Author: Anneke

“By SACRED FIX I mean the fix on and with Madness – that sanctified condition when all has meaning and the madman is a poet living a poem. Apart from LEAR IN LOS ANGELES, I have enclosed ‘The Needle Vestal’, ‘The Rake’s New Progress’… all of which were written either in asylums or when I was under psychiatric supervision. Indeed these have been the conditions in which most of poetry has been written. In many ways the conditions of an asylum are ideal for a poet, for he is surrounded by other madmen…

“…In Shelley, Williams has found his ideal subject. The rogue aristocrat who became an outcast from English society because of his wild ideas about political and spiritual freedom; the teenager expelled from Oxford after just six months’ residence, who, by a cynical sleight of hand, has been rehabilitated as part of the ‘cultural legacy’ of the university; the opponent of church, state, and monarchy, the advocate of vegetarianism, free love, and political revolution; the poet who was presented to the Victorian age…