"Walk With Strangers" by Stephen Williams
"Poetry of light rising from the abyss"
"Walk With Strangers" is a collection of contemporary poetry by Welsh author and poet, Stephen Williams.
The subject matter of these poems is diverse, thought-provoking and frequently controversial. The collection includes poetry of place, hope and death, gay love and sex, mental health and manic depression, death, old age and illness, politics, poverty and homelessness. Sometimes satiric, often gritty and biting, the work is never gratuitous.
Writing in a contemporary form, Williams has also published his own interpretations of the traditional poetic forms of the Villanelle, Haiku, Rondeau and Sonnet.
Williams's voice is rarely integrated, always standing outside of a social group or society itself, watching and remembering but never becoming a part of it. "Most days we only talk in silence," he says, "like strangers wearing coats, about to leave..." All the while, though, we feel he would prefer to be "Licking Jack Daniels from your mouth" or meeting with "a well-hung boy" in some shop but he remains on the outside, waiting for an invitation that never comes, remembering only what might have been as he sees "the truth told and the cold coffee going stale on the counter."
This is a provocative and varied single-author collection of poetry.