What do you think?
Rate this book
Visibilty: Selected Poems
The newest volume selects pieces from each of the poet's seven books of poetry and spans the poet's career, from his early work inspired by Seamus Heaney and his sense of form and feeling for the natural world, to later pieces that showcase the distinctive style Mort developed over time. The poetry utilizes a sharp eye for detail, an acute grasp of character, and the ability to evoke affecting atmosphere and situation to great effect. This compilation functions as both a satisfying collection of poetry and as a vantage point for observing the development of an artist.
176 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2007
8 people want to read
About the author
Graham Mort
23 books7 followersGraham Mort has had a lengthy career as a freelance writer and artist in education, specialising in innovative combined arts projects. He has taught writing courses for the Arvon Foundation and Taliesin Trust and was director of studies for the Open College of the Arts, extending distance learning though new technology. He is currently professor of Creative Writing and Transcultural Literature, at Lancaster University where he directs the Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research. He has worked extensively on literature development projects in Africa for the British Council and for the University of Soran in Kurdistan. Amongst his many awards are the Edge Hill University Short Story Prize 2011, the Bridport Prize for the short story collection Touch (Seren 2010), Cheltenham Poetry Competition first prize (twice), a major Eric Gregory Award, two Duncan Lawrie prizes in the Arvon Foundation International Poetry competition and a Poetry Book Society recommendation. His latest book of poems, published by Seren in 2011, is, Cusp.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 21, 2010
2634423 Graham Mort is one of the world’s most accomplished poets. He’s taught writing courses for the Arvon Foundation and the Taliesin Trust (Wales), and he was director of studies for the Open College of the Arts (Wales). He now lectures in Creative Writing at Lancaster University (England), where he directs the Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research and develops writing projects in Africa for the British Council. He’s won many awards for his poetry, among them the Cheltenham Poetry Competition (first place, two times), a major Eric Gregory Award, two Duncan Lawrie prizes in the Arvon Foundation International Poetry competition and a Poetry Book Society recommendation.
Graham Mort has long been one of my favorite poets and short story writers. In Visibility one can read selected works from five previous collections of Graham Mort’s poetry as well as a substantial collection of new poems, written especially for this particular book.
Mort’s early poetry focused on the natural world, however, his very distinctive style can be seen throughout his evolution and consists of technical assurance, a keen eye for detail, and a wonderful grasp of atmosphere. He is a master at “showing, rather than telling,” however, when it’s appropriate to “tell,” Mort doesn’t shy away.
The poems contained in this volume are the work of a mature poet, writing at possibly the height of his powers. While all of Mort’s poems are thought provoking, they are also filled with sensory detail – we can see, hear, feel, and sometimes smell and taste the world he evokes.
Mort seems comfortable writing in any form of poetry – free verse, rhymed verse, half-rhyme, internal rhyme, even the sonnet. He has a special gift for metaphor and imagery and his control of the verse line and verse paragraph are unparalleled.
These poems, like all of Graham Mort’s poems, have been meticulously crafted and they not only “hold up” to repeated readings, they get better and better with each visit.
One of my all time favorite “Graham Mort” poems is “Wild Grapes,” one of several poems that revolve around his first visit to Catalonia, shortly after the death of Franco, but prior to the changes that have since taken place.
Wild Grapes
Scrub explodes in splinters of green;
hillsides trickle dust, a lizard coils
its false tail under a prickly pear.
Even rock is aromatic with sun;
oils of lavender and rosemary sublime
into superheated air, arthritic
roots haul us up a gully that sheds sweat
and stones under our feet.
These hillsides were terraced for vines
gone wild long since; here is what labour
comes to in the end, its forsaken love,
the scars of some lost wine war
with France.
Wild grapes are too sour for pressing;
they've strayed from the knife,
from grafting onto newer stock;
those cellars where cases of wine
and rifles were laid down
fall inwards onto darkness now.
The years that propped their vaults
- the constant temperature of air -
saw the sown stones of hope crushed, until
wishes sent after the old language returned,
bringing the Garnacha of speech
to christen its own elusiveness.
Air is resinous with scent,
a hawk drifts in your caught breath,
your knees gleaming as I wait for you,
watching the beach's turning
tide of flesh.
As one who’s visited Catalonia many time, I found this poem so evocative. Scrub really does explode in splinters of green; lizards really do coil their tails under the prickly pears; and the air really is resinous with the scent of grapes. I love how Mort brought all the senses into play in this poem.
Another favorite of mine is “Ravens at Red Bank.”
a foursquare gliding dance
a half-quadrille
an airborne masque of rare
funereal etiquette
on the polished floor of sky
where black
is de rigueur
their cries bump and grate
iron gourds from
which the lake's bright lead
or liquid slate
is poured
feathered spokes
of a sky-wheel turning
then tumbling to a dare
shot dead
until their wings flick out
to flirt
a carbon-diamond
sex appeal
we stumble to a halt
stand staring
skyward
in the wet sap-scent
of this logged space
one birch goes up
straight as a radio mast
its budding tines capture
the quadraphonic sky-dance
bring it down
to wood anemones
herb paris humble
in the grass
the broken yokes
of celandines
your raptured
upturned face.
For me, poetry doesn’t get any more sophisticated or assured than the poem above.
When it comes to poetry, however, Graham Mort can do it all. Just look how different the next poem, “Dithyramb,” is:
We lie on our backs in the bright field
of the poem, listening to the hum of
the earth, the indecipherable language
of magnetism; it spins us like needles
as we watch the burst blue sofa
of the sky. Everything is rich and dizzy
in the poem: syllables fizz and wasps
fly to the petals of our faces to drink
sweet spit. The sun goes down behind
torched cities and we look beyond the sky
to where the Universe must be: a wheel
of whitest incandescent gas that whirls
us into everlastingness. We sleep and
wake up, still inside our lost selves, still
in the poem, still in the night. Blackthorn
blossom covers us, falling from branches
where sloes will ripen a purple bloom of
bitterness. There is a grove of yew trees
dark with Druid’s breath, a tomb with
faded writing, an owl coughing, drifts
of pink cherry flowers – the usual corny
stuff of verse. Something quite ordinary
has gone missing in this poem - like rain,
an old brown coin, a day of the week or
punctuation or life – we’ll never guess.
Wind is pressing us into wet grass, still
on our backs, still with berry-stained
fingers, so that our hands almost touch:
now a syllable
now a dactyl
now a dithyramb apart.
For those who would like to learn more about Graham Mort, you can visit his Website at http://web.me.com/graham.mort/website/We...
And below is a bibliography of his published work.
I know Graham Mort has readied a book of short stories to be published in March 2010 and he’s also working on a new collection of poetry. For me, Graham Mort, himself, as well as his poetry, is and always will be, a treasure.
Bibliography
A Country on Fire Littlewood, 1986
A Halifax Cider Jar (illustrated by various artists: limited edition with an appreciation of the potter, Isaac Button, by Barry L. Sheridan) Yorkshire Arts Circus, 1987
Into the Ashes (illustrated by Janet Sansom) Littlewood, 1988
Sky Burial Dangaroo, 1989
Snow from the North Dangaroo, 1992
Circular Breathing Dangaroo, 1997
A Night on the Lash Seren, 2004
Visibility: New and Selected Poems Seren, 2007
Graham Mort has long been one of my favorite poets and short story writers. In Visibility one can read selected works from five previous collections of Graham Mort’s poetry as well as a substantial collection of new poems, written especially for this particular book.
Mort’s early poetry focused on the natural world, however, his very distinctive style can be seen throughout his evolution and consists of technical assurance, a keen eye for detail, and a wonderful grasp of atmosphere. He is a master at “showing, rather than telling,” however, when it’s appropriate to “tell,” Mort doesn’t shy away.
The poems contained in this volume are the work of a mature poet, writing at possibly the height of his powers. While all of Mort’s poems are thought provoking, they are also filled with sensory detail – we can see, hear, feel, and sometimes smell and taste the world he evokes.
Mort seems comfortable writing in any form of poetry – free verse, rhymed verse, half-rhyme, internal rhyme, even the sonnet. He has a special gift for metaphor and imagery and his control of the verse line and verse paragraph are unparalleled.
These poems, like all of Graham Mort’s poems, have been meticulously crafted and they not only “hold up” to repeated readings, they get better and better with each visit.
One of my all time favorite “Graham Mort” poems is “Wild Grapes,” one of several poems that revolve around his first visit to Catalonia, shortly after the death of Franco, but prior to the changes that have since taken place.
Wild Grapes
Scrub explodes in splinters of green;
hillsides trickle dust, a lizard coils
its false tail under a prickly pear.
Even rock is aromatic with sun;
oils of lavender and rosemary sublime
into superheated air, arthritic
roots haul us up a gully that sheds sweat
and stones under our feet.
These hillsides were terraced for vines
gone wild long since; here is what labour
comes to in the end, its forsaken love,
the scars of some lost wine war
with France.
Wild grapes are too sour for pressing;
they've strayed from the knife,
from grafting onto newer stock;
those cellars where cases of wine
and rifles were laid down
fall inwards onto darkness now.
The years that propped their vaults
- the constant temperature of air -
saw the sown stones of hope crushed, until
wishes sent after the old language returned,
bringing the Garnacha of speech
to christen its own elusiveness.
Air is resinous with scent,
a hawk drifts in your caught breath,
your knees gleaming as I wait for you,
watching the beach's turning
tide of flesh.
As one who’s visited Catalonia many time, I found this poem so evocative. Scrub really does explode in splinters of green; lizards really do coil their tails under the prickly pears; and the air really is resinous with the scent of grapes. I love how Mort brought all the senses into play in this poem.
Another favorite of mine is “Ravens at Red Bank.”
a foursquare gliding dance
a half-quadrille
an airborne masque of rare
funereal etiquette
on the polished floor of sky
where black
is de rigueur
their cries bump and grate
iron gourds from
which the lake's bright lead
or liquid slate
is poured
feathered spokes
of a sky-wheel turning
then tumbling to a dare
shot dead
until their wings flick out
to flirt
a carbon-diamond
sex appeal
we stumble to a halt
stand staring
skyward
in the wet sap-scent
of this logged space
one birch goes up
straight as a radio mast
its budding tines capture
the quadraphonic sky-dance
bring it down
to wood anemones
herb paris humble
in the grass
the broken yokes
of celandines
your raptured
upturned face.
For me, poetry doesn’t get any more sophisticated or assured than the poem above.
When it comes to poetry, however, Graham Mort can do it all. Just look how different the next poem, “Dithyramb,” is:
We lie on our backs in the bright field
of the poem, listening to the hum of
the earth, the indecipherable language
of magnetism; it spins us like needles
as we watch the burst blue sofa
of the sky. Everything is rich and dizzy
in the poem: syllables fizz and wasps
fly to the petals of our faces to drink
sweet spit. The sun goes down behind
torched cities and we look beyond the sky
to where the Universe must be: a wheel
of whitest incandescent gas that whirls
us into everlastingness. We sleep and
wake up, still inside our lost selves, still
in the poem, still in the night. Blackthorn
blossom covers us, falling from branches
where sloes will ripen a purple bloom of
bitterness. There is a grove of yew trees
dark with Druid’s breath, a tomb with
faded writing, an owl coughing, drifts
of pink cherry flowers – the usual corny
stuff of verse. Something quite ordinary
has gone missing in this poem - like rain,
an old brown coin, a day of the week or
punctuation or life – we’ll never guess.
Wind is pressing us into wet grass, still
on our backs, still with berry-stained
fingers, so that our hands almost touch:
now a syllable
now a dactyl
now a dithyramb apart.
For those who would like to learn more about Graham Mort, you can visit his Website at http://web.me.com/graham.mort/website/We...
And below is a bibliography of his published work.
I know Graham Mort has readied a book of short stories to be published in March 2010 and he’s also working on a new collection of poetry. For me, Graham Mort, himself, as well as his poetry, is and always will be, a treasure.
Bibliography
A Country on Fire Littlewood, 1986
A Halifax Cider Jar (illustrated by various artists: limited edition with an appreciation of the potter, Isaac Button, by Barry L. Sheridan) Yorkshire Arts Circus, 1987
Into the Ashes (illustrated by Janet Sansom) Littlewood, 1988
Sky Burial Dangaroo, 1989
Snow from the North Dangaroo, 1992
Circular Breathing Dangaroo, 1997
A Night on the Lash Seren, 2004
Visibility: New and Selected Poems Seren, 2007
Displaying 1 of 1 review