Books by JL Williams include Condition of Fire (Shearsman, 2011), Locust and Marlin (Shearsman, 2014) which was shortlisted for the 2014 Saltire Society Scottish Poetry Book of the Year Award, Our Real Red Selves (Vagabond Poets, 2015) and House of the Tragic Poet (If A Leaf Falls Press, 2016). She is especially interested in expanding dialogues through poetry across languages, perspectives and cultures and in cross-form work, visual art, dance, opera and theatre.
She has been published widely in journals, her poetry has been translated into Dutch, Spanish, Turkish, Polish, German, French and Greek and she has been featured at international poetry festivals in Scotland, Turkey, Cyprus and Canada (upcoming May 2016). She was selected to take part in the 2015 Jerwood Opera Writing Programme, was Writer-in-Residence for the British Art Show 8 in Edinburgh with the artist Catherine Street and plays in the poetry and music band Opul.
Williams gives regular poetry readings and workshops and is on the Live Literature funded list of Scottish Book Trust Authors. She is the programme manager at the Scottish Poetry Library where she curates poetry events and creates workshops and professional development activities for writers.
JL Williams on social media:
I was once asked by an acting teacher to leave the theatre to scream at a tree. I was playing a character who needed to get angry, really angry, and I wasn’t able to express the emotion properly, so she wanted me to go outside and practise. I stared at the tree, willing it into all the people who had ever done me harm, feeling the lump of pain and anger grow in my chest and begin to spin and burn, but I couldn’t let it out.
Years later, while trying to understand my own movement through and behaviours in this world, it became clear to me that I was still not very good at expressing my anger. I began to wonder how much this was down to my upbringing and peculiarities of my personality and how much it might have to do with the fact that I am a woman living in a patriarchal society. It seems obvious that the expectations of women and men to behave in particular ways, especially when it comes to emotions generally and anger in particular—and, by association, both expressed and repressed violence—have deep and painful implications for all of us.
Are men expected to be violent in ways that women are not? Are women allowed to express their anger openly? How are physically violent women judged in comparison to physically violent men? Would what we call strength in a male hero be called the same in a female hero? Is non-violence in a woman respected less, and expected more, than non-violence in a man?
These questions, and many others including ones that consider the opposite end of the spectrum of emotions for men, intrigue me, and I’ve been exploring them in my writing. The key to peace may be to seek a balance between extremes, and it is of no use for any of us to deny or be denied the full range of our emotions; our anger and our joy, our darkness and our light.
In the end I did manage to scream in that play, and what stays with me is the sense of relief I felt at finally making my loudest sound.
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A recording of these poems was made into a film-poem as part of the Second Space project. Watch and listen to the poems here.
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Market at Golgotha
I am interested in the sound of light
I am interested in violence, specifically
women’s violence
I am interested in the way the mouth
of a woman is like the wound in the palm
of Jesus, I am interested
in the layering of voices a cacophony of voices
a cacophony of women’s voices a cacophony
of screams a cacophony of orgasms a
cacophony of women outraged at the repression
of their instincts kicking sexuality or of the
boxing of their lust into a lit screen whose noise
is the strobe of men weeping; all those bright, rectangular,
glinting, crystal, touch screen tears
The more you touched it the more
I couldn’t feel you
When a quiet woman gives birth she learns
how joyful it is to scream
When I was a virgin
I used to hyperventilate
thinking that’s what men
liked
In the garden the spears of flowers
are the spears of the legionnaires
who aimed between the ribs of Jesus
Women collected the tears
of the soldiers in crystal vials
Sold them to make enough money
to buy out their pimps
Except for one whore, my mother,
who preferred the truth
arroyo where last you
who in sleep dreams
and weeps for dreams
dead horses inability
move toward the desired
thirst wake both wet and dry
taste in mouth sand cactus water
hot brown legs feel
gold hair soft as muzzle of a woke horse
flail in the heat a white bird bent from sky
good enough for him
good enough for
beyond the good
bad beyond
that love
hairs and thread
thick rubbery
thin flexible
endless playing out
strands of hot glass
rope sewn
devils split cheek elastic thread
offering
this lit theatre
tying
broken things
cornbread and black coffee
chestnut smoke
sweat stained saddle leather
forget to wake you
duty to wake
wake you treachery gun shots
wake you panting
wake you
still sleeping
white flesh beneath my collar
boys lit the fire
ate supper coyotes
sang pine trees
the wind
how dark winter when the sun goes
slept in a circle heads
on saddles horses
learned to keep close
our language
their breaths
the long lost ocean
does not understand
the words hazy skein of dusk
in my mouth her man
has a boys hands
soft unable to shuck
vulgar gold
dont stop a man
dying
slept not far from a creek
last night couldn’t hear a heart beat
for the water you
forgot beneath the noise
your aspirations the sapphire
of your eyes the racing water
Almost
I want to hold you under water until you stop struggling
then raise you again, watch you remember how good it is to breathe.
Wealthy children embellish their skins with cuts and burns,
starve in waxy houses to change into matchsticks.
I want to pour wine down your gullet holding your nose,
explain I come from a womb laced with wire and light.
Cars drive off bridges, buildings are downed by small planes.
Mothers in kitchens have no tools to cut the raw meat.
The meat is poisoned and greenish, it smells of a flood.
I want to cover your mouth and eyes with my hands,
release my grip when your tears lubricate tense palms.
Nostalgic technophobes cower beneath a gas globe.
Circumference of its orange cast grows more narrow.
Men and boys shove women toward its iron post.
They tell each other how good it was in the old days,
pointing out beautiful clichés like powder, mellifluence.
Armies of nano-economies dilute the city,
buoy me up as ants erecting an altar.
I want to watch you crush your scion in hopelessness,
beg you to stop, explain that you’re almost ready
to appreciate your particular, exceptional gifts.