Arthur Talks

Poetry about the homeless and how their lives evoke the legendary figure of King Arthur. Some poetry looks inwards and serves only its own ends, but the poems here serve the memory of the real people you sense behind the characters who populate it. They are portrayed with a remarkably precise eye and ear, and without any hint of sentimentality. These sharp, funny and touching poems enact their stories like scenes from a play with a cast (Spider, Chalky, Blind Mary and The Weasel are a few) who seem unnaturally vivid and real. The nicknames describe the family-like intimacy of a community existing as a subset within the larger society, a community completely at home in this lively book.

“Some poetry looks inwards and serves only its own ends, but the poems here serve the memory of the real people you sense behind the characters who populate it. They are portrayed with a remarkably precise eye and ear, and without any hint of sentimentality. These sharp, funny and touching poems enact their stories like scenes from a play with a cast (Spider, Chalky, Blind Mary and The Weasel are a few) who seem unnaturally vivid and real. The nicknames describe the family-like intimacy of a community existing as a subset within the larger society, a community completely at home in this lively book.” Mark Waldron –  Poet

“Troubadour, prophet and seer, a kind of Nottingham Charles Causley, with dashes of Larkin and the beat poets mixed in with the Bible and Catholic liturgy, Ruth Hobson offers us original songs of life at the edges of urban, austerity Britain. Her poems, crafted and poised, shed a kindly and never condescending light on Arthur's, and our, wounded but resilient humanity. Though these poems never preach, I am sure that, if Christ still wanders the byways and thoroughfares of our contemporary cities, he will be hanging out with Arthur and his companions, joining them in their antics and revels, at home in their marginal haunts and tasting their hungers. Or perhaps it is Arthur himself, and his unlikely knights/disciples, who are the Christlike fools in our city streets, holding out the possibility of redemption within their ramshackle, fiercely loyal camaraderie. Here is a dark but playful wisdom, concealed within the cracks of pavements and the noise of night shelters, that we might miss were it not for Hobson's gaze and words. “ Nicola Slee – Poet and theologian

"Arthur talks, but with one eye always on the street. Ruth Hobson's poetry never forgets where it's coming from, her imagination and the richness of her language encouraging us to see what we might otherwise turn away from. The poetry of the real by a real poet."  John Harvey – Poet and novelist