: Media

NVTV profile of my Ulster-Scots poetry

Blog, Poetry, Television

Liam Logan interviewed me for a programme in his 8-part series on Ulster-Scots writing, ‘A MIGHTY MALLET’ made by Belfast cable channel Northern Visions (NVTV).

The series showcases the work of the Rhyming Weavers or Weaver Poets, working-class writers of the late 18th and early 19th century in the north of Ireland, who wrote in their vernacular and were influenced by Robert Burns. The programmes feature the work of James Orr, Samuel Thompson, Hugh Porter and John McKinley, David Herbison and Sarah Leech from Co Donegal, the only known female Irish weaver poet.

Liam Logan has added three contemporary writers in Ulster-Scots: Angeline King, Gary Morgan and myself.

The half-hour documentary on my work can be viewed here:

You can find the rest of the series at nvtv.co.uk Go to “on demand” and then “language”, “Ulster-Scots” . Continue reading NVTV profile of my Ulster-Scots poetry →

Fellowship from Institute of Welsh Affairs

Blog, Media, PortfolioTelevision, Prose

It was a great pleasure to be awarded an Honorary Life Fellowship by the Institute of Welsh Affairs. The citation reads:

For supporting our shared objective of a strong, confident democracy in Wales by chairing and leading our media policy work to foster robust debate in Welsh society, laying the groundwork for our current citizen-centred  media and democracy work.

Image
Left to right: IWA Chair, Bethan Darwin; Founder members Geraint Talfan Davies & Huw Roberts; Director, Auriol Miller

Continue reading Fellowship from Institute of Welsh Affairs →

Christmas & Winter 2 edition from Black Bough Poetry

Blog, Poetry, Print

Black Bough Poetry/Barddoniaeth Y Gangen Ddu has produced its second Christmas and Winter-themed anthology and it would be an ideal Christmas gift. Over sixty short poems by poets from around the world are beautifully enhanced by linocuts from Gower-based artist Emma Bissonnet .

Black Bough specialises in imagist micro poems: short, and sharp or sweet, with the emphasis on the visual. These poems take the reader on a tour of the feast and the  season. Perfect for dipping into.

Available here

Edited by Matthew C. Smith and colleagues, Damien B. Donnelly and M.S.Evans.

I’m delighted to have this poem included.

CHRISTMAS

The smallest words mean the most

Joy

Hope

Love

These things

Not things

May you receive them all

A star              of particular promise

A light             that has sought and found you

The child         of your heart

Arrived

Waiting beyond the door.

copyright Angela Graham

Irish Times review of A City Burning

Blog, Print

Irish Times Review

Books in brief:  Angela Graham’s evocative short stories

Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 00:00

A City Burning
Angela Graham
Seren, £9.99
Angela Graham’s debut collection of short stories has been longlisted for the 2021 Edge Hill Short Story prize, and it’s not hard to see why. The film-maker and screenwriter’s move into fiction brings with it an eye for perspective, for the power of the vignette to momentarily depict a whole life. There is a craft in the economy of Graham’s prose, as evocative as it is sparse, and the theme of change resonates throughout the collection, as well as the inherently human fear of it. We are not always prepared for the moment when our lives change for ever, and Graham seeks to capture that sense of knowing and not knowing here, inviting us into an intimacy with her characters that is never forced, and always elegiac. BECKY LONG

Reactions to ‘A City Burning’

Portfolio, PortfolioPrint, Print, Prose

A city burns in a crisis − because the status quo has collapsed and change must come. Every value, relationship and belief is shaken and the future is uncertain.

A CITY BURNING  Order here

A Book of the Year 2020 on Nation Cymru and The Lonely Crowd.

Books of the Year 2020: Part One

“This is an exemplary collection illustrating the creative possibilities of the short fiction form… All the stories allowed me to feel the emotional intensity of a range of characters as they stand at pivotal moments in their lives in the aftermath of personal tragedy. This is due, I believe, to the innate understanding that Graham has for the ‘stuff’ of the short story: suggestion rather than statement; rising tension rather than high drama; the power of the unsaid; and the realisation that endings are not neat and tidy and tied up!” Jane Fraser (The Lonely Crowd)

“a kind of clarity of languag… that rings off the page…  a voice that feels completely new and fresh… Graham’s language has a searing quality yet also a humour about it that is genuinely hard to forget long after reading. Very highly recommended – I can’t wait to see what she does next.” Kate Hamer (The Lonely Crowd)

“Angela Graham’s debut collection A City Burning announced a confident, stylish new voice in short fiction.” Jon Gower (Nation Cymru) Continue reading Reactions to ‘A City Burning’ →

Seren Short Story of the Month from A City Burning

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ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT – READ HERE

My story ‘ All Through The Night’ is Seren’s Short Story of the Month for December 2020. An extract from it is beautifully read by Geraint Lewis.

The story was first publsihed in Crannóg magazine which nominated it for the Pushcart Prize 2019.

A Book of the Year – A City Burning

Portfolio, PortfolioPrint, Print, Prose

I’m delighted that two authors in The Lonely Crowd’s Books of the Year feature Part One chose ‘A City Burning’ as a highlight of 2020 – Jane Fraser and Kate Hamer

and that Jon Gower selected it too in his Books of the Year for Nation Cymru.

Books of the Year 2020: Part One

NATION CYMRU

Wales’ Books of the Year, 2020 – what have our contributors been reading?

Review of ‘A City Burning’ by Prof Diana Wallace

Blog, Portfolio, PortfolioPrint, Print, Prose, Reviews

Prof Diana Wallace researches women’s writing, with special interests in historical fiction; Welsh writing in English and Modernism and the Gothic.  She is co-director of the Centre for Gender Studies in Wales and Leader of the English Research Unit at the University of South Wales. Her review appears on the website of the Centre for the Study of Media and Culutre in Small Nations at the University of South Wales.

Centre for the Study of Media and Culture in Small Nations

How can writers respond to sudden, even exponential, change? It can take a decade, as it did after the first world war or 9/11, for novels and memoirs to catch up as writers process traumatic events. And readers, time-pressed and battered by 24-hour news, may turn to genre fiction for the comfort of familiar plot lines and predictable endings.  The short story, on the other hand, can turn on a sixpence to give us a snapshot of our crises in real time. Compressed, intense, often challenging, some of the most powerful examples of the form have come from writers on the so-called margins: women, immigrants, people from ‘small nations’ such as Wales and Ireland.

Angela Graham’s assured and compelling debut collection, A City Burning, ranges across Wales, Northern Ireland and Italy. It offers 26 brief stories, most no more than a few pages (one a mere page and a quarter), which turn their forensic flashlight on a moment of change when a character has to make a choice. Continue reading Review of ‘A City Burning’ by Prof Diana Wallace →

On ‘Your Place And Mine’, BBC Radio Ulster

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It was lovely to have this [click here to listen Interview with Anne Marie McAleese ] on Your Place And Mine BBC Radio Ulster 7th November. This long-running and much-lauded series focuses on place. We talked about the role of place in my short story collection A City Burning.

I read an extract from the story Coasteering in which a middle-aged woman and her Ulster Scots-speaking coasteering instructor venture far out along the coast at twilight:

‘Dinnae ower-think it!’ Alec urged, and then repeated himself….

I loosened the cuffs of the waterproof jacket that added a layer to the battered old wetsuit he’d provided. Seawater gushed out past my wrists. I poised myself, leapt − an un-timeable gap − and was smothered in crashing bubbles and noise and resistance, then broke upwards into air and the push and pull of the sea. This was what I’d wanted, to be out beyond the little beaches and rock-strewn shores; to be out of my depth but safe; to be gripped by the sea’s power but not at its mercy. I respect the sea. I fear it…. Continue reading On ‘Your Place And Mine’, BBC Radio Ulster →

Interview with Seren Books on ‘A City Burning’

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As her debut short story collection A City Burning, is published, we interview Angela Graham to find out more about the book and what inspires her.

In the twenty-six stories in A City Burning, set in Wales, Northern Ireland and Italy, children and adults face, in the flames of personal tragedy, moments of potential transformation. On the threshold of their futures each must make a choice: how to live in this new ‘now’. With a virtuoso control of tone, by turns elegiac, comic, lyrical, philosophical, A City Burning examines power of all types. The result is a deeply human book full of hauntingly memorable characters and narratives.

What is the meaning behind the title A City Burning?

In the opening story, ‘The Road’, a young girl witnesses her city blazing. She understands that this is a sign of the collapse of the status quo, of all the usual certainties. She is confronted with the need to react to this new situation. What values should guide her in this choice? I realised that this story encapsulates the theme of many stories in the collection – witnessing major change and having to work out a response. It seemed a fitting title for the book.

Belfast on a November evening

Continue reading Interview with Seren Books on ‘A City Burning’ →