Landline
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William Wootten’s Landline takes us from Eden to the end of the world. Its poems circumnavigate the globe and journey to Venus and the Underworld, bringing arresting voices via intricate patterns of rhyme and metre. Poems of meditation reflect on the sadnesses and joys of nature, art and time. Poems of myth, history or science fiction become timely or timeless embodiments of strong emotions and concerns. Subjects range from roses to aviation, from Narnia to plague rats, from artificial reality to the Parthenon.
‘A fine poet … and a richly musical one’. Declan Ryan, Poetry (Chicago)
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William Wootten’s Landline takes us from Eden to the end of the world. Its poems circumnavigate the globe and journey to Venus and the Underworld, bringing arresting voices via intricate patterns of rhyme and metre. Poems of meditation reflect on the sadnesses and joys of nature, art and time. Poems of myth, history or science fiction become timely or timeless embodiments of strong emotions and concerns. Subjects range from roses to aviation, from Narnia to plague rats, from artificial reality to the Parthenon.
Roseleaf
Sometimes – not often, but sometimes –
I prefer the leaves on the rose to the rose itself,
Not the pointed run of thorns, no, but the leaves,
The way the light weaves
Across the dotted breath-holes of each canted shelf,
Yellow veins that branch through leaves, and jagged rhymes
Counterpointing curvy edges,
And the dry brown paperiness that in time will spread
To be like crumpled paper waiting for the fire,
Enkindling desire
For green, blackspot and brown, leaf living and leaf dead,
Heaven, earth, earth’s water’s things flourishing false images.
Listen to William read the poems ‘Passage’ and ‘The Wheatsheaf’, recorded at the Exeter launch of Landline, 2025.
Published: 8 October 2025
ISBN: 978-1905208517
Pages: 70
Praise for You Have a Visitor
‘There is a great deal to admire in Wootten’s first collection. He can do lyric, narrative, darkness, joy, tradition and innovation. Most importantly, it is greatly heartening to see a new writer emerging with such commitment to the traditions of form and the musical possibilities of language.’ Jonathan Edwards, Poetry School
‘Thomas Hardy would have appreciated these poems.’ John Greening, Times Literary Supplement
‘Wootten has made an art of the refrain, that time stopping device which can sometimes be heart-stopping, playing variations on the repetition, nudging it into a semblance of narrative development without erasing the pattern. Poetry almost becomes memory at such points.’ Carol Rumens, Poetry Review
‘This collection takes familiar poetic forms and reworks them for this century’s readers.’ D.A. Prince, London Grip
William Wootten is the author of the poetry collection You Have a Visitor (Worple 2016) and the critical study The Alvarez Generation: Thom Gunn, Geoffrey Hill, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and Peter Porter (Liverpool University Press, 2015), and is editor of Reading Walter de la Mare (Faber 2022). His poems have appeared in publications including Poetry London, Poetry Review, PN Review, the Spectator, Stand and the Times Literary Supplement as well as the pamphlet Looking at the Horsemen (New Walk 2022). He works at the University of Bristol and lives in London.
