The Hitting Game is the first collection of poems by the London-based poet Graham Clifford.

The vibrancy of the poet's voice and the immediacy of his claims upon our attention are clear. These are urban poems where nature appears like a strange intrusion: a flock of swallows 'flick about dusk like black flames'. These are poems full of unexpected dramas and fresh enchantments, they provoke as well as delight.

Graham Clifford was born in 1973 in Portsmouth and grew up in Wiltshire. He has been published in numerous literary magazines such as Poetry Wales, The Rialto, Magma, and London Magazine.