Themes, Dreams and Seasons

Graham Wade is a writer and musician living on the East Yorkshire coast. He studied English at Cambridge University, is a Fellow of Trinity College of Music, London, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1982. He has published over thirty books among them his critically acclaimed biographical studies of the great Spanish composer. Joaquin Rodrigo, and of the guitarists, Andres Segovia and Julian Bream, as well as works on musical history, and several slim volumes of poems. In 2002 he was awarded the Schotts Gold Medal for his contribution to Rodrigo studies and in 2010 won the David St John Thomas Prize for his first novel The Fibonacci Confessions. Graham Wade has written for many newspapers and periodicals including The Times, The Independent, and The Guardian and is an Advisory Editor and contributor to both the British and American New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. In 1999 he was appointed General Editor for a series of paperbacks for the leading American music publisher, Mel Bay Inc., of Missouri.

In Graham Wade's poetry, our perceptions of the world about us are sharpened, keenly refreshed. They become the beat of our pulse. John Carrington; Graham Wade's best are his tragic poems, which is rare for most incitements to pity by modern verse-writers are mere sentimentality...His poems have the true pathos of the soul. Kathleen Raine; This is a most unusual and rewarding anthology – a reflective personal journey of 60 years in author Graham Wade’s life. Over its sheer variety and volume, “Themes, Dreams & Seasons” covers prose-poems, traditional poems, recollections spread over decades, and three short stories. It is demanding and challenging, whether in its modern poetic style and images, or the sheer range of unexpected subjects. There are 250 prose-poems, some traditional poems, many revealing reflections, in 20 `sections’ or chapters. Graham, a prize-winning novelist, prolific author of many books, is from his earliest career primarily a musician, composer, teacher, and an international authority on classical guitar.; What might you expect in this read? A glimpse into a remarkable mind. And all you need to know about the book’s singular quality arises in a splendid erudite, so readable foreword by John Carrington, School Head of English, completely rewarding in itself. And an engaging humorous remembrance by Brian Swann, Professor of Humanities, about Graham’s early family life and his acquiring of his first guitar. They knew each other at Cambridge and elsewhere - but their `offering’ is beyond `academic’ and is universal. ;Those seeking greater understanding of the `human condition’ will, I’m sure, find some literary explorative answers. Graham is far from pretentious. He is exposure-unprotected in/of his imaginative, compassionate mind and heart, which has revealed itself to himself over those decades. What might it do, helpfully, to you, dear reader? Mr Carrington quotes another poetic expert as believing `a poem should not mean but be’. That’s Graham also, who tries `not to be too experimental or progressive’. He seeks `a natural finesse that blends rhythm, sound and language’. And he is both modernistic and traditionally original, witty, with soft, gentle humour, and with beauty in his images. They are not all sunny and light, some (poems and recollections) are sombre with dark events. I loved his variety, especially in traditional: Young Love, full of sad yearning (p6), Requiem, a love lost (p24), A Sailor Remembers, another lost love (p84), Calcutta, `eyes meeting expressively’ (p102), Poor Tiger, author in mind and being of a caged tiger (p123), and the third of his short stories: `The Golden Guitar of the Pharaoh’s Daughter’ (p.365). A prized toy of such a daughter? Is it our author speaking? `As I had recently begun to play the guitar…..’ ;Our author-poet went on, in his long life, to charm the world as an authority of this `stringed musical instrument, with a fretted fingerboard, six or twelve strings, played by plucking or strumming with the fingers or a plectrum’. But In his previous life, Graham Wade might well have tutored that Pharaoh’s daughter! Brian Jarvis.