List Of Writers

GRIFFITHS, STEVE

6 Cleeve Hill, London, SE23 3DD
Tel: 02082 913180    Mobile: 0777 357 1147
Email: stevegriffiths@clara.co.uk
Website: www.stevegriffithspoet.com

Steve Griffiths is a poet, born in Trearddur Bay, Anglesey, 1949. He has published four collections of poems since 1980, the last being Selected Poems (Seren, 1993). Read a poem from it here. In the Nineties he took a long break from writing and publishing, before an intense period from 1999–2004 when he wrote An Elusive State: Entering al–Chwm, creating a booklength imaginary Utopia, one that does not always work and is subject to transformations and shifts backward and forward in time. Steve describes it as:

 "…a book about maturity, history, mistakes, places, death, democracy, power, laughter in the dark, science in the context of these matters, glasses half full or half empty, cups overflowing and the advantages and disadvantages of this…"

It will be published by Cinnamon Press in 2008. It was also given extensive coverage in Poetry Wales (starting in issue 39/3, Winter 2003/4). Read extracts from Steve Griffiths’ new work here, and a description of the work here. Here are some early responses to the manuscript:

"…let me say how much I enjoyed the manuscript – it was a real breath of fresh air – genuinely individual…"
Don Paterson

"…Challenging, refreshing…the tangential world we really inhabit…ambitious, demanding and should be seen…"
Robert Minhinnick

Steve has recently completed a new book which traces a movement from darkness into light, mostly lyrical and playful poems of renewal written during 2006/7.  Some appeared in Poetry Wales in April 2007: the book has not yet gone out to publishers, but the new note of optimism can be sampled in his forthcoming pamphlet from Rack Press (January 2008), which will probably be called Landing.     

Steve Griffiths has given many readings in Wales, England, USA, France, and Spain, and has broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Radio London and Radio 4 Cymru - most recently in December 2006 on Radio 3’s ’The Verb’. He has appeared in a number of anthologies, including the forthcoming Library of Wales Poetry 1900-2000, to be published in 2007 by Parthian, featuring 100 twentieth century Welsh poets writing in English. He is keen to perform his new work more widely. A CD is available.

Click here to read a response to a reading he gave for Wenlock Books in Shropshire in April 2007.
 
Steve Griffiths spent his childhood on the beaches and cliffs around Trearddur Bay, not knowing that 35 years earlier one Ronald S.Thomas was getting his feet wet in the same pools. At the age of 11, he moved to Amlwch, the origin of al-Chwm in his new work An Elusive State. After reading English at Cambridge at the end of the Sixties, he began a working life engaged with the consequences of, and some solutions to, poverty,  inequality and poor health, first as a welfare rights worker in London, later as a researcher and consultant in social and health policy, in the last twelve years working freelance all over Britain for local and national government, health bodies, and charities. This commitment has often squeezed out the poetry; but the quarrel between landscapes has also certainly created a defining tension in his work. He has constantly returned to the scene of his childhood for renewal, and has continued to be engaged with Wales.  Steve has recently appeared on Radio 3’s The Verb along with Fiona Sampson and more radio performances are planned for 2008. He was Vice-Chair of the Welsh Academy (English section) at the beginning of the Nineties, and is a Fellow of Academi.    

Reviews:

Of his Selected Poems (Seren, 1993)
"…(they) show him to possess that defining attribute of the important talent, the capacity for sustained development.   The continuity is felt, imparted by a pulse from the heart of books and poems, rather than residing in conveniently definable themes or motifs.  Griffiths’ achievement lies in the emergence in his writing of a mode in which social, ethical and personal elements undergo a deep fusion…"
Douglas Houston      

Of his Civilised Airs (Seren, 1984)
"…another ghost can be sensed – the austere authority of Zbigniew Herbert – and when Griffiths hits this note he reminds us of a great lack in our poetry…"
Sean O’Brien, TLS 


Selected Publications:
Anglesey Material: Poems, 1975-78 (Rex Collings, 1980) 
Civilised Airs (Seren, 1984)
Uncontrollable Fields (Seren, 1990)
Selected Poems (Seren, 1993)
An Elusive State: Entering al–Chwm (Cinnamon Press, 2008)
Landing (Rack Press, 2008)