Café des Artistes
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:2nd Apr '09
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
John Hartely William's latest collection of poems is a glorious miscellany of bizarre stories, surreal images and Bacchic reveries from the prize-winning, absurdist arch-comedian of British poetry.
Entertains and diverts by bizarre stories of mapless roads and unreal cities, the Ostrich Palisades and the erotic stones of Bonehenge.
Welcome to the Café des Artistes. Your host, the owner, bartender, master of ceremonies and only other guest: John Hartley Williams. Here you will be entertained and diverted - by bizarre stories of mapless roads and unreal cities, the Ostrich Palisades and the erotic stones of Bonehenge; by a spooked version of Rimbaud's 'La Bateau Ivre'; by encounters with Malcolm Lowry, the floating dead, the 'old men behind the waterfall' and the knitted poet; by poems about donkey jackets and dancing with donkeys, and a one-sided conversation with a decidedly un-Romantic polar bear two doors down from Dove Cottage.
Long celebrated for his ranging, restless imagination, his baroque, elliptical narratives, his manic humour and maverick stance, Williams returns with another invitation to join him for a jug or two of wine in his out-of-kilter universe: a world that is both strange, and strangely familiar. Welcome to the Café des Artistes!
He is a strong, sophisticated, funny original. Since 1983, the poems in his collections have explored sex, politics, the wild west, and language in a wide range of styles: formal, direct, swashbucklingly experimental. The mix of traditionalism and ignoring convention shakes you into reading with fresh eyes and mind -- Ruth Padel
Williams's great skill is to make the places and people he's writing about seem to be absolutely central to the concerns of poetry, now and always -- Ian McMillan
His poetry comes at you from any angle. You could no more predict what he will do next - from one collection to another, from one poem to another - than you can know whether or why Cootie Williams will come after Johnny Hodges or Tricky Sam or Harry Carney. About the only thing you can be sure of is that whatever he serves up will be well worth reading -- John Lucas * Other Poetry *
John Hartley Williams, still resident in Berlin, has the most recognisably English voice... open to both the influence of European poetry and a very British absurdism, both of which mark him as at his own precise angle to the mainstream -- W.N.Herbert * Poetry London *
One of our finest contemporary poets -- Steve Spence * Tears in the Fence *
ISBN: 9780224087858
Dimensions: 198mm x 130mm x 7mm
Weight: 100g
80 pages