Scottish Poet, Graham Fulton has been writing and performing poetry since 1987 when he joined the Paisley Writers’ Group run by Tom Leonard, and was a founder member of the influential Itinerant Poets performance and publishing group which included Jim Ferguson and Bobby Christie.
His first major collection of poems was Humouring the Iron Bar Man published by Polygon in 1990, followed by Knights of the Lower Floors in 1994. His work has appeared in many major literary publications in both the UK and the USA, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland and Scottish Television.
He was on the editorial board of the important and popular West Coast Magazine in the early 1990s, and was joint winner of the prestigious Scotia Bar First of May Poetry Prize in 1992. He has also received three Scottish Arts Council bursaries.
Always an individualist and never part of the the Poetry Establishment in Scotland. Graham Fulton is renowned for his intense, energetic and entertaining readings, and has read his poetry live from Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow, Scotland, to Los Angeles in California. His latest collection is Inner Circle from Controlled Explosion Press, a publishing imprint set up to produce limited editions of some of Graham Fulton’s smaller scale projects.
“My poetry is about people. I am particularly interested in observations of 'normal’ life, often beginning with a humdrum detail or incident and working outwards. The big and the small become one, and what seems insignificant can be transformed when isolated and magnified. The ordinary becomes extraordinary, personal feelings become universal. There’s a thin line between comedy and tragedy, beauty and ugliness, sadness and sanity. It’s all interchangeable”.
“I’ve admired Graham Fulton’s work since I first heard it: his mix of tenderness, adrenalin, razor clarity and dynamism, as rare as it is potent, just sings. This is poetry got right to the heart and the head at the same time. It’s just poetry got right. Brilliant.”
Janice Galloway
“I work in free verse, which I find gives my voice discipline and focus. My poetry has a distinct, controlled rhythm, which is very apparent during a reading. However, for me, it’s vital that the poem works on the page first of all. When that is achieved, the live performance will then take care of itself. Themes that turn up in my poems again and again are conflict, foreign cultures, social tension, religion, work, childhood, the reality of death, obsession, the fleetingness of celebrity, the individual trying to survive in the crowd.
My poems have always been very cinematic with a strong use of vivid imagery, so projects involving photography were a natural development. Many of the same themes that appear in my writing also occur naturally in the pictures, and I’m currently developing a number of visual ideas for publication in either CD or book form, as well as collections combining harmonious poems and photographs.
I've learnt from a small group of poets, some from Scotland and the rest of Europe, some from America, all separated by decades and oceans but unified in their celebration of the astonishing world of the ordinary as well as their attitude and approach to writing. Find your own way and say what you have to as truthfully as you can”.
'From 1997 until 2001 I withdrew from writing poetry completely and did some other things, recharged. Since 2001 I’ve begun on what I see as the second phase of my 'career’ as a poet. Now I simply want to continue to enjoy writing and create a body of exciting new work, see what happens.'
Graham Fulton