File 15 - Poetry

Manuscript and typescript copies, with minor annotations, of more than 500 poems by Niall Griffiths, many of them published, some unpublished and some without titles, in a variety of formats, and including a few in two or more drafts, written primarily in relation to personal experiences, feelings and thoughts while living in Cambridge and Aberystwyth; also included are rough notes produced by Niall Griffiths in the process of composing his poems and prose, a letter to him from Stand magazine concerning the potential publication of ‘Sea Otters, In Oils’, manuscript notes by him on subjects including the history of English literature and human biology, notes made by him for personal professional and domestic purposes, and a note to him from the British Council about a meeting with a journalist from the Croatian newspaper Vjesnik.

The poems include:
A Boiled Egg Some Toast & The Chart Show Refuses To Drip The Dream Away; A Chewed Pentop Without A Pen Is Lonelier Than Shaven Bristles Lying In The Sink; A Dream; A Field In Saughall Massie; A Grief That Hasn’t Happened Yet; A Happy Memory; A Hare Stares At The Sun Through A Rainbow Caught In Cobwebs; A Hood To Hide Your Face; A Lesson In Grammar; A Little Drop Of Moisture On A Packet Of Rizlas & You Lose The Whole Fucking Lot; A Little Something To Fend Off The Hell; A Lot Less Often Now But Still They Come; A Moment To Get My Breath Back; A Note On Leaving, For Deborah; A Poem In The Park; A Present; A Spike From The Star Has Fallen To Earth & Has Gathered Green Eyes & Fur; A Summer Sunday Afternoon, Just After The Rain; Aberystwyth, 27 August, 1992; Aborted Ph.D Sickness; About Ten Past Three, Maybe; Acceptance; Advice; After A Gorgeous Dream Of Fucking Four Women; After An Eight, Maybe A Nine-Day Drinking Session; After Kafka; After Lifting Weights; After Shaving; After Sweden; After Working; Aleatory; Aleatory (Wax, May 1997); Aleatory Composition Whilst Watching Brookside; All Grown Up; All Of This, Only; Alltimes & Someways, Unlike The Sun, I Know It Will Return; Almost Imperceptible; Always Something Dirty About Theory; Amphetamine Hangover; An Out Of The Body Experience; And Only The Clouds Are To Blame; And The Story Of Us All Is An Ongoing One; Animals; Another Muggy Night; Another One; Another Poem On The Death Of Another Grandad; Answering Back; Approaching The Palace Of Wisdom On A Bus; April, End Of; Archaeology; Arse; Arsenal 1, Liverpool 2; As Always, As Rare; As Close As We May Ever Come; As Loaded With Meaning As A Weapon Now Defunct; As The Flower Faints Before The Florist, Perfume Is Manufactured In Factories All Over The World; At Dyfi Junction; At The End Of The Road Is A High Wooden Tower In Which A Man With A Big Gun Stands; At The Thought; At Thirty-Two; At Work; Awe; Ball-To-Hand; Bank Balances Beautiful Views And, Well, Anything Really; Banks Of Fog Like Big White Pillows; BBC Cheque; Because If You’re Already Horizontal, No-One Can Knock You Down; Because The World’s In Colour; Bedtime; Beluga, Bless Us Both; Big Brother; Big Moth In My Kitchen; Binge; Bird; Bird, Again; Birdsong; Bitemarks And Friction Burns; Blackened Breadcrumbs; Blinded Owls And Dystrophic Horses; Block; Blue Period; Blueprint; Bombay Insomnia; Brainscan; Breaking Through; Breathless; Bruised; Bwlch; C2H5OH; Can You Imagine How Hot It Was, To Make That Place Seem Cold?; Caption; Cell; Chain-Smoking Camels; Checkout; Cheese & Onion Pie, Damaged In Transit; Cheese & Potato Bake; Chickenbones; Chocolate Cake Three Times A Day & You End Up Hating Chocolate Cake; Christ That Guinness Has Gone Right Through Me; Christmas Card From A Shadow; Chunks Of Monday; Citazopram; Citazopram, Again; City Station; Civil War; Clash; Claxon; Closest I’ve Been In A Long, Long Time; Cocaine; Coffee; Coitus Interruptus; Cold Chicken Madras, 9 A.M.; Colm Recovering; Coming Off A Binge & Craving Sugar, The Rain Burns Skin Here & In Liverpool & In Some Parts Of Yorkshire; Coming Off You Like Steam; Coming Up To Armistice Day, 1998; Commercial Break; Conception; Couch; Creaking Sounds At Midnight; Curried Beans; Daft Mulligan; Day Of Rest; Daylight Saving; Dead Dog; Dead, Bukowski, Dead Now; December; Defrosting The Fridge; Determined; Developing, Darkroom, Dusk; Diabetes; Diazepam; Dilemma; Dim Days Of Long Yearning, Nights Soft With Loss; Directly After Watching Terry Gilliam’s Brazil; Dishwasher; Disney With A Bazooka And The Tooth Fairy Carries Pliers; Distemper, Cancer, A Horse With Two Broken Legs; Do This & You’ll Feel Better; Dog; Dog Dreams; Dominatrix; Don’t Answer The Door, Ignore The Phone; Don’t Cry For Me, Cos I’m Going Away; Don’t Even Think About It; Don’t Let Me Fall; Don’t Mark Me; Drained; Dreamlessly; Dreams Of Leaving; Dredger; Dregs; Drip, Drip, Drip; Driving Around Town; Drone; Drought; Drunk On White Wine & Anne Sexton; Drunk; Drying Out; Dunblane; During A Typing Break; E #1; Easy: Just A Name; Empty Bottle Wednesday; Envoi: In The Park; Everybody’s Moving South; Everything Dreams; Everything In Its Place; Everything Is Clean; Ex; Exponentially Accelerating The Metabolism; Extract Of Passionflower, Dermatologically Tested; Eyeballs Aflame Yet Remaining Unburnt; Eyeballs Burning Without A Flame; Facebook; Fame Academy, 2003; Farting, Halitosis, Bitten Finger-Nails (Although I Have Had A Shave); February 2006; Fertility; Finally; Finding it; First Lines For A Long Time, And Of ‘96; First Night In Aberystwyth; First Novel; First Taste Of Tequila; First Win Of The Season; Flashback; Flea-Bite; Following Through; Food; For Nobody In Particular; For Once; For Some Time, Now; For Tina, Always Aged 22; Forbidden; Fortuitousness; Four, Not Eight, Potatoes; Freakshow; Free; Freefall; Friendly Fire; Frightened Into Life Like Ice; From Me Will Come Flowers; Fuck, Yes; Games Of Grotesque Threats; Get In, Get Out, Stop Fucking About; Getting Ready To Go Out; Getting Wet; Giving Up Smoking; God, What A Night; Going To The Pub Where Paula Will Be; Good Morning, Vodka-Breath; Gorgeous; Got To Get This Out: I Can’t Concentrate On ‘A Bit Of Fry & Laurie’; Gravedigging; ‘Green Eyes’; Greenland; Gremlins; Gwen Stefani; Hackles; Haiku: Ponytail; Hair Of Auburn Water; Halloween, 1997; Hangover; Happy & Happier With Every Drop I Bleed; Hard Sky; Hay-On-Wye, 2005; Helicopter; Herbs; Here Comes A Common Cold; Here Endeth; Higher Power; Hillsborough; His Little ‘Hello’ Noises; Homewards; Hope It Snows This Christmas; Hot Tea & Strong Toast; How Can I Write Clearly The Simple Stupid Statement That I Miss You Like Fuck?; How Will I Know When I Get There?; Hung From The Rafters Stripped & Empty Like A Gutted Pig In A Butcher’s Window; Hungry; I Am Full Of Life; I Could Wear A Ski-Mask And Clothe Myself In Shadow; I Feel No Fear About Not Being Here; I Feel No Fear About Not Being Here, No Tadpoles Drift Towards Death; I First Moved Here Just After My Dog Died & I Needed To Live Somewhere Different, With No Memories; I Hope She’s In Here Somewhere; I Know I’m Odd; I Know You’re Wrong; I Live Twenty Yards From The Sea, And Didn’t Step Out Of The House Today; I Saw Him Last Six Days Ago, Prowling In The Garden; I Think I Need To Get Out More; I Think These Walls Need Painting; I Will Die In A Temple In Mongolia; I, WILL, One, Day, Forget; I’ll See You When I See You; I’ve Waited Fifteen Years For This; Icarus; Idle Bastard; If Fairies Can Be Squeezed From A Bottle; If I Heard Her Call My Name; Impaled On The Stamen Of A Marigold; In My Garden, Drinking; In Nineteen Hundred & Ninety Three (Almost Ninety Four); In No Way Like Some Paper Money Stuck To The Sole Of Your Shoe; In Tandem In Pandemonium; In The Doorway Of Barclay’s Bank; In The Place Of Peaceful Sleeping; Indelible; Insomnia: 1st November 1993, 7:38 A.M.; Insomnia; Interim; It Must Be Morning: I’m Coughing Up Phlegm; It’s Just So Much Easier This Way; It’s More Okay Than It’s Ever Been, Sometimes, Like Right Now; It’s Only Sunshine; It’s The Ordure Of Ordinariness Which Drives One To Don The Long Coat & Balaclava & Commence Carrying Blades; Jackdaw Dies In Backyard; January 3rd, 2000 AD; Jarvis Cocker Stole My Audience; Jingle Bells; Just Feel How My Heart Is Beating; Just For Starters; Just Let Me Watch The Fucking Football; Just Like I’ve Always Dreamed; Just Like The Blind Man Needs His Guide Dog, Just Like The Orchids Require The Sun; Just Not With It Today; Just Wide; Justification; Killing Things; Knives Of Nacre & Diamonds Of Steel; Knowledge; Let Me Go First; Let There Be Hedgehogs In The Hedgerows, Let There Be Lobsters Under The Sea; Leukaemic Cat; Life Always Finds A Way; Lighthouse Approaching From Far Away; Like Drowning; Like Love Is Supposed To Be; Like Some Half-Remembered Nightmare; Like The Luminous Ghosts Of Bones In An X-Ray Photograph; Lines Written After Visiting Tintern Abbey; Listing To One Side But I Can’t Tell Which; Little Bit Of A Sing-Song; Little Bits; Liverpool 5, Kosice 0; Liverpool 8, 4 A.M.; Living In Wales, Aged 26; Living; Llanberis Pass; Look At The Torturer Touching The Tortured; Losing The Moon; Love Poem; Lovely Dirty Nasty Brutal Ugly Fucked-Up Gorgeous World; Low-Rung Bliss, But Bliss All The Same; Lust; Mad Janet Rafferty; Mangled Cars In Moonlight; Mascara; Maturity; Maybe It’s Different In Sweden; Maybelline; Might As Well Call You Mabel; Might As Well, Yeh?; Millennium News; Monday, Early Afternoon; More Dog Dreams; More Than Half In Love; Morning Sunlight, Colour Of Cider; Morning; Mother’s Milk; Mould; Mountains Grow Like Cancer; Mountain-Sized Comets Tonight Hit Jupiter; Mourning; Mouth Ulcer; Moving; Mr. Seagull; Mushroom Soup & Wild Wild Horses; Music; My Beautiful War; My Friend Rat; My Jesus; My New Boots; My Sadness Once Was Terrible; Nameless; National Insurance Contributions; Necessity; Needing A Piss; Never Wear White Boxer Shorts When On A Drinking Binge; Nevertheless; New Book, New Drug, New Zit On My Face; New House 1; New House 2; New House 3; New World; Newsnight 1999; Newton’s Balls; Night Fright; Nine, Ten, Eleven O’clock; No Questions Asked; No, Leave The Light On & Take Off Your Clothes; Nothing But Time; Nothing To Worry About; November & Forever; Now I’m Free, Aren’t I?; O Such A Dirty Distance From The Complex, Constructed, Cocked-Up Self; October; Oh My Goodness, What A Performance, & Listen To That Crowd; Oh, Hello; Okay; Old Man In Search Of Discarded Pornography; On The Day Without Food; Once I Moved Like The Wind. Now I Surrender. That Is All; On The Fourth Or Fifth Day Of Knowing You; On The Seventh Day Without Food; One Foot Over The Threshold; One For The Children Who Torture Frogs To Death; One For Me, So That When I’m An Old Bastard I Can Read It & Thus Avoid Writing Some Self-Pitying Stuff Asking Where My Youth Went; One For The Road; One Question & An Answer; One Sunny Friday Afternoon I Steal Lou Reed’s ‘Between Thought & Expression’ And Sit In A Pub And Read It; Only For A Moment; Open All Hours; Open Poetry Reading Held In The Sphincter Of Venus; Origami; Oysters; Pack Up Your Troubles; Penrhyncoch Insomnia; Peru; Pilgrimage; Poem #?; Poem In Two Halves; Poems Written On Small Format Paper; Poetry; Poor; Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Drunkard; Possibility; Poverty Is Gravity; Pus; Quick ‘Un; Quiet Night In; Rain; Rain Is Poison & Sex Is Death; Rainbows: Simply Physics; Rainy Tuesday; Raising Aberystwyth; Rank Outsiders; Raspberry Ice-Cream And A Pot Of Tea; Reader Response; Recalled; Red Berries; Red Is The Rose; Rejection Slip; Remembering Rachel; Repeats; Re-Reading Pasternak, Chili In The Kitchen, The Telephone Doesn’t Ring; Response; Revelation; Ride The Tiger; Risible; Robin; Room Service; Rubbing The Lamp; Running Over A Rabbit; Sad; Saint Fuck You Of Assisi (Or: St Francis Of Assassins?); Sally Redwine; Scabies; Scene: Neil Having A Shite Time : 1:38 On A Rainy Tuesday In Aberystwyth [-] Soundtrack: ‘Alison’ By Elvis Costello; Scratching; Scratching Your Scrotum With A Sandpaper Rasp; Screaming Blue Murder; Sea Otters, In Oils; Seascape With Seagulls; September 12th, 1996; September Afternoon; Shock Upon Shock Upon Shock; Signing On, Waking, Shitting Are All In No Way Anyway Endless; Simplicity; Smudged; Snail Trails; So The Run-Over Cats Can Prowl Gracefully Into Heaven; Sodomy; Some Reasons; Something To Get Out Of Bed For; Sometimes I Get Such A Fright; Sometimes, When You Masturbate, Do You Ever Imagine That The Ghost Of A Dead Ancestor Is Watching?; Song; Song Of A Pad & Pen; Song: Searching; Song Sung By Someone Shot In The Larynx; Space & Light & Time Enough; Special Delivery; Spellbound By Foam; Spiked; Splattered; Spring Morning; Squawk; Still And Small; Still Trying, Still …; Stoned; Storm; Storm warning; Stray Cat; Strength; Strong Legs; Suburbia; Suicide Note; Summertime; Sunburn; Sunday Drunk; Sunstroke; Superglue; Surprising A Room; Surrendering; Susan & Suspension; Swaying In Time, In Sync, In Pain; Synchronicity; Tarrif [sic]; Telly Taliesin; Temazepam; Ten Years On; Terminal; Terminator Tao; Thanking You, Yours Sincerely, P.S. I’m In Hell; That Stupid Club; That’s Enough, Now; That’s Life; The Bacteria We Once Were Will Always Breed Within Us; The Beluga; The Cat Which Prowls Uninvited But Welcomed Through Our Rented Rooms; The Cobbler’s Down The Cobbled Alleyway; The Early Poems; The Final Straw Can Be Gossamer Light; The Genius; The House That Burning Built; The Joy Of Bathing; The Last Doesn’t Always Equal The First; The Laying On Of Hands; The Lizard, The Dead Rabbit, & Me; The Longevity Of Snowflakes; The Luckiest Man In The World; The Man Who Brings The Winds; The Mersey In My Veins; The Something For Nothing Society; The Technological Age; The Uncomfortable Chair; Then; There Is No Guilt Like The Guilt Of A Drunk; There’s always been a spark between us. Let’s have an affair; Thirty Septembers; This Just In; This Winter; Three Wishes; Thursday; Ticks; ‘Til Death Do Us Part; Time; Tired; To All My Fellow Prisoners; To Keep You Safe From Harm; To Myself, Again, Wherever Whenever I May Be; To Remain Forever Unread; To The People; Today She Comes Back; Tomorrow Is All About Fun; Too, Too Soon; Toothpaste; Toxic Psychosis; Training Pool For Injured Swans; Truth; Trying To Cope With After-Bingeing Boredom; Tuesday Nov 11th: Remembrance Day, 2008: 90 Years After The Armistice; Twins; Two People Kissing On A Collapsing Bridge; Two Shades Lighter Than Dijon Mustard; Unalone; Unbalanced Between This Lift, This Pit; Under Extreme Pressure Of Opinion; Unspoken Apology; Unsure; Vegetables Bubbling On The Stove, Bill Cosby On The Television – First Reading Of Elmore Leonard; Vegetarianism; Velvet Belly; Visitation; Visiting Whittington; Vista – City Street - Anywhere; Voices, Voices, To Bring It To An Ending; Waiting For Jennie To Come Back With The Milk; Waiting For The Phone, Corner Of Mill Road & Gwydir Street, 11.30PM, 15th May, 1990; Waiting for the water to boil; Wake Me Early, There’s A Lot To Do; Wanting The Words To Come; War; War In The Gulf & My Love’s Gone Away; Wastebucket; Waving A Can Of Stout Like A Black Flag Of Truce; We Could Be Outlaws, Just Like We Planned; Wednesday; Wednesday, Dinnertime; Well …; Well Thank You Andrew Barr From Keith; Wet Dream At 32; What If One In Every Thousand Bricks Was Hexagonal?; What Shape Is The Sea-Spray In?; What We Do With Tongues; When I Write My Masterpiece; When It Comes; When It Rains; When It’s Gone, It’s Gone; When Stars Hum Like Bad Reception; When The Heron Points Like Polaris From The Shores On Which We Walk; When Their Soft Bodies Pop; When You Read This; Where You Can Drink Forever; Whilst Peeling Potatoes For My Tea I Find One That Looks Not Unlike My Arse; White Days Of Cotton, Nights Of Wet Wool; White Flag; Why? Well, Listen; Winter Kills; With Tomorrow; With Your Hand Out The Window No-One Can Tell Whether You’re Seizing The Day Or Waving Goodbye; Without Fail; Wondering Who I’d Be If I Wasn’t Born Me; Working Girl; Would You Consider Going Out With An Alien?; Wrecked; Yorkshire Years; You Are An Angel: You Are Another One (Too Few Really) Sent From Heaven; You Call That A Bender?; You Don’t Always Have To Try It To Know You Won’t Like It; You Got Through It Then & You Will Do So Again; You Know When You See A Field Of Virgin Snow & You Can’t Resist Diving Into It & Messing It Up?; You Will Be Here Again; You, Marry, I, Have, Should; You’re Wishing Your Fucking Life Away, Man; Young; Your Fucking Rage; Your Story, Almost; ? [sic]; 28; 34; 3.A.M. Bath; 11:53 P.M. (Approx..); 6.28 P.M., 25th August 1990: Glory, Airstrikes, Barking Dogs; 23rd December, 1996; 11-11-99: Total Eclipse; 30th December, 2008; 911 On 26110; 21st June 2013.