New collection out now:

   An Elusive State: Entering al–Chwm (Cinnamon Press, October 2008) (www.cinnamonpress.com)

A man hits fifty. He grew up surrounded by a belief in progress. Now he, and the world around him, are not so sure.    He creates a Utopia to comfort himself.  Steve Griffiths's cycle of poems, Al-Chwm, tells the story of the life and death of an imaginary utopia.

"…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…"

The cycle began with a vision in the province of Granada which merged a twilight in the hill town of Montefrio with one in Griffiths's home village in Anglesey, North Wales, as the lights came on one by one.   Steve read from al-Chwm on Radio Three’s ‘The Verb’ in 2006, and will return to the programme shortly.

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

“A parallel universe, a magical epic, a comfort, a mystery”

                                                             Laura Thomas, Producer, BBC Radio

      Steal away

There's a room of transition

at the slightly shabby end

of a branch line

closed years ago,

where you are visited

by an embarrassment

of sins of the heart.

They are persistent,

those old adolescent

crimes of meanness,

the seeing another's individuality

or hunger as a shadow

that became a lead ingot

in your ageing pocket.

Still they bring you

the small presents

that diminish you,

they know no other way

but the way

of the mirror

of the act.

There's sometimes

no need of forgiveness,

as when you pay the bill

discreetly in a restaurant

and turn away,

that is, if ever

you have the wherewithal.

From ‘An Elusive State – Entering al-Chwm’,                      Cinnamon Press, 2008

                  Other Books by Steve Griffiths

Landing (Rack Press, 2008) (rackpress@nicholasmurray.co.uk).    

Selected Poems (Seren, 1993) (www.seren-books.com)

Uncontrollable Fields (Seren, 1990)

Civilised Airs (Seren, 1984)

Anglesey Material: Poems, 1975-78 (Rex Collings, 1980) 

He has appeared in a number of anthologies, including the Library of Wales Poetry 1900-2000, (2007, Parthian Books, featuring 100 twentieth century Welsh poets writing in English) (www.libraryofwales.org).

Steve Griffiths was born in Trearddur Bay, Anglesey, in 1949. He has published five collections of poems since 1980, the last being Selected Poems (Seren, 1993).     Read a poem from it by clicking here. 

Steve has recently completed a new book which traces a movement from darkness into light, mostly lyrical and playful poems of renewal written during 2006/8.  Some appeared in Poetry Wales in April 2007, others in The Rialto.    The book is ready to go out to publishers……

More Biog

See www.academi.org/writers-of-wales for more about the writers of Wales.