[(West End Final)] [By (author) Hugo Williams] published on

by Hugo Williams

Hugo Williams's new collection summons the poet's past selves in order of appearance, as in an autobiography, showing in poems as clear as rock pools that the plain truth is only as plain as the props and make-up needed to stage it.Childhood and school time offer up the amateur theatricals of themselves, in poems of vertiginous retrospect; other poems itemize the professional selves of the poet's actor-father Hugh Williams (by now as familiar and frequently depicted as Cezanne's mountain), while the narrator - 'waiting to step into my father's shoes as myself' - teases out the paradoxes of identity and inheritanceAfter this searching portraiture of the poet's parents, the chronology opens onto the broad secular thoroughfares of adulthood, including a limpid arrangement of pillow poems which tell the same erotic bedtime story in twelve different ways. Other poems strike out decisively along roads not meticulous misremembering, sinister and fecklessly unfinished narratives about the parallel lives of desire, re-enacting lost futures and accommodating the irrepressible past as it keeps bouncing back onstage.In these fastidious and sardonic investigations of the fault-line between voice and projection, we admire once more the droll fearlessness, the art of candour as practised by Hugo Williams in this, his tenth collection of poems.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

West End Final has a strong lead character – Hugh Williams, the father of the poet, Hugo Williams. Hugh probably only appears in half the poems at most but his presence is felt like a colossus astride this book.

Hugh Williams was an actor in the early twentieth century. According to the sleeve notes of the book, he is now “as familiar and frequently depicted as Cézanne’s mountain.” Given this is Hugo Williams’s tenth collection, I’m guessing that means his father must have appeared in a fair few poems by now.

In West End Final the focus is on the similarities between father and son and on the unnerving way that Hugo feels he is becoming like his father. In ‘Heavy Father,’ he recounts his father’s incarnations as various screen icons and concludes:

“How he achieved the transformation
from juvenile lead to Heavy Father
without the use of wigs and make-up
is the great mystery
that is currently being revealed to me.”

I suppose this is a sentiment that many men could apply when thinking of themselves and their fathers.

In ‘West End Twilight,’ Hugo describes his own appearance in the third-person, saying he looked “old-fashioned actorish” before telling us that:

“Ransacking old letters, he has raided the past
to imagine himself into his father’s life
and personality.”

Despite his frequent appearance in the poems, Hugo’s father can seem like a distant figure sometimes. I didn’t get the feeling theirs was an easy relationship. In some poems, Hugo reveals awkward moments such as his father’s dictatorial attitude to dinnertime in ‘The Mouthful.’

Hugo also writes several interesting poems about his mother, including the touching seven-part ‘Poems to My Mother,’ the centrepiece of which, ‘Someone’s Girlfriend,’ again focuses in on the father:

“Your father and I
were staying at the Gotham, but it wasn’t long
before we moved to the Devil, which was just as well,
I suppose, considering he was still married.”

The structure of West End Final is chronological and runs the extent of the author/narrator’s life. There are poems in here about school and bullying, right through to the effects of old age.

Hugo Williams’s style is straightforward and matter of fact. The sentences and ideas expressed are simple, readily understood. It’s the kind of style that when done well (think Philip Larkin) can result in the most sublime and memorable poetry.

So I’m sorry to report that Williams doesn’t reach such heights here. There are several poems in West End Final that I’m fond of, but none that I’m in awe of. A good example of what I mean is ‘Peach,’ the poem that opens the collection:

“It was almost impossible to get down.
That was the whole point.
We wanted to eat a peach somewhere interesting.
We wanted to dribble peach juice on the world.”

Beautifully, straightforwardly written, yes. But verging perhaps on the side of trite rather than sublime.

The same could be said of ‘A Pillow Book,’ a sequence of twelve poems written from the perspective of a man lying in bed and watching a woman get undressed. Again, I rather liked the prosaic style but felt he didn’t do enough with it:

“I’m not saying anything
until I see everything
you are wearing
lying in a heap on the floor.

Oh dear, that was your last
pair of pants.
What are you going to do?”

I feel a bit harsh quoting snippets of poems and trying to make them stand up as representative of the whole, but what else can you do in a review! In reality, both ‘Peach’ and ‘A Pillow Book’ are poems I am fond of as are many others in this collection. But they aren’t exceptional.

The poems in West End Final that perhaps get closest to greatness are some of the ones that focus on the father-son relationship (back to that father figure again). For this reason I likened Williams in my mind to those other chroniclers of the paternal figure, Seamus Heaney and Tony Harrison.

So to end with, I’ll pick out another of Williams’s poems on the subject of the father – one that’s called ‘Slapstick.’

This poem presents the father (and indeed the son) as comic, pathetic figures and so perhaps more human as a result. The father figure in this instance is the historic performer Grimaldi who is “constantly falling down drunk, / unable to express himself.” The son/narrator tells us:

“I found I had a flair
for parental caricature,
dressing up and spouting
nonsense at everyone.”

Five Words that describe this book: fatherhood, straightforward, prosaic, caring, honest.

Stand Out Poems: ’West End Twilight’; ‘Slapstick’; ‘Poems to My Mother’; ‘A Pillow Book’; ‘Washing My Hands’.

Killer line: “Of course, I could be wrong about this / and all that is really going on / is you, undressing, / getting read for bed.” (from ‘A Pillow Book’)

[Milva · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Jenny Cooke (Bookish Shenanigans) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though Hugo Williams is nowhere near my favourite poet he is very readable and if you are the kind of person who finds poetry hard to penetrate then this would be a good collection to look at. It doesn't fall into the classical style of strict rhyme and metre and feels quite conversational in style. I particularly liked the poems Religion, Leaving London and sections of the Pillow Book. It is what I would describe as very down to earth poetry but does not excite me or feel as skillfully crafted as other poets.