Perhaps it’s true, as Twain implies,
statistics are the greatest lies
but point for point and size for size,
I think they tie for major prize
with poets’ modest little ‘i’s.
*****
Margaret Ann Griffiths, aka Maz, aka Grasshopper, was a British poet known almost exclusively for her online work. In his Preface and Personal Recollection, editor Alan Wickes speaks of her “belligerent modesty” and her lack of interest in the preservation of her verse. In 2008, after winning Eratosphere‘s annual Sonnet Bake-off with “Opening a Jar of Dead Sea Mud” and being praised by Richard Wilbur, she was a Guest Poet on the Academy of American Poets website, where she was hailed as “one of the up-and-coming poets of our time”.
Her poem ‘Lies’ speaks volumes (in a brief space) about the different types of modesty available to creative figures. Her reputation for wit, intelligence, astute criticism and kind-heartedness goes well with her wide-ranging subjects and diverse styles of verse. She was the preeminent English-language online poet of the early 21st century.
Her work was posthumously collected by fans and fellow poets in the 2011 ‘Grasshopper‘ from Arrowhead Press and Able Muse Press.
Photo: “Anjo da Vila, Vila Madalena, São Paulo, Brazil.” by ER’s Eyes – Our planet is beautiful. is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Form in Formless Times 
Lovely to see a bit of Grasshopper popping up here. That would please her very much, especially a cheeky little whippersnapper like this one.
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I love her work, it’s very rereadable – but also quite sad, a lot of it: medical problems, family problems, she throws it all out there along with her love of birds, animals, countryside, fallible humans, life in all its forms…
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She didn’t ever make a collection to be published, no set of her own choice. I don’t even know that she would have agreed to do that. So her book (though it has some lovely things in it and was assembled for the best of motives) doesn’t reflect her own final choices. She did lots of poems as exercises in one form or another, some with considerable time invested, others more on a whim. Much of this was a sort of online conversation for her. She was working as part of a community, and that community mattered. I love ‘Listening to the Dog’ which would be a desert-island poem for me, though neither metrical nor rhymed.
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The ‘Grasshopper’ collection gives a much more complete picture of a person in all her creativity, than you can usually extract from anyone’s Selected Poems or even Complete Poems. I somewhat doubt she would have had strong opinions on the project – I get the sense she would be bemused by it all.
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A pleasure to see Maz again!
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Poets’ self-curated collections often give the impression that they are constantly writing inspired work. I think Maz’s collection presents a truer picture of the working writer, who is constantly trying things out for the fun of it and in response to other writers and particular prompts, contests, etc. They aren’t all masterpieces, but you get a real sense of the individual behind the poems in her work; that person interests me a lot, though I never met her.
Susan McLean
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She is missed by a surprising number of people who never met her – myself included.
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