In gathering four decades of work, Hugo Williams's Collected Poems brings back into print a vast body of material long since unavailable - from his 1965 debut Symptoms of Loss to Self-Portrait With a Slide (1990) - including Writing Home (1985), described by Mick Imlah in the Independent on Sunday as 'a classic of creative autobiography'. The edition is brought right up to date with his most recent work: Dock Leaves, a PBS Choice of 1994, and Billy's Rain, winner of the 1999 T. S. Eliot Award. Collected Poems brings together work from eight books that testify to Hugo Williams's reputation as a master of irony and autobiography; a writer subtly able to 'slip back to the past as effortlessly as a dreamer' (The Times).