Rocky road to recovery

New Light for the Old Dark, Sam Willetts, Jonathon Cape; £20

IN a hotel just off Piccadilly Circus Sam Willetts tells me he has just been ripped off at a West End newsagent paying for a packet of tobacco. Talking to Willetts about his latest collection, New Light for the Old Dark, you sense the whole affair has a sort of dreamlike quality to it.

Just a few years back — at the height of his heroin addiction — Willetts says he could barely read, never mind write poetry.