Four last publications
The Gaze Met, May 2024
Written between 2013 and 2022, the poems of Steve Griffiths’ third pamphlet in four years are concerned both with acts and failures of attention: in ‘Choice’, ‘seeing’ a consultant who discharges a patient because he can’t do anything more for her. The man not seeing the woman fully, because for self-preservation he can’t afford to. ‘Seeing’ her both as patient and as older woman giving a presentation among younger women, using the skills of a lifetime, unknown to the consultant. ‘Seeing’ an orangutan making her bed as night falls, absorbed in the task. ‘Seeing’ an influential English teacher, as the poet didn’t, couldn’t, when young. In ‘Sceptred Isle’, as in ‘Choice’, the perspectives are multiple: prisoners and captors observe each other, each perspective shaped by its own history, drawn into clear definition as the dawn breaks ruthlessly in a cathedral that’s revealed as a prison – history with an uncomfortable contemporary resonance. Scattered through the poems are moments of recognition:,
hold on
to the small outstretched fingers,
the gaze up met
and held in common.
A Twist in the Stairs, June 2023
Steve Griffiths’ second poetry pamphlet with Rack Press, ‘A Twist in the Stairs’, responds to a time of political, psychological and climate crisis, criss-crossing and interrogating threads of optimism, certainty and error, wonder, defeat, resignation – and resilience. Some of the poems have appeared in Stand, in Poetry Salzburg Review and online in New Boots and Pantisocracies. Steve is also interviewed by Zoe Brigley in the Poetry Wales series ‘How I write a poem’ about the origin and development of one of the poems included in the pamphlet.
Weathereye: Selected Poems 2019
Steve Griffiths’ Weathereye: Selected Poems pulls together the best of seven collections published by Rex Collings, Seren Books and Cinnamon Press over forty years. It includes poems that have been honed and brought to completion over the decades since their first publication: Steve Griffiths questions his own work as he questions the society and the choice of narratives that shape us. There are poems of childhood and family, love poems – and a lifelong exploration of what’s going on around us, our fallibilities and fragilities against a backdrop of profound change. Among veins of loss, commemoration, and resistance to injustice, there’s a vision of what is possible with an informed generosity at its heart. Griffiths’ capacity to celebrate and lament develops and deepens as he calls increasingly on a lightness of touch, paradoxically hard-won.
Read Jon Gower’s review in nation.cymru here.
Updrafts, 2020
The aim of this pamphlet, conceived for the Ludlow Fringe 2020’s Beautiful Earth project and published by Fair Acre Press, was to give the reader an uplift in the time of the pandemic – and beyond.
Jean Atkin writes: ‘Here is an exceptional pamphlet, studded with some of the very best of Steve Griffiths’ work. Updrafts explores the richness of the poet’s lifelong connection to place – and wider skies – in poems of spare but deeply felt and vivid imagery. The landscapes of Anglesey and Shropshire feature here, but so too, do ‘three herons, slow/ and upside down over Harringay’ as the poet exercises in his flat. These poems celebrate life, and remind us there is ‘no joy but in recognition and discovery.// No resilience/ but in the delicate’. The pamphlet raised money for Ludlow Food Bank.
Latest News from Steve
Steve Griffiths launches his third poetry pamphlet in four years, The Gaze Met
Steve Griffiths has launched his third poetry pamphlet in four years, ‘The Gaze Met’, published by Clutag Press. A convivial gathering with old friends and new on June 11th with fellow Clutag pamphleteers Robert Minhinnick and Laura Wainwright at the Wheatsheaf,...
Steve Griffiths interviewed by Zoe Brigley in the Poetry Wales online series ‘How I wrote’: ‘We need a definite programme’
Steve Griffiths interviewed by Zoe Brigley in the Poetry Wales online series ‘How I wrote’: ‘We need a definite programme’, now in Steve’s Rack Press pamphlet ‘A Twist in the Stairs’, available from https://rackpress.blogspot.com/. Steve talks about how a poem takes...
Steve Griffiths launches his poetry pamphlet ‘A Twist in the Stairs’ with Rack Press
Steve Griffiths launches his poetry pamphlet ‘A Twist in the Stairs’, published by Rack Press, on 16 June at the Music Room, 49 Great Ormond Street, London WC1, alongside pamphlets by Michele Hutchison, William Palmer and Tuesday Shannon. Find out more and order...
