Henry Graham

I read only yesterday about the death of poet Henry Graham. As a contributing editor of Ambit, he was responsible for my first professional publication in a journal. A painter, he turned to poetry, as painters often do. Considerably more sweary as a poet than I, he nevertheless picked out some of my poems from the doubtless massive piles of submissions, giving particular notice to Joan of Arc. They eventually took three poems, wanting to give me double page spread, for which I was paid the princely sum of £10. I never cashed the cheque....

Henry Graham's obituary in The Guardian

His reworking of Shelley's Ozymandias is right up my street....

Ozy

I met a traveller in Antiques Land
who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
stand in the desert . . . which somewhat surprised me, and
considering we’d never met before his frown
and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
left me non-plussed, that's not to say filled with dread,
after all buying an antique warming pan with tiny rings
minding my rhyme and meter when this black guy said
without introduction and with a mocking leer:
My name is Ozy man, I dig old ‘tings:
nothing is too unsightly, none beyond repair!
Noting bedside remains, I found I could repay
his colossal neck with a boundless stare
and quite alone he turned and walked away.

Henry Graham