ONE of America's most prominent poets, C K Williams, gave the last pure poetry reading at this year's Ledbury Poetry Festival and he did not disappoint a capacity audience.

The Pulitzer Prize-winner reminded me, initially, of the poet laureate, Andrew Motion, in that his work is often conversational and biographical, but kept lively by flashes of accomplished imagery.

I am tempted to describe Williams as a perplexed straight-talker. He is perplexed by the suicide of a beautiful young woman, who throws herself from a window, because "she's not the person she is".

He is perplexed by the death of a child and asks, "how do you know when you can laugh again?"

Williams does not pretend to have the answers. Instead, Williams likes to use quotations, most originally, to highlight the baffling and often unjust circumstances of life and death.

This technique is most telling in his anti-war poems, such as the recent Shrapnel, which manages to explain how shrapnel was invented, how quickly the shards travel and the damage they can do, including to the bodies of Iraqi children.

Developments in war continue, and as ever "something howls, something cries".

Williams first came to prominence during the Vietnam War.

Now, with a new war to witness, it is hard not to detect real anger in the poet's voice.

Williams was one of the American intellectuals opposed to the Iraqi invasion, because of what he saw as its almost inevitable consequences.

As he explained to his audience, with age there comes little pleasure in being right.

Gary Bills-Geddes