Gordon Hewitt interviewed me – very perceptively – for the May 2026 Poetry and Spoken Word issue and I appreciate this great opportunity to reflect on my writing practice.
4 interviews with CAP Arts ‘The Monthly’
Category Archives: Poetry
Imaging Writers in Public in Wales
I’m very pleased to be featured among the portraits of writers taken by photographer, John Briggs for his exhibition Write in the Eye at Cwtsh Gallery, Newport.
‘ Write In The Eye’ brings together some 100 portraits in colour and black and white of Wales-based writers since 2002. Selected from thousands of images and taken at all manner of literary events in Wales over the past 25 years – festivals, book launches, award ceremonies, readings at open mics, literary walks, authors at home – the series illustrates just how rich and varied the Welsh literary scene is today, was and will continue to be.
John Briggs is a wonderful photographer.
You’ll recognise these folks.
John Briggs told me this about the exhibition:
“I’d like to think this is a significant documentation of literary life in Wales. |It’s organised chronologically going back to 2002, and John Berryman before that, who I photographed in 1967 in Minneapolis.
I’ve photographed so may writers because the opportunities were made available to me by two people in particular- Peter Finch and Alan Roderick. To start with, photographing people in general is my favorite subject. I’m also a lover of the written word – studied French Lit and Classics at university, so the chance to hear and photograph authors reading and performing their work has always appealed to me.
From one photoshoot to the next, experience tells me that I never quite know what to expect, to be on my guard constantly in trying to capture a telling image. Taken as a whole, my collection impresses upon me the fact the literary world in Wales is not just full of surprises, but also far more extensive and varied, fuller of talented, passionate writers than I could have ever imagined. I hope the exhibition will be useful in promoting that fact. “
Exposure reviewed in Fortnight
Maureen Boyle is a poet and former committee member of the John Hewitt Society.
Her review is published in Fortnight magazine issue 502 July 2026
The Poetry of Hope workshop
This was a day of great creativity. In my workshop we looked at examples of poetry across a spectrum from blank despair to marked optimism and worked, prompted by these, to write fresh material. It was a moving experience.
Participants in both workshops met after lunch to do a shared reading which was eye-opening in its breadth and variety.
The Language of Belonging
I was delighted to appear on a panel at the Jaipur Literature Festival – Island of Ireland JLF we discussed how writing can draw on experiences of duality and change, and how literature, in its many forms, becomes a home for identity, inheritance, and connection. Writer and editor, Elaine Canning was due to chair but was, unfortunately, unwell so crime novelist, Paul Waters – Author – Author, Podcaster, Broadcaster, Trainer (left below) stepped in. Maire Zepf, the first Children’s Writing Fellow (2017 – 2019) for Northern Ireland is centre.
Between the panellists many languages were represented. Cauvery Madhavan the Indian novelist living in Ireland spoke about capturing Irish voices in her work.
It was good to see my short story collection, ‘A City Burning’ (Seen Books) for sale among great company.
Exposure at Waterstone’s Coleraine 16 May
2pm Saturday 16th May I did a reading from my new poetry collection
Poetry Reading with Angela Graham | Events at Waterstones Bookshops
It was a pleasure to interact with such a receptive audience. I was asked what in my own life had led to my interest in conflict. A fair question! I tried to answer honestly. There was an exchange about minorities, what it’s like to be in one, or not. Frank and direct. And several people shared their own artistic practice.
Is love ever present at the root of violent action? Another issue that came up. Can someone behave violently motivated by love of something? What is love in such circumstances? Big questions.
Neill Walker, manager at the Coleraine branch, was a great host.
Exposure launches at Corrymeela
I was delighted to launch ‘Exposure’ at Corrymeela, the centre for peace and reconciliation which is only a short walk from my Ballycastle home. And particularly pleased that the event was held in An Croí, the wonderful building whose name is Irish for ‘The Heart’ and which expresses the welcoming and inclusive approach of the centre. It was designed by Norman Hawthorne in 1979. The photograph of it at the head of this article is from a post by his son Corin Hawthorne.
Documentary poetry
Angela Graham considers the influence of her career as a documentary-maker on her poetry collection Exposure: war, media, democracy from Culture and Democracy Press.
This appeared in nation.cymru (without Enemy in the Woods images) on 22.3.26
My new collection of poetry, Exposure: war, media, democracy began from my response to a photograph of a dead Russian soldier on the outskirts of Kharkiv. It was taken on the invasion’s third day, but he had died on its first afternoon.
As I saw more and more photographic coverage of this one death, there before me was evidence of how the choices made by the photographers were emphasising particular aspects of the scene. Changes in the weather were powerful influences – snow loomed, arrived, dominated, melted; as were changes in access – front line crisis, aftermath, stasis. Each variable was likely to touch one rather than another emotional chord in the viewer. Every image was ‘true’ but many images considered in relation to one another revealed the complexity in the circumstances, making them more challenging to decipher – the truth deepened; or the truth undermined?
Continue reading Documentary poetry
Exposure on All Things Considered, BBC Radio Wales
I was interviewed about ‘Exposure’ by Delyth Liddell on the BBC Radio Wales multi-award-winning weekly programme ‘All Things Considered‘.
Poet Profile Nation Cymru
Poet Profile: Angela Graham
08 Mar 2026 6 minute read
Angela Graham
Angela Graham is a BAFTA Cymru-winning filmmaker and journalist who turned to writing poetry full-time in 2017. Her work has appeared in The North, The Honest Ulsterman and Poetry Wales, amongst many others, and her first collection – Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere – was published by Seren Books in 2022.
To mark the February release of her latest collection – EXPOSURE: war, media, democracy – Graham joins us here for our ongoing Poet Profiles series in which we pose our burning questions to writers shaping the modern literary landscape.
- Do you remember what first drew you to poetry?
Poetry has always been part of my life. I wrote my first poems aged six – short rhyming verses – and my mother was so surprised that she typed them up. I still have them. She submitted one of them to a weekly magazine and it was published. Because I was so young my headmistress had had to write and confirm my identity and age but she claimed I was eight. The editor stated beneath the poem, ‘Authenticity vouched for in the usual way’ but I knew our fearsome headmistress was lying – in print! So I learned something about unreliability.
And those words had such an intriguing sound, ‘Authenticity vouched for …’ What did they mean? This was my first encounter with ‘vouched’. And my poem was suspected of being not real in some way? I took words seriously while finding them very pleasurable.
- Who are some of your favourite living poets, and what resonates with you in their work?
I love Gwyneth Lewis’s work, in Welsh and English. She has a forensic sense of which word is just the right one for the task in hand. This precision appeals to me. She does the work of weighing experience and emotion and intellect and giving to each proportionate heft within a poem. Her, ‘Treiglo’ (Barddas, 2017) is a masterpiece of sustained attention to a subject and of using a metaphor (that of linguistic mutation and other sorts of change) to support and deepen her engagement with the subject. Her most recent collection, ‘First Rain in Paradise’ (Bloodaxe Books, 2025) is a pleasure throughout. Her excellent prose memoir, ‘Nightshade Mother’ (Calon, 2024) won the Wales Book of the Year 2025 Creative Non-Fiction Award.
- What have you read recently that excited or surprised you?
I am enjoying Menna Elfyn’s trilingual, ‘Let the World’s People Sing / Caned Pobl y Byd’ (H’mm Publishing, 2025). She writes in the introduction, ‘The original Welsh poems were rendered into English and subsequently crossed another bridge; that of Arabic.’ by means of writers Rawan Sukkar and Lara Matta. Elfyn declares the book to be ‘a clarion call for people of all languages to respect their neighbours’ ‘mother tongue’. This appeals to me because I’ve always seen language as a bridge rather than a barrier. In each of my books there is at least one language other than English. In my new collection there is a trio of poems, for instance, which begins in Ulster-Scots, moves to Welsh and then to English. It’s a huge pleasure to be able to use the characteristics of languages to ring changes on the act of expression through language. Each has virtues and strengths for the writer and reader to enjoy.
Currently there is an exhibition in Belfast’s Linen Hall Library of poems commissioned for its Fragments of Scotch Poetry Project. I was one of ten poets asked to read through their collection of Enlightenment poetry (which includes Burns and contemporaries) and write in response. I was struck by the political passion of these writers. So, using Standard Habbie metre, a strict rhyming form very popular in that period and well-known as the ‘Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie…’ of Burns’s ‘To A Mouse’, I wrote about a stage in Netanyahu and Trump’s dealing with Gaza.
- What inspires you outside of literature?
Images. I wish I was a talented painter. I have to use words to ‘paint’. I’m often inspired by paintings, photographs and film. I worked in documentary and feature film and that involved handling thousands of images. My new collection, ‘Exposure’ is prompted by journalistic coverage of conflict, often through still or moving images, and I find the contemplation of these endlessly challenging and rewarding.
- What projects or poems have you been working on lately?
I’m working on my next book, a prose/poetry memoir, for which I have received a grant from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. I’m also preparing an essay for the Journal of Cross-border Studies in Ireland, drawing on my forty-five years in Wales to consider language issues in Northern Ireland (Irish, Ulster-Scots and English).
- One last thing! Would you like to share one of your poems and tell us why you chose it?
Since I’ve been writing about images, I’ll share this poem from ‘Exposure’. I’ve felt from an early age that the images we allow into our minds, or are forced to let in, have the potential to affect us deeply. We have to be vigilant about our role in what an image might achieve in us. No matter how manipulative a photographer or film-maker may be, we have some control over how we respond. We live in a deluge of images (hence the title of my collection, ‘Exposure’) so that control is often hard-won, and it’s precious because we don’t want to be hard, impermeable. Maintaining compassion and avoiding cynicism – staying open – is a major task in modern life.
DIALOGUE
In a pail of water I am looking up at myself looking down.
Does the water know?
The saint in the icon appears to return my gaze
but the painted pupil is a door, opening ….
Does the photograph return my scrutiny?
As a window reflects. I bring myself to what I see.
Whichever hunger dominates the heart
prompts the human gaze to flinch, devour or savour…
The eye of the photographer knows this, invites
collusion – cruel, compassionate or joyful –
but always there are ripples it will never see, and can’t control,
for the gaze hosts image upon image and,
even if the photographs are cached,
they are still, in your life and in mine, proliferating;
never neutral;
like a kiss from Christ or Judas.