Hugo Williams is probably my favourite current poet. This one is from 2014 and it’s a good example of his style, easy to read with those overlapping lines, almost conversational, but with more going on than might be apparent at first. Like so much of his writing, it’s a slightly melancholy comment on changing times and social mores.
I don’t actually remember porters, but I do remember people wondering why they had disappeared. The whole question was rendered redundant by the invention of the wheeled suitcase, of course.
Another reason I like his work so much, is that he has written about how he came to poetry via song lyrics. That is a journey I myself have made over the years. The title of the collection in which this appeared is I Knew The Bride, a reference to the Nick Lowe song. It also contains a poem called Twenty Yards Behind, dedicated to Wilko Johnson. Those two go back a long way. Hugo Williams is also a journalist and wrote the programme notes for Doctor Feelgood in 1975.
The Fifties by Hugo Williams
Remember porters? Weatherbeaten old boys
with watery blue eyes, who found you a corner seat
‘facing the engine’ and stowed your luggage
in a net above your head? You gave them a coin,
worth almost nothing, even then,
and they touched their caps and thanked you
as they struggled out through the sliding doors
of the compartment into the corridor.
You used to worry vaguely
that they wouldn’t have time to get down.
The Good Reader 