10 Questions for John Sibley Williams

rusty eyed orphaned tracks. somber, un-
blinking house. what we keep calling a 
face, though never our own. wildly invasive
dead things & when the train that never
comes doesn’t come again, the wool we’ve 
gathered to stave off winter refuses to hold 
us together. basho said the cry of the cicada 
gives us no sign that presently we will die.
—from “Wool Gathering,” Volume 66, Issue 1 (Spring 2025)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I actually began writing short fiction around age eight or nine and throughout high school and my first years of college. It seems strange to say in hindsight, but I was 21 when I wrote my first poem. Perhaps due to the way it was taught to me in school, before that I had never enjoyed reading poetry and had certainly never considered writing one. The story of my first poetry experience still fills my heart with gratitude and inspiration.

It was summer in New York and I was sitting by a lake with my feet dragging through the current caused by small boats when suddenly, without my knowing what I was doing, I began writing something that obviously wasn’t a story. What was it? Impressions. Colors. Emotions. Strange images. I didn’t have any paper, so I used a marker to write a series of phrases on my arm. Then they poured onto my leg. Then I realized I needed paper. I ran back to the car, took out a little notebook, and spent hours emptying myself of visions and fears and joys I don’t think I even knew I had. Since that surreal and confusing moment by that little city lake 19 years ago, poetry has become my creative obsession and life’s work, the lens through which I better comprehend the world and my tiny part in it.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Oh my, dozens! Many dozens. Hundreds, really. I could list off a handful that just came out this year that I’ve read multiple times. But the poets and writers who have consistently inspired me in a way I cannot fully comprehend, that have changed my life, include Carl Phillips, Octavio Paz, Paul Celan, Charles Wright, Federico García Lorca, and more recently Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Ocean Vuong, Jericho Brown, Ada Limón, Tracy K. Smith, Fatimah Asghar, Tarfia Faizullah, Jenny Xie, Craig Santos Perez, Safia Elhillo, Joan Kane, and Abigail Chabitnoy.

Also, although not a poetry collection, the book most influential to my life would have to be Man’s Search for Meaning by psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl. This seminal work frames much of my understanding of human nature, and I don’t think a day goes by in which its insights aren’t validated in my daily life. As opposed to abstractions like truth or beauty, the idea that purpose—a motivational drive—is the “meaning of life” that sustains us feels both ground-breaking and true to life. Reading Frankl’s work, it’s as if the earth shifts beneath me. Every time. I don’t know who or what I would be without having read it.

What other professions have you worked in?
Having gotten my first job at 14 by lying on my application to say I was older and allowed to wield heavy machinery, I’ve worked in a wide variety of jobs. As a youth and early adult, I worked in kitchens, nursing homes, shipping facilities, banquet halls, hotels, offices, and other obviously temporary places. It wasn’t until I was in my early 30s and studying for my Book Publishing degree that I began to (finally) truly consider a “career.” Since then, I have worked for three book publishers (in acquisitions, marketing, and editing), taught both middle and high school classes, tried to keep up with the workload of literary nonprofits, and other lit-related gigs. Just before COVID struck, I was able to transition into self-employment full-time. And I have been truly lucky to keep this going, expanding, blooming. My services now include poetry editing, mentoring, book coaching, workshop teaching, book marketing, publication assistance, and related ways of assisting authors.

What did you want to be when you were young?
After those (in hindsight) awkward, pie-in-the-sky kid dreams of being Indiana Jones or some noir detective, I actually wanted to be an author. I wrote my first full short story at 8, and I wrote a lot, even under past-your-bedtime sheets with only a flashlight illuminating my notebook. At that time, I was absolutely absorbed by Stephen King, Clive Barker, and such, so my stories were all horror. Through high school and early 20s, my work shifted to other influences, especially the magical realism of Marquez and linguistically cold yet deeply intimate stories of Kafka and Camus. And then, as the story goes, poetry discovered me. 

Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
Hmmm. I don’t really know how to answer this. Every place I have ever visited, in both life and imagination, in some way influences my poetry. Though I’m from Massachusetts, I’ve lived in four states, now reside in Oregon, and have driven cross-country twice and backpacked through parts of Europe. Every grain of sand from every beach, each museum and near-death experience, there’s not a single location, for good or ill, that hasn’t impacted me personally. And, of course, there are our imagined worlds, which know even fewer bounds. That said, for some odd reason, many of my poems explore midwestern imagery. I did spend some time in Iowa as a kid visiting family, but that’s really it. But there’s just something about those horizon-to-horizon fields of wheat and corn, those half-empty silos and rusted out plows, the scarecrows and overall sense of a certain kind of past still humming beneath the grass that intrigues me. 

Is there any specific music that aids you through the writing or editing process?
Actually, I cannot write with any kind of music playing. I find it too distracting. 

I tend to write either at my local café, where the white noise of quiet conversations allows me to focus better than the silence, music, and distractions of home. During the summer, I often write at a picnic table at my local park, where the various, overlapping natural sounds also work as a kind of white noise. There’s just something about the breeze and birds and distant motorboats that spark creativity. I guess that’s my writing ‘music.’

That said, of course, I’m deeply in love with and influenced by music, just not while actually writing. But I have poems borrowing lines or finding direct inspiration from quite a few bands, including new wave/punk outfits like Joy Division and Bauhaus to international artists like Sigur Ros and Bjork to alternative folk like Rock Plaza Central and Bright Eyes. 

Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
Notes on writing routine:
I don’t have a specific location or time of day, especially now that I’m a parent. I must steal every moment I can. However, even before fatherhood, I found that ideas and phrases and images emerge at the oddest times. I’d taken to carrying a pocket notebook everywhere some years ago. During my daily work commute. In the hospital visiting an ailing friend. While walking my dog. Even in the middle of a concert or film. Though I tend to write best when outside, inspiration can come from anything. At its core, I think creativity is all about curiosity and how one chooses to communicate with the world. As adults, we’re programmed to think linearly, reactively, and, dare I say it, boringly. But if we retain a bit of that childhood innocence, that unabated curiosity, then we can find metaphors in everything. Why look at the night sky and think “sky, moon, stars”? Why can’t the sky be a river? Why can’t the stars be that part of our hearts we leave open to love? 

My process is a bit different with every poem. Some pour forth as if on their own, leaving me the easier task of revising for sound and clarity. Other poems take serious effort, time, and struggle. But generally my routine includes having notebooks filled with phrases and images splayed out before me. My goal is to find connective tissue, loose threads, unexpected contexts, from which a poem may emerge.

Notes on writing during the pandemic:
Although I know many poets and writers whose perspectives have broadened, whose hearts and minds opened, and who have had so much more free time to write during the pandemic, my experience has been quite different. Partly due to health and political fears, partly because my kids have been home so much more due to school closures and family illnesses, and partly because my twins have recently been diagnosed with neurodivergent disorders, the past few years have taken a toll on my own writing. The inspiration, that necessary spark, isn’t quite there at the moment. But I know from experience that it’s only temporary, and I’ve learned not to make an issue of it. I am still working with poets, still reading poetry…so I’m far from disconnected from what I love. I’m just having some continued trouble finding words for my own experiences. But this will pass…hopefully later this summer. I can feel something akin to inspiration slowly blooming inside.

Notes on how I write:
Many, perhaps most, of my poems begin with a single image. Be it a dead horse bloated by a river, my young daughter tearing up the paper swans I made for her, or the implication of what once hung from a tree that now wears a tire swing, I usually start with a single haunting image written at the top of a page. Then I try to weave a world in which that image makes sense. I have multiple notebooks filled with individual lines, words, images without context, and I tend to flip through these while writing to see if any previous little inspirations might tie into the new world I’m creating. That said, I do sometimes start with a concept, theme, or other larger motivation, often cultural or political. But I tend to find these ideas and themes spring naturally from whatever I write, and it usually feels more organic if I begin with an image and let the context find its voice. Another very important element to my composition process is how a poem sounds when read aloud. Poems are music. Poems have internal inflections, rhythms, and cadences that can only be recognized and appreciated when vocalized. To me, that’s when a poem truly comes to life. So, I always read my lines aloud, over and over and over again, and often the next lines spring directly from this vocalization. I hear what’s meant to come next. I feel I’ve written this way as far back as I can remember.

Notes on getting creatively stalled:
When my writing gets stalled, I usually take it as a sign that my mind needs a break. Often writers block hits me after an extended period of hectic writing. Six months. A hundred poems written (not all of them good, of course). I’ve opened my heart and explored the ways it hurts. Then…the page goes blank on me. And that’s okay. It’s an essential part of the process, as sleeping is to wakefulness. I take that time to regroup and work on other things. Sometimes I forget there’s a whole world out there. I forget I actually have hobbies and interests outside of writing. So, I take these stalled times to get inspired by the non-literary world, and I wait until the need to write returns. It’s rarely a long wait. Then, as a warm up, I tend to write a few choppy, rather poor poems that no one will ever see. Then, hopefully, the better writing returns in full force.

Who typically gets the first read of your work?
Apart from me, usually my future reader. My wife doesn’t really enjoy poetry, and though my twin eight-year-olds do sometimes ask to read my work (and they write their own poetry!), I don’t belong to any critique groups nor do I run drafts by others before submitting them to journals. Although I absolutely adore our wonderful poetry community, I keep my poems close to my chest until I believe they might just be ready to be introduced to the world.

If you could work in another art form, what would it be?
I’m sure most poets reference visual art or something similar, but as a huge horror film fan I would love to work for a practical effects company, using my hands and imagination to create real, on-set illusions, wild visual effects, animatronics, miniatures, fires, explosions, and the like. There’s just something deeply intriguing about being asked how to create a certain visual effect and then strategizing, building, and using whatever materials on hand to terrify an audience. 

What are you working on currently?
I’m not working on a specific project at the moment. I’m just writing and writing, trying to push my own boundaries, stretch my comfort zone, and experiment with new styles and structures with the hope something fresh and authentic will come of it.

JOHN SIBLEY WILLIAMS is the author of nine poetry collections, including Scale Model of a Country at Dawn (Cider Press Review Poetry Award), The Drowning House (Elixir Press Poetry Award), As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press), skycrape (WaterSedge Poetry Chapbook Contest), and Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize). His book Sky Burial: New & Selected Poems is forthcoming in translation from the Portuguese press do lado esquerdo. A thirty-five-time Pushcart nominee, John serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review, poetry editor at Kelson Books, and founder of the Caesura Poetry Workshop series. Previous publishing credits include Best American Poetry, Yale Review, Verse Daily, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, andTriQuarterly.