Reviews

Billy's Rain by Hugo Williams

angelayoung's review

5.0

These poems, as the blurb says, 'Trace the course of a love affair, now ended' and so are a mixture of the poignant, the yearning and the resigned. The poems are full of once-felt feelings, remembered meetings and redescribed lovemakings. In the title poem the couple sit in the back of a van on location listening to God's rain on the roof and waiting for it to end. But they need rain for the commercial or short film they're making and the woman asks, 'Why can't we use regular rain?' 'That's God's rain, said someone / It doesn't show up on film. / We need Billy's rain for this one.' That poem is a memory book-ended by (God's) rain that prompts the narrator to remember a code they once use for 'Let's get out of here.' He says, at the end of the poem, 'I'd say it now if I thought you were listening.'

A mini-myth for our times; and a perfect collection of poems to collapse into at the end of an affair.