I stare at death in the mirror behind the bar
And wonder when I sacrificed my blood,
And how I could not recognise the face
That smiled with the mouth, the eyes, of death --
In Manchester, London or Amsterdam.
I do not hate the face, only the bell.
            from 'The Playground Bell'

Three weeks before his death at the age of 28 in May 1993, Adam Johnson
delivered the typescript of this, his only full-length collection, to
Carcanet. During the last years of his life, and perhaps especially after
he had been diagnosed HIV-positive in 1991, his writing developed at an
astonishing rate both in scope and in technical accomplishment; his poems
essentially celebrate -- music, painting, places and, above all,
friendship. A love of natural history and of the profligate, ephemeral
riches of the given world is always present, and an answering generosity,
wit and optimism mark even the poems he wrote in the last months, when his
health was failing. Except for the addition of a few otherwise uncollected
pieces and two alterations in the reading-order, the poems are presented as
they appear in Johnson's draft version.
    Neil Powell in Gay Times wrote, 'his later poems...take as their
starting-point.. art's oldest theme: the celebration of life juxtaposed
with the terror of mortality.' John Heath-Stubbs said: 'When more of
Johnson's poems have appeared in book form, it will be time to assess his
achievement. That it is a lasting one, I, for my part, have little doubt.'