Mr. Graham is that rare creature, a poet who knows something about ordinary life outside the library, where livings are earned in dangerous and cold labour….

The Nightfishing is a grand sea poem, strong, turgid, violent and driving, as the sea does, in unknown directions. In years to come Mr. Graham may write one of the great sea poems of our language. More than any living poet his talent is compressed and disciplined to this purpose. He may be too sincere, at least he is not relaxed by the welfare of modern life. Fishing will always be dangerous and cold, and this gives his poem a grip on experience which the villanelles of the universities never communicate. We know what it is like to have been fishing for herring at night after we have read Mr. Graham's poem, and we understand more deeply what this means than if...