Description

Faber & Faber, paperback

Publication date: August 9, 2022

Publisher Marketing: Lines off is a term used for lines spoken from the wings of a theater, 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 sinceI 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 Offheralds the return of this acclaimed poet, back to the stage of the page, offering us the performance of a lifetime.