Faber Members get 10% off their first order

Lines Off

Hugo Williams

The new poetry collection from Hugo Williams – now in paperback.

6 in stock

£10.99
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780571349760
Date Published
02.06.2022
Delivery
All orders are sent via Royal Mail and are tracked: choose from standard or premium delivery.
Summary

‘Lines off’ is a term used for lines spoken from the wings of a theatre, or off-camera in a film. It was while Hugo Williams was out of circulation following transplant surgery that he wrote the poems for this new collection – the first since I Knew the Bride (2014), shortlisted for the Forward and T. S. Eliot prizes. From youthful days ‘upside down in the Crazy Room, / rising and falling on the Haunted Swing’, he takes us to distant countries, both actual and metaphorical; participates in the ‘mortal pantomime’ of the hospital ward with humorous frankness; and offers a percipient account of growing older, with all its attendant doubts and disturbances. Autobiographical, psychological, remedial, Lines Off heralds the return of this acclaimed poet, back to the stage of the page, offering us ‘the performance of a lifetime’.

Critic Reviews

This highly readable volume turns terrifying experiences into verse that’s sometimes hyperreal,
sometimes surreal, and often verges on hallucination ... These are haunting, shining, untidy
poems ... vivid with emotion and experience.

Fiona Sampson, Spectator
Critic Reviews

Williams has a gift for making poetry read as effortlessly as conversation – a huge accomplishment.

Observer
HugoWilliams

Hugo Williams was born in 1942 and grew up in Sussex. He worked on the London Magazine from 1961 to 1970, since when he has earned his living as a journalist and travel writer. Billy’s Rain won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1999. His Collected Poems was published by Faber in 2002 and his last collection, I Knew the…

Read More
HugoWilliams