In a Room Darkened

Kevin Williamson is a writer, poet, and author of one previous book, Drugs and the Party Line. He was founder and editor of the legendary Rebel Inc publishing house.

In A Room Darkened is his first collection of poetry.

Praise for In a Room Darkened:

'Like many of the punk generation Williamson seems torn between staying true to his angry, anti-establishment roots and embracing the material comforts of middle-aged contentment. But with a cast including Taggart, Karl Marx, Walt Disney, John Coltrane, Robert the Bruce, Pinocchio, Jesus, Norman MacCaig and Grandmaster Flash, it is a genuine pleasure to watch him swither.' Marc Horne, Scotland on Sunday

About Kevin Williamson

Kevin Williamson has lived in Edinburgh since 1979 and feels very much at home there with his daughter and his mates and some of his family and his football team and all the people he likes and the people he bumps into when he walks around aimlessly photographing things. He likes the historic bits of Edinburgh with cobbles and sandstone much more than the shiny new bits with black glass and computer terminals. He can't get enough of Arthur's Seat and Portobello beach and Leith Walk and the Botanic Gardens and the house where Robert Louis Stevenson was born and the bars in Iona Street and the back of the East Stand where folk meet for a smoke and a laugh at half time and the National Museum of Scotland with all the butterflies on pins and the view from the top of Calton Hill in the winter. Some days he likes watching bands at the Liquid Rooms or movies at the Cameo and others he likes watching folk lying around in the summer having picnics in the Meadows and taking the long and winding path along the Water of Leith from the Modern Art Gallery to the Shore and staring down at the burnt out shell of La Belle Angele from The Bridges. In a previous life he was a publisher but can't recall the details and some of his poetry has appeared here and there and some of the things he has done have worked out okay and others haven't which aint a bad batting average.

Kevin is author of one previous book, Drugs and the Party Line. He was founder and editor of the Rebel Inc publishing house. In A Room Darkened is his first collection of poetry.

About the poetry

If I was asked to describe these poems in a sentence or two I'd try and find something else to do, such as cleaning out the bottom of the fridge or drilling a hole in the top of my head. These poems are just a jumble of stolen fragments from the people and the music and the literature and the ideas and the cultures and the histories and the friendships and the inside of a thick skull and a thin skin with cameo roles from George Best, Karl Marx, John Coltrane, Norman MacCaig, Robert the Bruce, Tom Leonard, Art Pepper, Walt Disney, Stuart Christie, The Duke of Sutherland, and Hibernian FC.

An extract from In a Room Darkened

In a room darkened

I cling to the honey — the black treacle — the
back-throat sherbet — the scented fur — the lycra
tingle — the hot metallic blood — the aniseed lick
— & the last gasp bumper to bumper kiss of all
the flat earth of your skin that covers me morning,
noon and night

In a room darkened

I forget the death watch beetles lying on their
backs, legs waving, feeler eyes grinning — the
turquoise damp on the crumbling walls of a
transplant heart — the icy blasts of vanishing
trains — the ammonia cut of low-grade crack —
the shrivelled breasts on a tiger’s tongue
strike — the last venal entrance to Eva Braun’s
corpse — the body bags of restricted joy — &
the dusty winged moths that flutter across my
eyes as they open their slits to the torn
chrysalis of your still-born love that is me

In a room darkened

I love you with the ivory bite of mouth
on mouth — the parallel spear of four blue
eyes — the electric burn of eight limbs
fused — the fingertip brush — the arc on
arc — the liquid flames — & the sad long
rush of a revolution’s breath as your siren
queen divests her robes for the naked
warmth of my republic’s embrace