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Collected Earlier Poems (1966-80)
This volume brings together for the first time the late Bill Griffiths' poetry up until 1980. The text, edited by Alan Halsey in consultation with Ken Edwards of Reality Street, includes the full "Cycles" and "War w/ Windsor" sequences that so astonished readers when they first appeared, as well as much other poetry that was published by his own Pirate Press imprint, Writers Forum and other small presses during the 1970s; and also poems and performance texts that have only made fleeting appearances in ephemeral pamphlets and magazines, or have never been published before. Bill Griffiths was a poet, Anglo-Saxon scholar, book designer, small press publisher, biker, pianist, archivist and social historian. He died in 2007 at the age of 59.
A Tour of the Fairground
Poetry. This collection brings together many of the finest of Bill Griffiths' longer poems, including two quite new sequences, "A Tour of the Fairground" and "The Violinist." Topics range from urban incarceration to rural Hungary. The width of focus is deliberate: as Griffiths puts it, "There is no such thing as English poetry, only poetry in English."
Durham & Other Sequences
Poetry. "One of poetry's old hands, Bill Griffiths, uses fewest words to best effect. A visit to Durham goal is related as well as conveyed, apprehension palpable in the memories provoked, in stories minimalistically alluded to. Language is at times invented, always wrung out, each word examining its own use"--Sam Smith, New Hope International Review On-Line. This new collection from Bill Griffiths features a series of composite texts and a world of subject material, from Astor in the New World to Cuthbert in the Anglo-Saxon North East, via rural scenes, metropolitan furnishing, a garnish of top vegetables and a prison visit. Can poetry cope with any subject matter? In three decades of published poetry Bill Griffiths has never stopped trying to find out.
Blind to Misfortune
Bill Griffiths lost both hands and both eyes when he was a prisoner of the Japanese in Java in 1942. This book tells the story of how he overcame these two shattering handicaps, either one of which might have qualified him to spend the rest of his life quietly in a home for the disabled. But Bill had no intention of allowing himself to become an object of pity and it was not long after his return to civilian life that he began to make it clear that, even if he had no hands and no eyes, he still had his own two feet and he certainly intended to stand on them. Inevitably life has not been without its ups and downs, and he certainly Bill could not have got where he has without the care and devotion of Alice, his wife. Their story is one of remarkable courage, told with no trace of bitterness and with a generous helping of laughter. It is a measure of the man that Bill can end his story with the words, "I've been lucky"!
Fishing and Folk
With enormous enthusiasm for the language of ordinary northerners, this scenic portrait of coastal peoples combines history, etymology, and recollections to record a folk culture that strives to survive against current worldwide trends of uniformity. The examination delves deep into the boat and fishing traditions that shape this small angler community, including smuggling, the scenery, and the surrounding wildlife. The increasing threat that globalization poses to these sea populations makes this an important preservation - as well as an excellent source of factual information and reference material about those who live on the North Sea.
The Salt Companion to Bill Griffiths
Griffiths has one of the finest ears - for song, for varieties and cadences of speech - of any poet writing today. His compacted lyrics flash with intelligence and humour. They are shaped by anger, empathy and childish delight. But they are also charged with the excitement of contemporary form: swift, filmic montage and free use of the page space. His poems dig, probe, reveal, expose the language as it is lived, with a range possibly unequalled in any British poet. Their sharp diagnoses of social domination and the ideas that sustain and mask it are a wake-up call. But there is nothing dry about them: they savour language, ask you to dance with it, show you the pain in it, enlarge the world ...
Deep Time Dreaming
People would have known about Australia before they saw it. Smoke billowing above the sea spoke of a land that lay beyond the horizon. A dense cloud of migrating birds may have pointed the way. But the first Australians were voyaging into the unknown. Soon after Billy Griffiths joins his first archaeological dig as camp manager and cook, he is hooked. Equipped with a historian’s inquiring mind, he embarks on a journey through time, seeking to understand the extraordinary deep history of the Australian continent. Deep Time Dreaming is the passionate product of that journey. It investigates a twin revolution: the reassertion of Aboriginal identity in the second half of the twentieth century,...
Collected Poems
This is the third, and projected to be the final, volume of Reality Street's edition of Bill Griffiths' Collected Poems, which began with Collected Earlier Poems (1966-80) in 2010 and continued in Collected Poems & Sequences (1981-91) in 2014. The sequence spans 30 years and more than 1,200 pages of Griffiths' poetry, most of which had previously only existed in now unobtainable small press productions. From 1996 until his death just over ten years later his poetry was collected in commercial or semi-commercial editions which are still in print or easily obtainable. The present volume, while covering only five years, during which he was settled in Seaham, County Durham, presents a period of his work which even by his own standards was remarkably prolific and exuberant.
A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 1960 - 2015
A comprehensive and scholarly review of contemporary British and Irish Poetry With contributions from noted scholars in the field, A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 1960-2015 offers a collection of writings from a diverse group of experts. They explore the richness of individual poets, genres, forms, techniques, traditions, concerns, and institutions that comprise these two distinct but interrelated national poetries. Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companion to Literature and Culture series, this book contains a comprehensive survey of the most important contemporary Irish and British poetry. The contributors provide new perspectives and positions on the topic. This impo...
Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Magic
"With the arrival of Christianity in England there was a convergence of the new religion with the old. Many of the heathen customs, superstitions, and festivals were adopted to the needs of the Church, which sought, where it could, to preserve continuity with the past. Communities came together to celebrate seasonal festivals in much the same way as before but the meaning of the events and customs was given a Christian gloss. So, while many heathen practices were outlawed, others were absorbed into Christian tradition and preserved. Thus Yuletide, Easter and harvest festivals are still with us." --book jacket.
