Williamson is one of these poets that seem equally at home in the fast-moving urban landscape and under the steep skies and ragged clouds of the countryside. His political comment is acerbic, his streetwise-guy persona both rough and engaging, his love lyrics unexpectedly tender. Some of his poems, such as “The Luminous Flame of Rosie Savin” and “Vanishing Point”, are sophisticated and melancholy, while the conversational tone of others, for instance “Christine’s Poem”, can barely mask the underlying poignancy.

“In a Room Darkened” is also inhabited by a motley cast, which includes characters as diverse as Walt Disney and Karl Marx; most relevant among them is the late Norman McCaig, the man who, to the author, “is no more dead … than Wallace or Burns”. The awareness of history, more specifically Scotland’s, runs through the poems like a dark thread, linking modern-day issues to ancient events and grievances, and taking a wry look at a troubled present through snapshots of the past.

I guess it has to do with instinct, but I tend to distrust poetry written by political activists or otherwise “committed” people. Too often, I have found, their writing is only a sideline to their more important business – whatever the latter is. Kevin Williamson’s work is a good example of poetry by a politically engaged author that is refreshingly varied and uncondescending.