Origin
This is the story of a baby coming into the world, and of her first year in that world altered beyond recognition by a virus born into our lives at nearly the same time. It is a song of breath, and of light. It is a collection of love poems, and a cry flung into […]
After Economy
‘The fifty-six poems of After Economy balance on a wavering tightrope between oblivion, void and humanity. An intriguing unpredictability fills Williams’ poems, as they unfold into sensitive, beautiful musings: “this poem may die some evening in a garden by the sea”. A hallucinatory-feel transcends the confines of familiarity as “I was close enough / to […]
Locust and Marlin
Nominated for the 2014 Saltire Society Poetry Book of the Year Award. ‘The slings and arrows of life are challenge enough and Williams celebrates all of our strengths in her poetry. Just as her words are rich with life and love, they’re also critical, and address the harsher blows of living. The poet refuses to […]
Condition of Fire
‘Now I will tell my stories of bodies that change…’ Ovid, Metamorphoses Ovid wrote his famous stories of change just before he was banished from his beloved Rome and after travelling and observing many diverse and vibrant landscapes. He may well have visited and was knowledgeable of the Aeolian Isles where volcanoes cast molten lava into […]
House of the Tragic Poet
A pamphlet entitled HOUSE OF THE TRAGIC POET, published by Sam Riviere’s If A Leaf Falls Press. These poems came about because I watched a documentary about a house in Pompeii called The House of the Tragic Poet, and wrote a poem about that house. Then that poem disappeared off my computer. I tried everything I could to […]
Our Real Red Selves
In war and in birth we reveal OUR REAL RED SELVES, and this volume brings together three poets whose work moves between life and death. JL Williams’ The History of Fire takes us to war. Her poems are savage and hallucinatory. She writes not about a single war but a patchwork conflict, whose battlefield moves […]
JL Williams Poetry 