Frances Leviston reviews Tony Williams in The Guardian

Frances Leviston finds some magic in Tony Williams’ wonderful first collection:

“O collapser of delicate moods and arch lyrical poignancies! / damper of youthful enthusiasms! / user of out-of-date prophylactic sheaths!” The target of this vatic homage is the mostly fictitious Julian Metcalfe, a “lecherous old time-travelling scoundrel”, object of equal parts disgust and fascination, and presiding spirit of Tony Williams’s first collection, The Corner of Arundel Lane and Charles Street. Metcalfe’s portrait ransacks history for all the trappings of the quintessential English rogue, from misadventures in the far east to open defiance of PC protocol: “putter of brown glass / into green bottle banks!” This sort of avid collection and juxtaposition of ideas continues throughout the book, presenting us with a vision of northern England, Derbyshire and Sheffield in particular, that feels totally contemporary, but not reductively so. By layering cultural references and registers like sediment, a deep, imaginative landscape appears, industrial and feudal, suburban and gone to seed, where doggers and spliffs and curates and cribbage-games meet.

Read more in The Guardian