Hugo Williams: Lines Off

This is out any day now. I don't suppose Hugo Williams will ever be the height of poetry fashion, but he always strikes me as something of a one-off, wringing the maximum effect out of deceptively simple-looking poems. I look forward to all his collections, and this one is no exception.

Declan Ryan on Hugo Williams

Interesting overview of Hugo Williams' Collected Poems here, in the Los Angeles Review of Books, by young poet Declan Ryan. Williams never really seems to quite fit in to any poetic school or movement, but I've liked his work ever since I first encountered it (a remaindered copy of Dock Leaves that I bought about 16 or 17 years ago). Billy's Rain is, as the article suggests, probably his best collection, but the Collected Poems is well worth a look.

Phil Brown on Hugo Williams

Over at Rogue Strands, Matthew Stewart has posted about Phil Brown's excellent Huffington Post feature on Hugo Williams, a poet whose work I've always enjoyed.

It rang quite a few bells with me. Years ago, 2004 I think, I went to hear him read in the theatre at Uppingham School. It was a weekday evening in late autumn, and I think I was the only person there who wasn't actually a pupil at the school. I'm not sure if the kids there had been dragooned into attending by their teachers, but they were an enthusiastic, appreciative and large audience.

After he'd read, I had a few words with him in the bar, and he very kindly offered to take a look at some of my work (I didn't ask him to, honestly). A few weeks later, I received a charming handwritten letter, in which rather as Phil describes, he pointed out why the poems really weren't very good. He was right and the advice he offered with a view to improving them was taken on board. But he also, by way of illustrating some of his points, enclosed a handwritten copy of his own poem Memory Dogs. At the time, I assumed it was a poem that he'd discarded previously, but it subsequently appeared in his collection Dear Room. I'm glad to hear that his health has improved, and that he's writing again.

London calling

I was down in London yesterday, mainly to visit the Geological Society in connection with a poem for an anthology project from Worple Press. It's to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the creation of William Smith's geological map of the country, and I was able to see the map itself. Seen full-size, on the wall of the Society's offices in Piccadilly, it's really an imposing and impressive piece of work. It was great to meet and have a drink with Michael McKimm, who as well as being a very fine poet, works at the Society and is co-ordinating the project.

I also managed to fit in a visit to the Viking exhibition at the British Museum, a bit of research for another literary project (of which more very soon), and some book-buying - Karen Solie's Selected Poems, Hugo Williams' I Knew The Bride, and Christopher Isherwood's The Condors and the Cows. I also couldn't help noticing, in Foyle's, two copies of The Elephant Tests. You'll have to forgive my delight at finding one of my collections in a London bookshop for the first time - it was nice to be sandwiched between WS Merwin and Hilary Menos.

I ended a great day by catching up with an old university friend for a quick drink before the train. It had been far, far too long.

Food for thought

Not been getting much chance to blog recently, but here's something to stimulate a bit of debate. I think Jon Stone has encapsulated a lot of what I feel about the subject. I'll return to it later in the week...

Party fears one

I once read a piece by Hugo Williams saying that, when putting together a poetry collection, he liked to print off each individual poem on a separate sheet, then lay them out on the floor. Then, he added, just like at a party, certain poems would start to gravitate towards others.

It's good advice, although actually pretty hard to achieve in my cluttered house (even a chapbook would be a struggle, if I'm honest - floorspace gets swallowed up at an astonishing rate). But it's worked for me in the past, so I'm doing it again.

Certain poems have started to resolve themselves into little knots, but others are remaining resolutely around the edges. My next task is to decide which of those wallflowers to show the door, and which to entice into the fun and games going on elsewhere. Maybe breaking out the cheese footballs and cava (on special offer down the Co-op just now) will help them shake of their inhibitions...

TS Eliot Prize

Something of a surprise, but a welcome one, that Philip Gross won the TS Eliot Prize last night for his collection The Water Table. He was certainly not one of the favourites, with many tipping Christopher Reid to take the award.

I've only read two of the shortlisted books (the George Szirtes and Hugo Williams collections), so it's hard to make an informed comment about the decision, but I've got a few of Gross's older collections and like them a lot, and have always wondered why he's, relatively speaking, missed out on recognition in the past. I'll have to dig them out to re-read, and catch up with this latest book.

I do have a slight problem with the judges' comments that "it was not merely a collection of poems but also so obviously a book". As Roddy Lumsden suggests over at Poets On Fire, I don't really think that the fact of it being a themed book should be that important - are we saying that an old-fashioned miscellany of occasional poems is somehow less worthy?

The TS Eliot Prize

The shortlist has been announced, and The Guardian ran a lengthy piece about the runners and riders here.

They seem to have spread the net a bit further than the Forward did (although their shortlist is twice as long, to be fair), but I think Simon Armitage might be slightly overstating the case when he says that the list reflects the "scope and breadth" of contemporary British poetry. Still, it's good to see someone like Philip Gross (a really underrated poet, IMHO) in there, and Alice Oswald, and Christopher Reid.

I am slightly baffled by what they say about Hugo Williams, mind you. Now I absolutely love his books, going way back, but one of the reasons I love them is precisely that he seems to be forever rewriting the same poem, trying to perfect it. West End Final's a really fine book, but I can't honestly see it as a great leap from Dear Room, or Billy's Rain. Good to see him there, though.

And I thought I'd been a bit hard on Don Paterson...

Issue 3 of Horizon Review is jam-packed with all sorts of goodies, and a fairly brief trawl through it at lunchtime was nothing like long enough to do it justice.

I put the poems themselves on hold for now, and the podcast on West Midlands poetry, and turned instead to the interviews. There's a really good piece on Hugo Williams, always a favourite of mine. I love what he says about line-breaks, especially that last line about the broken thermometer. Carrie Etter and Claire Crowther's piece is good too, as you might expect if you read the interviews with them both on these pages earlier this year.

And then there's Vidyan Ravinthiran's interview with Craig Raine. Among other things, he has some pretty harsh words to say about Don Paterson, words I'd struggle to agree with, despite my previously mentioned lukewarm response to most of Paterson's work. I think there's quite a bit of 'previous' between the two, though, and it's probably safe to assume that that's where all this coming from.

There's one thing Raine definitely gets wrong, though. No one decides to support Leicester City arbitrarily. Why on earth would you, on a whim, decide to subject yourself to a lifetime of gallant, underachieving mediocrity, punctuated by an all-too-brief golden era and not-so-occasional periods of grinding misery?

Forward Prize shortlist

The shortlists for this year's Forward Prizes have been announced, and I'd have to say I'm a bit underwhelmed.

I'm really pleased to see Sian Hughes on the Best First Collection list, and Lorraine Marriner, but on the whole the judges seem to have played it all very safe. I'm a fan of a lot of Glyn Maxwell's work, but I don't think this collection is anywhere near his best, and I've heard much the same about the Hugo Williams book (I'll still buy it, though!).

The judges do their usual thing of noting the "rude health" of the UK poetry scene, but I don't think their lists really back that up at all. I'm not asking for them to be packed full of wildly experimental work (hardly my thing either), but it would be nice to see more than a token nod in the direction of smaller presses, more women on the main list, and fewer of the usual suspects.

Anyway, all sorts of discussion is already going on here. Join in.