In these poems, Hugo Williams's subjects include the stings inflicted by school, family and love-life, and the exquisite (if qualified) solace afforded by their contemplation.

Hugo Williams was born in 1942 and grew up in Sussex. He worked on the London Magazine from 1961 to 1970, since when he has earned his living as a journalist and travel writer. Billy's Rain won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1999. His Collected Poems was published by Faber in 2002 and his last collection, Dear Room, was published in 2006. He writes a freelance column for the TLS and lives in London.