The Hitting Game - Softcover

The Hitting Game is the first collection of poems by the London-based poet Graham Clifford. The vibrancy of the poet s voice and the immediacy of his claims upon our attention are clear.

Characters first appear as you in Obvious Constellations , Amazing and Trying , as if we ve arrived in the middle of a conversation. Incidents are approached from disarmingly intimate and also entertainingly oblique angles, as in Shorn . These are urban poems where nature appears like a strange intrusion: a flock of swallows flick about dusk like black flames . There is also a gentleness and empathy, particularly in regards to children, as in About my daughter where the word echoes: the er-ing sound of doubt/mixed with ought. There is humour and pathos as in the poem about a chimp and her keeper. These are poems full of unexpected dramas and fresh enchantments, they provoke as well as delight.

Graham Clifford was born in 1973 in Portsmouth and grew up in Wiltshire. He studied Fine Art and then Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. He has been published in numerous literary magazines such as: Poetry Wales, The Rialto, Magma, and London Magazine. Graham has been commended in many competitions including The Arvon International and the Bridport Prize. Two short collections won first prize in the 2006 New Writer Poetry competition and the Biscuit Publishing Prize in 2008. He has also performed at venues and events including Hay on Wye, The Troubadour Café and the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. He works as a teacher in East London. The Hitting Game is his first full collection of poems. Poems from the collection have appeared in the Forward Prize Anthology 2014. www.grahamclifford.co.uk/