Suedehead, pulp horror writer, and man about town; the UK poetry scene would be a duller place without Tim Wells. In No Weakeners, he harks back to the streets that made him— captured in snapshots of his teenage love life —with trademark chutzpah and dry wit.
We stop at pubs, gigs, behind the bins, in cemeteries and sticky-floored cinemas, to honour a shimmer of fierce and formidable young women. Hard drinking and hard fighting, they are nobody’s fools. Spitting defiance: ‘a million girls are born, they do not cry but kick.’
“London poetry landmark” The Times Literary Supplement
“A neatly twisted line in rhetoric” NME, 19th May 1984
“Working class hero” The Morning Star
“Suedehead bard of N16” The Grauniad
“Thug” NME, 18th July 1984