Typescript of a version of Part II of Czargrad
1973?
From MS Add.10000/2

John Riley sent copies of poems which he had brought to a degree of completion to friends and fellow-poets for comment and criticism. One of these friends was Michael Grant, whose correspondence from Riley, donated to the University Library in 2013, includes texts of numerous poems, one of which is this typescript of a version of the end of Part II of Czargrad. It contains several lines that had been excised by the time the poem first appeared in print.

It is apparent from Riley’s letters to Grant that he made major amendments to Czargrad in the course of its composition, some of them in response to criticism the poem received from his correspondents. In one letter he reported ‘a brainstorm over Czargrad’: ‘part III as she was stands abolished, and I’m into a new fit the third.’