E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

I am sad to hear of the death of my friend, the poet, John Hartley Williams .  For a few years, in the mid-00s, he and I would meet, have a few pints (or more) every few months when he was in London, and talk about poetry, life, and the relative oblivion awaiting all of our work. John wrote poems like no other established British poet of his time - fearlessly, with a ribald appreciation of vocabulary, the zany, and the musical - tempered by a strong sense of form, and the tradition.  He was a sort of insider's punk - the most radical "mainstream" poet, somehow outside but always on the verge of being "in".  He was, after all, published by big presses for much of his career, and was nominated for a TS Eliot Prize.  John's poems are always larger than life, ferociously imaginative.  To hear him read, in his beautiful, theatrical voice, was to have already very vivid poetry roar to life. There are very few poets who read every poem as if it was an even...