William Sydney Graham was born in 1918 in Greenock, Scotland, the son of a shipyard engineer, a profession for which the young Graham served a brief apprenticeship. After attending evening classes at Glasgow University and a course in literature and philosophy at the Working Men's College at Newbattle Abbey, he decided to become a poet.  His first collection, Cage Without Grievance, was published in 1942. He was to publish six more collections, of which the last three, The Nightfishing (1955), Malcolm Mooney's Land (1970) and Implements in their Places (1977), all published by Faber and Faber, have been the most influential. He married Nessie Dunsmuir in 1954, and they were permanently resident in Cornwall from 1955 on. W.S. Graham died of cancer in 1986, at the age of 67.

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My study of Graham's work, Where the People Are, and my edition of his New Collected Poems were both published in 2004. My edition of his New Selected Poems was published in 2019 to mark the centenary of his birth. Both books are published by Faber and Faber. 

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