When T.S. Eliot wrote of W.S. Graham's collection, The Nightfishing, that some of these poems - by their sustained power, their emotional depth and maturity and their superb technical skill - may well be among the more important poetical achievements of our time, he could not have stated the truth more clearly.

Graham's career, which ended with his death in 1986, followed a pattern of steady refinement of vision and ever-deepening enquiry. In Selected Poems, taken from both the publications of his lifetime and posthumous volumes, and containing at least one major poem never collected before, the full stature of this still insufficiently appreciated genius is revealed.