W. S. Graham and Lyric Self-Consciousness

‘Rich in detail, sensitive to the intermedial dialogue of Graham’s poetics, and with the keen eye for form of a practicing poet, this book will offer readers a new, thoughtful way into the extremely self-consciously constructed space of Graham’s poetry.’ Hugh Foley, author of Lyric and Liberalism in the Age of American Empire ‘A probing, artful and original exploration of one of our most enigmatic twentieth-century writers.’ Natalie Ferris, author of Abstraction in Post-War British Literature 1945-1980 ‘Buchan-Watts gives us a newly contemporary poet, a Graham in sustained conversation with his own moment and ours.’ David Herd, author of Writing Against Expulsion in the Post-War World This monograph considers the formal vitality of lyric in the face of anxieties about linguistic agency across the corpus of the British poet, W. S. Graham. A sophisticated modernist lyric originates, the book argues, in Graham’s rendering of self-consciousness at different strata across space, sound, image and form – as distinct from a more general lyric subject or ego. By listening closely to the poems, the book seeks to identify the self-sufficiency of Graham’s lyrics, and their ability to account for themselves theoretically on their own terms. Archival material – including worksheets, manuscripts and notebooks – is used to examine Graham's visual and spatial conception of verse and his ambivalent relation to verse form. Graham’s propositions are considered in the context of broader theoretical debates about modern lyric and a slipstream of mid-century poets (namely William Empson and Veronica Forrest-Thomson). The book concludes with a sustained analysis of Denise Riley's long-term engagement with Graham’s poetry, which suggests how Graham’s generative approaches to lyric can be further politicised. Sam Buchan-Watts is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Fine Art at Newcastle University, UK. He is the author of the poetry collection Path Through Wood (Prototype, 2021) and co-editor of Try To Be Better (Prototype, 2019), a creative-critical engagement with W. S. Graham.