Category Archives: Poetry

Praise for ‘Star’

Poetry, Star

It takes a real poet to make those of us jaded by Christmas reimagine the season. Angela Graham performs the feat of translating the festival into an urgent challenge, fraught with our contemporary problems and yet full of joy. This book, with its lovely illustrations, will be used for a very long time.

Gwyneth Lewis, poet and writer, inaugural National Poet of Wales. Author of Nightshade Mother: A Disentangling, 2024 UWP https://www.uwp.co.uk/book/nightshade-mother/

In these intimate contacts with the so-very-strange tale of Christmas, Angela Graham refreshes the familiar with an array of characters and forms drawn from her own eclectic gathering of aesthetic influences – the three wise wives, the woman at the well, cards arriving for lost former inhabitants, departures of friends, innocence, languages (including Welsh, English, Ulster-Scots, Irish). Accompanied by wry and knowing linocuts by Martin Erspamer OSB, her poems enact much of the mesmeric pull of the season on young hearts, as well as the melancholic longing more jaded spirits bring to the festivities.

These are lyric poems of poignancy and some pain, alert to joy, the unexpected and the promise of better lives, more grace, greater love, even for those who accidentally encounter the wondrous, through no fault of their own – the best way to meet good poetry: “It’s fitting that the angels sang in the open countryside/but maybe someone, in the over-crowded streets nearby,/looked up and heard the stillness/when they drew breath/between each stanza of their praise.”

It is a wonderful gathering of poems … such a lightness of touch with the old tropes, so much music and energetic imagination at work, so many new notes sounded. Not a line is predictable or a thought expected…

Damian Smyth, poet and Head of Literature and Drama, Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Author of Irish Street, Templar Books https://templarpoetry.com/products/irish-street

You might think that there is nothing new to say about Christmas, yet this collection shimmers with relevance for us today.

Drawing on the world of nature, on seasonal rituals and on the nativity itself, Angela Graham brings original and re-invigorating perspectives to the Christmas story. For instance, present giving re-negotiates its commerciality when ‘we give each other presents, wrapped because/ Love always must emerge, / fresh as when we first discovered it: / shy saviour of the world.’ (‘Opening Christmas Gifts’)

Her poems give an authentic voice to many (some in an Ulster Scots, Welsh or Irish tongue), including a remarkable central sequence, Three Kings’ and their ‘Three Queens’ in their search for meaning. Caspar’s wife recalls on his deathbed how he had changed after their journey: ‘But, Caspar, you know, you must know, / that you came back more tender,/ humbler, sweeter, /wiser,/ as though you had some inner guiding star.’

A dramatic monologue that succinctly transports the nativity into today’s desperate circumstances, is spoken in the voice of a belligerent houseowner when he discovers a couple in his outhouse:

‘Not in here you’re not, I yell. But

he’s gawpin at the baby. She’s out of it.

Pack it in! The wife. From nowhere. Shift yourself,

she says to me. We gotta keep her warm.

She’s on her mobile, to Pam-I-used-to-be-a-midwife.

What’s her name? she asks the bloke

but it’s something she can’t catch so it’s love, this; love that

Love, it’s a boy. OK? You’ll be ok, love.’                 (December)

Many of the poems highlight the extraordinary in the everyday. They spin a luminous thread through the dark end of the year, aware of the hardship and heaviness of heart that many encounter, yet asserting that ‘In darkness, any light is LIGHT’.

The power of this collection lies in the scope of the poet’s imagination and her ample skill to realise it on the page for the reader. The striking folkloric images by Martin Erspamer which accompany some of the poems enhance the sense of human story and ongoing quest.

STAR is aptly named, as Angela Graham’s collection shines a light on the core values of the nativity, deftly revealing “the kernel – love.’

Ruth Carr, writer, poet, editor of The Female Line and co-editor of Her Other Language, White Row http://www.whiterow.net/her-other-language.htm

In STAR Graham gives us fresh and vital takes on familiar themes, leading us through the Christmas season, illuminating dark corners, casting wonder in everyday imagery and moving us with her deft poetic repertoire.

Glen Wilson, poet, winner of the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, author of An Experience On The Tongue, Doire Press https://www.doirepress.com/writers/glen-wilson

These are warm, hopeful, delicious poems that celebrate the spirit of the winter holidays. Observing that moment when the world pauses to reconsider what life and human fellowship could be, this collection is better than a Christmas card and offers more longevity than many gifts given. Read Star: Poems for the Christmas Season every year to remember the deeper values beyond the commercialism that sometimes dominates Christmas. 

Zoë Brigley, editor of Poetry Wales, author of Hand & Skull Bloodaxe Books https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/hand-skull-1213

A rich collection celebrating so many different aspects of Christmas: the material – gifts, decorations, shopping – is seen as an extension, a reflection of its spiritual heart, rather than, as more cynical commentaries often imply, in conflict with it, or even contradicting it.

Although each poem has a distinct character and mood, the collection seems informally linked by certain recurrent themes – like the door or narrow entrance which we must pass through to the realities of Christmas – ‘stooping under the lintel’ ‘waiting beyond the door’ ‘through a shabby stable door’:  the importance of the pleasures and promises of Christmas lies in their recurrence – ‘are renewed every year’ ‘tell each other every year since then, a nightly choir’ ‘Ah could aye gie ma pipes a guid skirl neist year’…: the merging of the stars with the idea of revelation – particularly potent in the poems about the Magi and their wives. I especially liked the first-person narratives of the wives of Caspar and Melchior, contrasted with the third person for the wife of Balthazar who can no longer speak for herself…

The linking of church interiors and woodland or forest is very effective, especially when trees  and stars are drawn so near to each other. The Christmas card is most moving, with its delicate subtlety, carefully avoiding too much pathos; the quote of ‘Come all ye faithful’ is a perfect example of the way you use familiar Christmas tropes in an original way, to deep and refresh perception.

The poems demand, and richly reward, close reading, especially In the shopping arcades, ‘What is it carries you/through this arcade?… ‘

Sian Best, librarian and writer. Author of A Whim Set In Concrete, Seren Books

….. clearly intelligent and inventive, what marks these poems out for me are their lightness and brightness, transmuting the ‘heaviness’ of the festive season, with its political wars all around, and price wars on every avenue of possible advertising, into something more aligned to caring, community, and love. Beautiful print illustrations illuminate and lift these themes further, with the end result that you feel refreshed and reinvigorated after reading. Star is a gorgeous book by a gifted poet and a great one to get as a gift this year, for another, for yourself, or, ideally, for both.

Mab Jones, Buzz Magazine

….. In her hands the commonest experience resonates … Her characters stay in the mind, as do the characters of her short stories. Her writing is at once very accessible and truly profound.

Caroline Clark, The Bangor Literary Journal

STAR: poems for the Christmas Season

Blog, Poetry, PortfolioPrint, Print, Star

At the end of the summer, a book for the depths of winter. Welsh independent, Culture & Democracy Press, published the collection on 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.

I regret I have no copyright details for this image

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]

TRIO Uganda Poetry Competition

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The TRIO International Poetry Competition is open until 31st October.  I have the happy task of judging the entries.

Last year’ s competition was judged by Mike Jenkins, a former editor of Poetry Wales, a winner of Wales Book of the Year and currently co-editor of Red Poets. First Prize was won by Jim Green; Second Prize went to Jenny Mitchell and Third to Glen Wilson. The winning poems can be read here.

All entry fees will be used to purchase books and equipment for the first school to be built on Uganda’s Agaria Island. Pictured is Lucy who is a Primary 2 pupil at Agaria Island’s provisional school, working from temporary premises until the new school is completed. Lucy writes poetry and stories… when she has pens and pencils. (Image used with permission).

 The competition is organised by Jon Sait who won the Poetry Society’s 2004 National Poetry Competition with his poem ‘Homeland’. Read his poem here. Jon is Treasurer and UK Co-ordinator of the volunteer-led charity, Trio Uganda.

Entry details https://www.triouganda.org/poetry-competition

CLOSING DATE 31ST OCTOBER 2024

Shipyard Writers Competition win

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I’m delighted to win second prize in Yellow House Publishing’s Shipyard Writers competition.

First prize was won by David Butler for his short story, ‘White Spirits’ and third prize by Lucia Kenny for her poem, ‘Building Walls’.

https://www.yellowhousepublishing.com/news/shipyard-writers-competition-2024

My poem is in Ulster-Scots with an English translation and is prompted by the 9th-century Irish poem, ‘Int en bec’, known in English as ‘The Blackbird of Loch Lene’ and the paraphrase of it in Ulster-Scots by John Erskine. I was intrigued to see the Irish rendered into contemporary Ulster-Scots and that got me thinking about some themes that last across the centuries and about the way meaning swims between languages.

I’ve written previously about this Irish poem here https://angelagraham.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=3171&action=edit and I’ve used its wonderful Irish metre, ‘snámh súad’, which the late Ciaran Carson rendered as ‘poetic floating’, in the ENVOI of my poem in The Interpreter’s House: https://angelagraham.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=4482&action=edit

(and temporarily lost the ability to embed links properly! Sorry, folks.)

The work will appear in New Isles Press journal issue 3.

There is an event in Belfast’s Eastside Arts Festival on 25th July https://www.glistrr.com/events/e/belfast-literary-summer-yard-sessions-2024-3507-7

‘Following last year’s festival success, the Thomas Carnduff Appreciation Society offers its second literary Summer Yard Session. This year’s theme is Borders, Boundaries and Barriers.’

‘The session features a panel of renowned authors, chaired by Dr. Connal Parr and featuring Rosemary Jenkinson, Wendy Erskine, Tony Black, Heather Currie and Eddie Currie, with Stephen Knox as MC. Together they will celebrate the rich literature and language traditions of Northern Ireland and across our shared Isles.’

Belfast Launch of Washing Windows IV- Irish Women Write Poetry

Poetry, PortfolioPrint

A stimulating evening at the Irish Secretariat, Belfast to launch Washing Women IV – Irish Women Write Poetry, Arlen House’s latest anthology.

A packed room heard 30 poets read their poem from this book which shot to number 2 in the Nielsen Non-fiction ratings as soon as it was published.

Washing Windows IV: Irish Women Write Poetry
with Csilla Toldy

My sonnet, DO Unto Others is mentioned in co-editor Nuala O’Connor’s introduction in which she asserts the truth-telling mission of poetry:

“The poets in this volume are fearless in this project … These are poems where … one courageous, newly-enlightened poet – Angela Graham – proclaims: ‘I am my Gorgon. I must turn to meet my stare …'”

with Mary Shannon

Out Of The Silence TV documentary

Poetry, PortfolioTelevision, Television

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].

Poems for Wales PENCymru 10th anniversary

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During Wales in London Week, around St David’s Day, there’s a celebration of the significant contribution to London of Welsh culture. On February 29th WalesPENCymru held a poetry reading and music event at The Poetry Society’s Poetry Cafe to mark the organisation’s thenth anniversary. The theme was ‘Wales as a Multilingual Country’.

The Wales branch of PEN is one of the largest in terms of membership. It is affiliated to PEN International.

PEN promotes literature and defends freedom of expression. It campaigns on behalf of writers around the world who are persecuted, imprisoned, harassed and attacked for what they have written. It has committees representing writers in prison, translation and linguistic rights, women writers and a peace committee.

A glance at WalesPENCymru’s website shows the range of events and campaigns that run throughout the year http://walespencymru.org/ They are all designed to support the freedom to speak of writers and journalists worldwide and also in Wales and the UK.

I was invited to read my poem, ‘Colony’ which is about what happens to language in the process of colonisation and I wrote a new poem for the event, ‘Wales/Cymru’.

At the London event we listened to the National Poet of Wales, Hanan Issa (below). And to Wales PEN Cymru’s president, the renowned Welsh poet, Menna Elfyn.

The Turkish writer Mehmet Ali Alabora spoke about living in Wales and the importance of the Welsh language.

The Kurdish musician, Ali Zeynel (below) played and sang in his minority language and then gave us the Welsh folksong, ‘Dacw ‘nghariad i lawr yn y berllan’.

photos and video by Dominic Williams of https://write4word.org/write4word

Watch the event on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsioNQ3TddM

In my collection, Sanctuary https://www.serenbooks.com/book/sanctuary-there-must-be-somewhere/ I have a poem written for Letter With Wings, an Irish PEN campaign for the release of the unjustly imprisoned jounalist, Nedim Turfent. Thankfully he was released in Novemeber 2022, after 6 years in prison.