JL Williams was born in New Jersey and studied at Wellesley College with the poet Frank Bidart. She has performed her poems in America and in the United Kingdom and her poetry has been published internationally in a number of journals including The New Writer, Barking Dogs, Aesthetica, The Red Wheelbarrow, Chanticleer, The Wolf, Orbis, The Eildon Tree and Fulcrum (upcoming 2008). Since moving to Edinburgh in 2001 she has been active both as a poet and in the performing arts as a director and producer and is currently studying at the University of Glasgow on the Creative Writing MLitt programme.

Click image to read next U.S. poet laureate, Louise Glück's poem, 'Happiness'; to read about Gluck on the Modern American Poetry website, click here; for Image and Emotion website, with news, excerpts and a forum dedicated to the poet's work, click here or to view her work on Amazon, click here.

Click image to visit, What the Thunder Said website, regularly maintained website dedicated to the life and work of T S Eliot; for the University of Missouri's Eliot website,click here or for related items on Amazon, click here

Click image for the online text of 'Notes From Underground'; for the online text of 'Crime and Punishment' on the Litrix site, click here or for related items on Amazon, click here

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SELECTED POETRY

by
J.L. WILLIAMS

CONNACHIN

Nicolson Street where the bus stops are
For the coaches that drop at the council estates.
It’s dark, late summer, the air haar chilled.

A family of schemies stands out the offy.
The mother breaks empties and smokes a limp fag.
The father’s opening a Smirnoff Ice

For his namesake, aged eleven years.
The youngest son, just six years old, stands quiet
Avoiding explosions of glass.

His hand is blistered from where his mother
Held it on the hob, educating him
How to be wise round an open flame.

Since that incident he has been aware
Of a conflagration at the back of his eyes;
A concentrated pinprick of fire

That feels as if he could focus it
And shoot lightning out
At all he hates and once was frightened by.

But in his shelter of contemplative silence
He waits, enduring the heat building slowly inside him…
Suffering the generation of his power.

© J.L. Williams

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SCOTCH MARK

He returned home fist mouthed, neither crying nor speaking.
No blood could be found on his clothes.

He stared out the window of the dingy bathroom,
Walter Scott dyeing violet and blue.

As the water in the tub cooled the suds disintegrated.
“What is it?” I finally asked him.

His eyes were on another time, some other place.
“What is it?” I repeated.

From somewhere behind the glaze he mumbled, “ Ashamed.
I’m so ashamed.”

“What shame?” I asked him but he was silent,
Looking at me but really looking away.

© J.L. Williams

---

KAIL

In finery which cost no more than Sunday’s best
They rush though the knee high hay burned white gold.

The older folk on bales with glasses of ale raised cheer
And children tumble about her bare feet, laughing.

The first young man to reach her will receive a kiss
From peony lips which newly belong to another.

He stands above them all, watching her white dress
Billowing in the wind; memorising her sunlit, upturned face.

© J.L. Williams

---

LEADEN HEART

Upon what girder, observing whose dainty flush,
Did Ruskin comprehend the metal’s potent balance
Its presence in our world to convey,
Its presence in our blood to seduce?

An ore man is made of of which he makes…
My sickness silences me.
My only true language in any case was that of the glyph,
The outlining of negative space.

Take this iron heart and wear its charm.
I’ve no need any longer for its mechanical beat.
This life, like my chest, has always been full of emptiness.
I leave the world these blood black Scottish roses.

© J.L. Williams

---

WHISH

In the Forrest Hill Bar the poet’s Laphroaig is warmed by a jumper of dust.
Were he to return from the long war there’d be a wee dram to welcome him home.

Through translucent lips he’d sip ‘neath his bust and share what he’d explored.
More like the Water of Leith in aspect than a god fearing man would expect.

Half-realised bodies of every regard ambling
Up one side, down the other

And they sing. Beautifully, they sing.
The fiddlers would come to the end of their tune.

The old boys would on with their usual game.
“English, don’t hate ‘em but wouldnae eat a whole one.”

The poet would rotate his noble head
And they’d bite their tongues, rebuked by the presence of brethren dead.

One day we’ll know when we should and shouldnae speak.

© J.L. Williams

---

DAMMING AND LOVING

Loch Tay on this clouded night is a black hole.
One woman’s stoned voice skips along its oilcloth.

She weaves the path to the water,
Demarcating an irrational pattern with her wedding heels.

The sand is damp.

She wants two things at once.

She wants to step into the water.
She wants the coke in her room.

She weaves back and forth,
Talking shit, looking
Like she’s dancing.

Tracing the irrational pattern of her wedding heels
We follow her footsteps along the polka dot path.

Into the water she goes,
Opting for a guaranteed pull.
She’s off, breath’s gone.
It’s the coldest water there ever was, ever.

Back in the hotel room
A strong wind pushes through the open window
And cocaine blows
As it had done in so many nightmares
Into patterns on the floor;
Forming, unforming, reforming.

We follow her footsteps along the polka dot path
Tracing the irrational pattern toward the black hole,
Spiralling like the staircase in a mollusc shell.

© J.L. Williams

---

TEIND-SKATE

The sheriff will get my fish for his supper.
Oh yes. I’ll picture the shrug of his whiskers.

No matter I’ve made up this straw bungalow
And have filled it with art.

They’ll yet make me pay…
For my sins. My debt’s all I own.

This puss and me, we’ll have beggar soup
And wait for the sheriff’s hearty knock

While the fish on the table’s scales iridesce
In the side streaming rays of the gratis sun.

© J.L. Williams

---

PIRLIE-WEE

From this distance the bridge looks small.
He watches, enchanted, as it falls slowly
With a woman’s grace.

The lorries and cars make tiny splashes
As they tumble in the firth which runs to the sea.

Aye, he thinks,
It’s true, what they say.
It is pirlie-wee, this life.

© J.L. Williams

---

J.L. WILLIAMS - PERFORMANCE/COLLABORATION DETAILS:

PERFORMANCE

2002 – present Big Word Poetry Slam Performance Poetry and Spoken Word Competition, Bongo Club, Edinburgh and Various Locations - Four competitive performances including one at the 2004 Edinburgh International Book Festival, 2002 – 2005 - Kin Open Mic Night, Café Royal, Edinburgh, Poetry Readings April 2005 Big Word Performance Poetry and Spoken Word Night, Tron Bar, Edinburgh, Poetry Performance November 2004 Big Word Performance Poetry and Spoken Word Night, Tron Bar, Edinburgh Poetry Performance June 2004 RCAfe, Royal College of Art, London, Poetry Performance June 2004 KAFKA: Corpus Et Voce, Experimental Theatre, Roxy Art House, Edinburgh, Theatrical Performance with Edinburgh-based theatre company Highway Diner June 2004 SIRIUS Concert Series, St Cecelia’s Hall, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Poetry Performance April 2004 Hotel SiLENCiO Performance Art Collaboration with Glasgow’s Chateau Art Collective, Brunswick Hotel, Glasgow, Techno-poetry recording experiment with theatrical accompaniment by Edinburgh-based actress Laura Cameron Lewis February 2004 Dialogues New Music Festival, Bongo Club, Edinburgh, Poetry Performance with simultaneous reading of text by Edinburgh-based actress Laura Cameron Lewis 2003 – 2004 SiLENCiO Performance Art Cabaret, Counting House, Edinburgh; monthly and also in Edinburgh RUSH Festival May 2003 and May 2004, Regular poetry readings and experimental poetry, video and sound delay performances November 2003 SIRIUS Concert Series, Reid Concert Hall, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Poetry Performance October 2002 An Opera of Clouds, premiere of music theatre work by Christine McCombe with chamber music, electroacoustic soundscapes, video projections and live electronics at St Cecelia’s Hall, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Reading of poems by Australian writer Alison Croggon February 2002 Big Word Performance Poetry and Spoken Word Night, Tron Bar, Edinburgh, Poetry Performance

COLLABORATION

July 2005 Scottish Arts Council Grant Award for Poetry and Music collaboration project with composer Martin Parker April 2005 Collaboration CD with AJ Yush 2K (Musician, Composer and Producer) Spoken poetry recorded and mixed with music for CD August 2004 Digging in the Vaults: Rosslyn 2004 CD Collaboration, Rosslyn and Edinburgh (for international distribution) with William Page (Music Journalist, Producer) Voiceover June 2004 Black Mother, poetry and music composition with theatrical accompaniment, KAFKA: Corpus Et Voce, Roxy Art House, Edinburgh with Martin Parker (Sound Designer and Composer) Writer and Director May 2004 – June 2004 Hollywood Law by Paul Hughes (Filmmaker) Producer November 2003 SIRIUS Concert Series, Reid Concert Hall, University of Edinburgh, Performance of John Cage’s Swinging with Daniel Williams (Sound Designer and Composer) Spoken performance of lyrics June 2003 Minotaur, live original poetry reading and sound delay with film accompaniment, SiLENCiO, Counting House, Edinburgh with Martin Parker (Sound Designer and Composer) Writer and Filmmaker November 2003 Poetry and music collaboration for Paragon Ensemble’s ‘Whatever Happened to Music?’, Tron Theatre, Glasgow with Daniel Williams (Sound Designer and Composer) Writer and poetry performer May 2002 The Sash Unwinding by Joshua Bryan, Edinburgh (Artist, Filmmaker) Film Voiceover November 2001 Thirst by Joshua Bryan, Edinburgh (Artist, Filmmaker) Film Voiceover Jan – May 1999 Vision (strangely there is a wisdom), Experimental Theatre, Jewett Arts Centre, Wellesley, Massachusetts, Writer and Director May 1999 The Accident, short film, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, Filmmaker December 1998 Kiss, short film, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, Filmmaker May 1998 Visiting Emily, short film, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, Filmmaker