David Wright
My first choice is the late W. S. Graham's Uncollected Poems (Greville Press Pam- phlets, £7.50). These include the last poems of a not quite neglected, but grossly underrated poet — arguably the best Scotch poet since MacDiarmid, though no dabbler in Lallans. In these masterly late verses, especially in 'A Walk to the Gulvas' he achieves a hard, classical simplicity: the pay-off of a lifetime's devotion to the craft. My second choice is the autobiography of the famous percussionist Evelyn Glennie Good Vibrations (Hutchinson, £12.95) which I found both stimulating and exhilar- ating. But I have to declare an interest, having been, like her, stone deaf from childhood, and practitioner of an art that, like hers, would seem to require perfect hearing. What she has to say about deaf- ness and its conquest — in her case, through music — jibes perfectly with my own experience.
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