NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

South Walian Evan Gwyn Williams is a far cry from Dylan Thomas's dream of a hearty, Britain-chested, cliff-striding companion, for Williams comes from the four bloody muddy winds school of poetry complete with liver, headache and general seediness, churning a bulk of words and scribbling madly in his reporter's notebook.

Williams's opening rant is the mock-hero-worship of Richard Wagner. It's a read-aloud poem from a tortured newspaper columnist; perhaps to be performed live in a German Biergarten after the Helles has taken effect? Of course, it quickly gets around to Adolf Hitler, a regular with a standing ticket whenever German opera was on the menu, even when starving in a flea-ridden garret. It commences:

	Wagner, I love you so much I am orgasmic in memory.
	Wagner, I adore you so much. O Erection of Erections!
	Wagner, I adore your Germanic soul in its utter purity

	Nobody gives a fuck about Any Body Else

	Nuttingberg Local Government wanted a picture of their town
	In words even though the town had the biggest crime rate in England.
	All the poets chosen were involved in the poetry bureaucracy,
	Running workshops and such,

Nevertheless 2 out of 3 ain't bad and I have no qualms in pointing the potential reader in the direction of FLOTILLA'S CONSERVATIVE SONG OF WAGNER, a slim booklet, but like a Vernon Watkins' pound note on its way to Dylan Thomas you'll hear it singing in the envelope.

Evan Gwyn Williams literary triumphs are too numerous to list. He was a member of the group Poetry Workshop, his stories and poems have been broadcast by the BBC and published in literary journals and he has worked for Tambimuttu on Poetry London/New York out of Cornwall Gardens, and the Queen's Elm pub.

Details of the way in which the long poem, THE MYSOGINIST AND THE OZZIE KNUT IN A DAMP FLAT IN A WELSH SEASIDE TOWN (1968-1975), to give it its full title, is written is explained in the INTRODUCTION by Evan Gwyn Williams. He tells us it is a satire on 1960s feminism. In his words:

The stanzas are made of a rhyming quatrain a rhyming couplet and a further rhyming quatrain. The meter hovers around the iambic with variations so as to avoid monotony. It contains images from the sea and from nature when the natural order is under threat.

The work is divided into ten sections:

1. A Marriage in Heaven,
2. The Romance of Love,
3. The Birth Pangs of Ozzie Knut. In the Liquid World of Flux,
4. How Hazel Knut was born,
5. The Birth of Misogyny,
6. Conversations in the Room Overlooking the street,
7. A Long Ago Little Innocent Boy,
8. At the Grave of an Unknown Poet,
9. Until Death do us Part,
10. The Long Goodbye.

This is a work of great depth, crossing boundaries, crossing stereotypes, as we come across a range of characters: the Misogynist, his landlady, lorry drivers, Ozzie Knut, Mordecai Thomas, solicitors and more. The tale is translated from dark times and strange rituals that shape the verse with stories of a dead brother, romance, birth, death, a hideous stepmother, the Little Innocent Boy, and the poet. These characters are interspersed with details about the human condition, as in Section One (ii):

	Weeping hatred lays on floor is some epileptic fit
		Of unknown origin, demanding sexual
	Intercourse, orgasm, while writing De-sexed Eunuch
		From cover to cover with radical pals.

	He was her darling man, heroically struggling tender
	Beyond words.  Handsome and tall with politeness
	And calculated charm.  Her emerging urban lover to render
	Her helpless.  Her protector from horrific stress
	Of suicide and death
	Of brother and tragic mother.

	And where was misery born but in suburban slum
	In twilight zone of burned cars viewed from a bus
	And squalor, too, in sink school, the hum
	Of motors at twilight's monumental tic toc fuss.
	And an African brought home
	To the disapproval zone . . .

	SNIFFLE! SNIFFLE! SNIFFLE! Knut wanted a baby
	When in love with Misogynist, lay in bed
	Longing for pod filled with seed beside the fecund sea.
	The night was blue, the hills green and the sky red.
	Must run to medical doctor
	With Misogynist's spunk in her paw.

	(I am only eighteen never had a girl friend,
	Longing for home.)

	I wring
	my hands to the cold war tune, cooking chips
	in the airman's mess.  Hung over, sick
	as a dog, while mud-grey Soviet Ships
	patrol the Baltic sea, shoot from the hip.

	"Men lead the Unions, a bunch of chauvinist pigs
	that oppress women, and keep them in the home.
	We want a wage for house work and a packet of cigs.
	We have erections, did nt you know, in the vagina zone.
	We want orgasms and foreplay.
	We got our needs.  We want our say.
	Male doctors Out! Out! Out! Walk the streets without
	Any fear."  "GET FUCKIN’ REAL," replied Misogynist,
	And live in the world. We need to shout
	Down finance capital and raise the banner of communism.

	are made from brier and hazel.

	And so he goes on restless nights to cheap hotels
	Through yellow fog that rubs the windowpane
	And wanks to the end of time, and time's end,
	A bloke half nuts, a bloke half sane, listening to a train.

	seedy Victorian Office block

	Misogynist has committed adultery with Croat
	In a block of flats while Knut in America.

	a social psychopath,
	Well suited, living off Giros and false addresses.

	Knut's adultery costs more
	Than its worth.

	female
	Feminist morality as vice.  Male
	Behaviour rules ok.

	who can tell the singer from the song.