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John Hartley WilliamsThe Ship |
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Biographical note: John Hartley Williams John Hartley Williams grew up in London and has worked in France, the former Yugoslavia and Francophone Africa. Since 1976 he has lived in Berlin. He has published nine collections of poetry, two of which were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. The latest collection shortlisted for this award was Blues (Jonathan Cape, 2004). He has published translations from German, French, Serbo-Croatian as well as versions of the Rumanian poet Marin Sorescu: Censored Poems (2001) Bloodaxe. He has published reviews and essays etc widely in UK poetry magazines and literary journals. He has also written a prose memoir Ignoble Sentiments (1995), published by Arc, and a mysterious prose work called Mystery in Spiderville, reissued in paperback by Vintage (2003). A reader-friendly guide to the writing of poetry called Teach Yourself Writing Poetry, co-written with the Irish poet Matthew Sweeney, was reissued in a revised edition by Hodder in 2004. A privately printed book of poems and photographs North Sea Improvisation (2003), set in and around Cuxhaven on the North Sea German coast, is available from the poet.
BIC Basic EAN13: 9781844713394
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Short description/annotation: In this terrific book John Hartley Williams gathers together a collection of largely unpublished work dating back as far as 1958, and ending in 1982. It is not simply an ‘early selected’ poems, with everything arranged in chronological order, but is a coherent and new collection, epitomised by the title poem The Ship. All the poet's many aliases are represented within its pages: the lover, the satirist, the anarchist, the lyricist, the experimentalist and not least, the saboteur.
Main description: John Hartley Williams may well contain several poets, all of them jostling for expression. These would include his younger self and many of his aliases, the lover, the satirist, the anarchist, the lyricist, the experimentalist, the saboteur etc. – all of whom are represented in this collection of largely unpublished work dating back as far as 1958, and ending in 1982. This marvellous book is organised not simply an ‘early selected’ poems, with everything arranged in chronological order, but as a coherent new collection epitomised by the title poem The Ship.
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Excerpt from book: The Ship
Unpublished endorsement : Good poets are always pressing on: all too easily they can overlook their past achievements — work not sent out, left in a drawer or relegated after a change of emphasis. John Hartley Williams’s recent poetry is powerful and richly embellished. But, as this remarkable earlier collection reveals, so was what he was writing three decades ago. The Ship is more than a welcome act of salvage — it carries a cargo of lyrical, symbolic, Surreal and personal poems which pulse with energy. Williams’s eye is exact; his nerve never fails; his language dazzles. A welcome homecoming to an argosy, not lost, only delayed. Peter Porter
Unpublished endorsement : The Ship reaffirms John Hartley Williams as a heroic presence in contemporary poetry, a warrior in language whose weapons are truth and hilarity. Carol Ann Duffy
Unpublished endorsement : He is one of our most original voices, funny and tender, savage and lyrical all at once. His restlessly international and quirky intelligence goes right to the bone. Ruth Padel
Review quote: Over a long and productive career, John Hartley Williams has always enjoyed launching poems that sail far away from land. The poems that make up The Ship are, it appears, ones that go back to his beginnings, though there's little sense of apprentice work here, let alone dewy-eyed rapture at sexual appetency, even though several poems appear at first blush to be about young love. No blushing for this poet, though. This is Keats reprised through the sensibility of a tongue-in-cheek Rimbaud (say). ‘I was standing in the station listening to/loudspeakers, when her sexy fingers//tickled my back. C’ etait le coup de foudre!/A picture of ideological villains we were – la chap with slick chops, a dolly with/blind, straight, hair, speeding in a/coloured motor car to egophilia.’ The decision to end lines with unimportant, casual-raggedy words, the mingling of linguistic registers (slangy idiom, codformality, neologisms, the sudden lurch into French), the cheeky-aggressive discomposing of readerly expectations (‘are you sitting comfortably. Then watch out’ each and every Williams poem seems to imply): these are all trademarks which characterise his later work. John Lucas
Review quote: There is certainly a more melancholy edge to some of the work here, a sense of ‘inarticulate longing’ more closely associated with a strict romantic sensibility, perhaps, but there is also the absurd humour, the sharp and acrid reek of piracy, as well as those hilarious narrative romps — Who Invited Carstairs? — for example, which are picaresque and swashbuckling to boot. John Hartley Williams is a much underrated poet and this collection of his early writing provides a rich and rewarding read. Steve Spence
Previous review quote: If you truly want to write good poems, try the brilliant handbook ‘Writing Poetry and Getting Published’ by Matthew Sweeney and John Hartley Williams. Ruth Padel
Previous review quote: Blues opens with one of the finest elegies of modern times. Ken Smith, a great friend and fellow poet, to whom it is addressed, had many of the virtues Williams admires and aspires to: a serious playfulness; concern about history and politics; a disdain of fashion; and a determination to keep his language free from the abuse it is habitually subjected to. Paul McLoughlin
Previous review quote: JHW, despite having been nominated for major prizes, and for all that collections of his have been PBS Choices and Recommendations, hasn't received the praise and attention he deserves. For his poetry comes at you from any angle. You could no more predict what he will do next – from one collection to another, from one poem to another, than you can know whether or why Cootie Williams will come after Johnny Hodges or Tricky Sam or Harry Carney. About the only thing you can be sure is that whatever he serves up will be well worth reading…. John Lucas
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