Poetry Review: Here’s What Happens When You Enter a Black Hole by Rhys Owain Williams

Andrew Holden

I was reading “A470 – Poems for the Road” the other week, so when I was asked to review Rhys Owain Williams’ new book, I was familiar with at least one of his poems, “A Mountain We Climb”.  It’s a poem that resonates with me, so I was glad to see a slightly reworked version of it included in this collection.  Moving from north to south Wales, as I did, 40 years ago, it was easier for me to revert to my native English, so I lost a lot of my Welsh through lack of use rather than having it beaten out of me by a headmaster’s cane, like his grandfather.  I can therefore empathise with “Dim Siarad”, where he laments not being able to speak Cymraeg, especially with such a grand Welsh name.  For me it’s dim digon o Gymraeg but, I’m glad to say, we are both getting a little green gwdihŵ to help correct our shortcomings in “this language [that] belongs to us all”.

My attention duly grabbed, I thought I’d better find out more about the man and his work.

A poet from Swansea, his first poetry collection, “That Lone Ship”, also published by Parthian, garnered favourable reviews from poets and authors such as Joe Dunthorne, Emily Blewitt and Paul Henry.  His work has been published in various magazines and anthologies, read on national television and he has collaborated on a number of artistic commissions ranging from Art in Site and Swansea Uni’ to NHS Wales and Nationwide Building Society (who knew!).  He has also been a Hay Festival ‘Writer at Work’, so no wonder Poetry Wales recently named him as a ‘poet to watch’. 

Any ffordd i fyny, if you’ll pardon the A470 allusion, there is much to enjoy in this book, but other verbs keep popping into my head the more I think about it.  The words empathise, sympathise, admire and marvel come to mind as Williams guides you on a very personal journey around his life’s experiences and observations. Milestones of grief and loss, love and joy, mark the way and are mapped out with touching poignancy.  

“Postcard to my Stepfather”

The book has a dedication to Williams’ late stepfather and there are 6 ‘postcards’ addressed to him which wind through the collection, as he works his way through the grief of his loss.  Dealing with emotions such as guilt and regret in “Morning Run” and arriving at, what I feel is, a sense of learning to live with that loss, in “At Parc Ceirw”.

The role of stepfather is also explored in the poems “Step”, “Joseph”, “Homeward Bound” and “Amphitryon”.  All of which drew my attention to a relationship that I’d never really given much thought to before.  Isn’t that what good writing should do?

Love of language

And then there’s the style.  You get the sense of Williams’ love of language and words in lines like these from the poem “Insomnia”.  :

And across the stair of rooftops

slick with stars, owlsong thins

the sharpened air.

Or the simplicity of “To Sleep”, which adds a heart-wrenching full stop the end of the previous poem, “Bucky”.

It’s not all wailing and gnashing of teeth, though.  Williams captures the simple joy and beauty in the mundane snapshots of everyday life, “And as the MOT Centre’s shutters yawned” from “The Kiss” or “As a family unpacks crockery to eat – Tupperwared Coronation chicken,” from “I’m doing my best, as always”.   But it’s family that seems to be the central thread that runs through this collection.  Catching the likeness of his grandmother in his son’s face, “scaling this shared memory of – two people born a century apart, – never to meet except – in the minds of those who knew you both.”, from “Iris & Nye” takes that thread and binds the generations together in a tight bond.

I have to confess that I’ve come late to writing my own poetry and find myself drawn to reading more of it, too.  Recently, I’ve discovered a newfound fascination with complicated poetic structures like villanelles, cynghanedd and englynion, so discovering yet another in “Sestina for my OCD”, a masterful use of the form, has revealed one more rabbit hole for me to explore.  Thank you for that, Mr Williams!  And thank you for the rest of this delightful collection.

A ‘poet to watch’?  Most definitely!  And “That Lone Ship” is another volume soon to be added to my ever-expanding reading pile.

Here’s What Happens When You Enter a Black Hole by Rhys Owain Williams is published by Parthian and is available from all good bookshops.