Urban Fox attends the TS Eliot Award reading and prize-giving.
Everything is to be found in Islington: the Almeida Theatre (haunted by the low tones of the chapel choirs it once contained); the home of the Culture Secretary; and even the Emperor of the Universe himself in the shape of the Almeida’s Director, Ian MacDairmid, who plays that role in the new Star Wars trilogy. This venue, redolent of other worlds (spiritual, intergalactic and political), was yet again the setting for the reading that precedes, by a day, the judging and award ceremony.
The following readers caught the ear. Tom Paulin, who has that Larkin-on-acid style, kicked off with The Wind-Dog (reviewed on page 49). He is a quite astounding reader to the first time hearer. There is something wild and inspiring about his work when read aloud that one struggles to reproduce when read from the page. It is as if a choice is made and the price of that is a certain opacity of the written word over the spoken. Kathleen Jamie read her sharply touching poems from Jizzen (reviewed in Magma 16) in her assured Scottish tones, lending further weight to the plausible claim that she is the best woman poet writing in Britain today.
C K Williams was over from the US and got last go, which he carried off as only someone of his stature, perhaps in both senses of the word (he is well over six foot six) can. Here was a man who attended Robert Lowell’s famous workshop that also encouraged Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. This night he provided a link to the other great tributary of poetry written in English. He has almost invented a genre with his distinctive long lines and his concern with the intimacies of human life. His shortlisted collection, The Repair, for example, contains the poem The Poet in which he considers with affection and a certain ruefulness the life of a drop-out who styles himself as a poet. It seemed to many to be a foregone conclusion that the winner would be from amongst the above three.
The award ceremony itself took place the following day in the British Library Events Lounge with the lights of the city sparkling behind the podium and Mrs Eliot, the dowager Duchess of Poetry, ensconced adjacent. Blake Morrison, the chairman of the judges, announced that there had been a split between the judges and took the unusual step of giving three names that had been in the final choice (a short shortlist, as it were). These were C K Williams, Tom Paulin and, the dark horse, Hugo Williams. The announcement of the winner was followed by a silence, then a murmur and then Hugo Williams making his way to the front, as elegant and louche as a versifying Sebastian Flyte.
The title of Hugo Williams’ book Billy’s Rain (Faber) refers cleverly to a comment about artificial rain on a film set where God’s rain is not good enough: Billy’s rain is required, artifice having greater dramatic power than reality. Although the poems are autonomous, the full effect is only gained if they are read as a continuous narrative: it is the account of an affair. This is the issue that has surrounded the book. In some quarters of the press the book is treated as if it were a well-worn The End of the Affair-style tale of deceit and intrigue. This is not the case. It has not prevented the work being treated with a certain amount of salaciousness and no little prurience. One might reckon that in France (where Williams’ wife resides) the whole story would be found quite tame. Williams is on record as quoting his wife after she read the book as dismissively saying “Five years for that!”.
It appears his marriage has an open character that in some way can tolerate such liaisons. In that case, the character of the poems takes on a calmer, more sensitive aspect. There is no buzz of deceit or thrill of secrecy, but rather the retelling of a romance that blossomed, but found its limit. The way this is done is the interest of the collection. Williams does it with a good deal of restraint. It is written in a deceptively plain style which presents the subject matter in an understated and gentle fashion, for example, a poem about a time after, Bar Italia: “How beautiful it would be to wait for you again / in the usual place / not looking at the door / keeping a lookout in the long mirror.”
Around the hall afterwards there seemed to be no-one who wasn’t pleased on a personal level for this genuinely urbane and popular poet. There were though, and for the record, some murmurings about what certain judges had really wanted to do. It was said that, as Williams passed one of the judges, the latter was heard by him to say they should have given it to the other Williams (C K). If Billy’s Rain was a surprise choice – Williams himself seemed genuinely surprised at the award – the judgement was made according to the overall views of the panel. It appears, going by sources close to the judges, that Billy’s Rain was given the prize as being the one collection that none of the judges thought was unworthy of it. Urban Fox has, before now, drawn attention to the issue of prizes for poetry and their possible divisiveness. One thing is certain, Billy’s Rain is a well judged and sensitive depiction of what a love affair can amount to.
