When organizing a potential collection, I print out all the poems I’m considering for inclusion and take notes in red ink on the top of each. But when the connective tissue does emerge, it’s such a thrilling sensation. Sometimes I can’t, because the poems I’ve written are too disparate to come together under one banner or because they’re just not up to scratch. WILLIAMS: I wish I had some mystical answer here, but honestly I just write and write and at some point I realize I have a hundred or more poems and should probably see if I can carve a collection out of them. TOMLIN: When do you decide to create a collection of poems like this, when do you know that you have a “book”? How do you organize and edit poems to create a collection? And I am currently experimenting with mixing short, staccato lines with page-width ones to see if that format might yield a new perspective.
#Vallum award for poetry skin#
Skin Memory is an amalgam of that format, traditional prose poems, narrative free verse, and more experimental free verse.
So my previous collection, As One Fire Consumes Another, entirely consists of short, newspaper column-like prose poems. I am terrified of growing stagnate, of writing in a manner I’m already comfortable with. Certain poems may push one or another theme more to the forefront, often based on our current political climate or internal changes that have reprioritized my daily life, but in the end, I recognize pretty clear thematic threads running from my early chapbooks all the way to Skin Memory. Be it national prejudice or fears of how I’m raising my children, our bloody history or the search for self when the self just keeps vanishing into the communal. The themes are interconnected, are threads that together form a single tapestry. So, in that regard, many of my books explore the same larger human concerns, be they personal or cultural. JOHN SIBLEY WILLIAMS: Well, thematically, I think we all write about what haunts us, what keeps us up at night, what questions we just can’t find answers for. This interview took place in fall 2019.ĭAVINA TOMLIN: What do you think makes this particular book of poetry different from your previous books in terms of theme and format? This collection contains themes of collective grief and guilt, as well as the role of language in our society and understanding what is sacred.
His poem “Absence Makes the Heart” was published in Volume 39 of The Worcester Review. Hargrove Editors’ Prize, Confrontation Poetry Prize, and Vallum Award for Poetry. McCabe Poetry Prize, American Literary Review Poetry Contest, Phyllis Smart-Young Prize, The 46er Prize, Nancy D. He is also the recipient of many awards including the Laux/Millar Prize, Wabash Prize, Philip Booth Award, Janet B.
John Sibley Williams is the author of five poetry collections including As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize, 2019), and Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press, 2019).
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