Poetry 29 May 2019 Lines Off A new poem by Hugo Williams. Vincent Ferron via Creative Commons Sign UpGet the New Statesman\'s Morning Call email. Sign-up I don’t know whether to make the difficult right-hand descent by way of a crooked stair with its missing steps and multiple overhangs and risk arriving late, or take the vertiginous plunge down the left-hand margin and arrive ahead of myself. I’d rather take the lift, but where is it located in this godforsaken building? I can’t make my entrance suspended in mid-air, groping blindly for non-existent bannisters. I feel like turning back, but it’s too late for that now. I’m going to have to jump. Hugo Williams won the TS Eliot Prize in 1999 for Billy’s Rain. His new collection Lines Off is published by Faber & Faber. › The man with dementia was astonished to find himself in a world that made no sense This article appears in the 31 May 2019 issue of the New Statesman, Theresa May’s toxic legacy