About Graham Clifford:

Graham Clifford was born in 1973 and grew up in Lyneham, Wiltshire. He trained as a fine artist before attending the UEA Creative Writing MA, tutored by Andrew Motion and Denise Riley. His poems have appeared in magazines including; The Rialto, Smiths Knoll, Magma, Obsessed with Pipework, Iota, Staple, BAD, The Rue Bella and The New Writer. Graham’s writing has received bursaries from the UEA and the Writers Inc, commendations in, among others, the Arvon International Poetry competition, the Bridport Poetry Prize, the 2004 Peterloo Poetry competition and two successive Biscuit Publishing prizes. Graham is the first prize winner of the New Writer 2006 Poetry Collection Prize. He has performed his work at venues such as the Hay on Wye Literary Festival, the Troubadour café, The Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and The Barbican, London. Graham works as an English coordinator and phase manager in one of the largest primary schools in London. He lives in Walthamstow with his partner and daughter.

(c) Anna Hubrich

The Best Poem Ever Written

I write a poem that is the best. Massive.
I don’t just mean long, but
huge intellectually
and although it ends up as quite a few pages
it’s so easy to read it’s like freefalling- each line
teeming with genius thoughts,
whole other worlds you hadn’t thought of.
The poem makes me famous.
It’s on the lips of intellectuals
and cleaners; teachers
and drinkers because the breweries
print stanzas of the poem
on the bottom of beer bottles.
On hot, oxygen-depleted nights
I walk down city streets and hear
lines of my poem being whispered
by sticky people. On the tube,
I peek over the top of a book about me
at a man in a suit nodding off
and recognise the words he’s mouthing
in his swoon.
All front pages, every day
have the entire poem in small font, so it fits-
bombings or knifings get tucked inside.
The new novelist pays well to get
my poem printed as an introduction:
she knows her work makes no sense without it.
Everyone I have ever known
rings me to ask how I did it.
I say I don’t know, and that’s the truth.
After a year the fuss doesn’t die down.
One morning I sit at my computer
and hear downstairs turn the TV on.
I put my ear to a gap in the floorboards.
It’s an actor and he’s reading my poem.
It’s a good version; I’ve heard it before.
He has a Shakespearean voice
doing justice to what the introducer calls
The Best Poem Ever Written.
I listen to it all, I travel where the poem takes me
then get back in my chair
and write a better one.

published in Obsessed with Pipework, ed. 24
Biscuit Publishing Poetry Prize 2007