Mick Imlah
Hugo Williams
At Cambridge, you were ‘The Quiff of King’s’:
A beautiful dancer, oversexed,
You swept the floor with the Underlings
But didn’t know what to do next.
Though mother and father and brother
‘Trod the boards’, you grew to prefer
The secret audience of Hugo Williams:
A failed 1960s hero of yours.
Redundant, debonair,
You take your double to task
In poems addressed like the back of a head to the mirror.
Candid and vain, they ask
What volume of self-consciousness
In an author, can the reader bear?
And give the answer: a bit less
Than naturally occurs there.
Page(s) 57
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