AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN SIBLEY WILLIAMS

By Adrian Koesters

Hello, John! It’s a pleasure to speak with you. I wanted to start by asking you about place and person in writing. I’ve heard that very often writers tend toward preoccupation with one or the other as a kind of natural reaction, and that even when “place” writers consider persons or characters, it is place that comes through most strongly (and the other way around for “person” writers). Do you have thoughts about this?

That’s an interesting question. I can see how some poets tend to concentrate on one or the other, though I feel my work dually emphasizes place and person. Naturally, some poems lean heavily in one direction, but the next poem may lean the opposite. It entirely depends on what the poem demands.  That said, many of my poems begin with a single haunting “place” image. Be it a dead horse bloated by a river, my young daughter tearing up the paper swans I made for her, or  children playing in the vast ribcage of a beached whale. Then I try to weave a world in which that image makes sense. So it’s rare for me to have a poem that focuses entirely on place or person. They’re inherently interrelated.

You are one of the editors of The Inflectionist Review, which has a strong “language” perspective. Can you say what that means in your own poetry, where you tend to head? 

That’s a huge question, as language is both the inspiration and the conduit for that inspiration. It’s the water in the vase and the vase itself . . . and the flowers sprouting from it. But you’re definitely right in saying my poetry is “language-heavy” in that I keep my work tight, focused, and rather dense in imagery. I trust in what Robert Bly calls “the leap,” allowing readers to make intuitive connections between lines and images. The poems that resonate strongest with me are those with multiple potential interpretations that open the poem up to the reader. Readers can pick the poem up and make it their own, bringing their personal histories, their fears and joys, to bear on interpretation. Any lover of poetry will make a poem their own. To me, that’s something to celebrate. So I tend to write with that idea in mind. 

And on the other side of the coin can you comment on what you look for in a submission to The Inflectionist Review?

Although our tastes are fairly broad, encompassing both narrative and experimental poetry, we tend to favor ambiguous work that asks questions without having to directly ask them, poems that haunt us long after reading, imagery that stings, language that constantly surprises, syntax that is aware of the rules it chooses to break. We look for work that contains multiple levels of meaning that unfold over multiple readings, that resonate with people across borders and cultures, that speak of universal human truths. 

You live in a rather complicated part of the United States, outside Portland, OR, which is rich in natural beauty and yet increasingly urbanized. How in the last couple of decades have you seen the area change, in terms of population, landscape, etc.? 

In the ten years I’ve lived here, both the Portland landscape and humanscape have altered drastically. Young artists and people of color are being pushed to the city’s periphery. Quaint, colorful, artsy communities are being swallowed up by developers. Towering complexes now rise from the ruins of midcentury office buildings. Three bookstores have closed in the past two years. Traffic now rivals the east coast cities that raised me. And, naturally, the cost of living has skyrocketed. In many ways, I barely recognize this Portland. However, this is still that bold, strange, vibrant city I fell in love with so long ago. Multiple poetry readings every night of the week. Over a dozen independent theaters and bookstores. Naked bike rides. Street musicians. Powell’s. And still that warm, inviting glow emanating from the city at night: neon-lit, wildly bridged, eco-friendly, bordered by lush green hills, wide rivers, and a razor-peeked mountain.

Where are you originally from, and where is your favorite place to be when you can be there?

I was born and raised in Boston, though I spent my early adulthood living in different areas of New England and New York. About 10 years ago, I packed my car, cats in tow, and started fresh in Portland. I’d visited Oregon before, and though it immediately felt like home I knew no one here and had a job and life back east. But something about Oregon kept tugging at me, so I decided to take the risk and start a new life out here. Luckily, this wonderful state opened its arms to me right away, and I became part of a few incredible poetry communities within a month. Oregon is astoundingly beautiful, diverse, and welcoming. 

Professionally, this past year has been a banner one for you as a poet, with two substantial poetry prizes for Skin Memory (The Backwaters Press) and As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Books). I’m sure you have been asked this often since then, but can you say a little about the differences between the two books? 

Many of my books explore the same larger human concerns, be they personal or cultural. The themes are interconnected, are threads that together form a single tapestry. 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. In the end, I recognize pretty clear thematic threads running from my early chapbooks all the way to Skin Memory. So both new books can easily be considered a pair. Their structures vary, and Skin Memory includes more intimate, personal work than the culturally charged As One Fire Consumes Another, but in the end they are asking the same questions and are answered by the same silence.

The story behind each book is actually quite different. Fire was a specific experiment for me, an entire collection consisting entirely of short, newspaper column-like prose poems which are meant to capitalize on my favorite aspects of free verse and prose poetry. I wanted the narrative flow and inherent conceptual linkage associated with the latter and the frequent, tense line breaks of the former. I found that happy medium in those boxy column form. And the poems in that book feel like newspaper clippings, in a way, so the structure melded with the content. 

Skin Memory was a wholly different beast. It had been in the works for over three years, endured 50 rejections, and, in the end, I revised it top-to-bottom seven times before Kwame Dawes chose it for the Backwaters Prize from the University of Nebraska. Each of the seven revisions involved cutting about half the manuscript, replacing those poems with newer material, and wholly restructuring it, trying to re-balance the various elements and themes for it to read as smoothly as possible. It was a pretty grueling process, but it taught me a lot about myself as a writer and editor. 

Finally, where do you see your work headed now, and what has the process been like to get back to your writing work after?

I rarely work on a specific project. I tend to simply write and see what happens. So, I’m writing new poems, yes, but not with a given aim. It feels more organic that way. I am also a professional poetry editor and run various literary workshops, and I am a Poet-in-Residence with Portland Writers in the Schools. I’m also father of twin toddlers and touring to support my two new books, so personal writing time has taken a temporary backseat to other (creative and personal) responsibilities.