Overview

Framed by the death of the poet's mother, Reading Water begins by considering how love is born then bound by the bonds of family and friends. These poems undertake a restless search for a self under constant evolution. Grappling with grief, familial and romantic love, and art - using persona and ekphrasis, along with the traditional lyric - this debut collection addresses Dean Young's crucial question: ""Who doesn't sense an unbridgeable alienation between ourselves and the world...That our poems speak to no one, not even fully to ourselves?"" In response to this question, over and over again, Reading Water fords the distance that exists between sons, brothers, parents, friends, and lovers--giving voice to the what's unsayable in these relationships. In three sections, the book moves backwards through time, forming an arc that begins with loss, moving on to desire and a beloved, before concluding with propulsive pieces about art and ekphrasis. In these sections, the poet moves from a place of support and community to one of solitude. This collection considers how we are made, before thinking about what it takes to become a writer or artist, and if solitude is a prerequisite for creation. Images of water's ephemerality, what happens above and below its surface, thread Reading Water together. This collection finds kinship in the work of poets like Brenda Shaughnessy, Nick Flynn, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz, Gail Mazur, and Alan Shapiro.

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9781962206211

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Derek JG Williams is an American writer and the author of the nonfiction chapbook, Poetry Is a Disease (Greying Ghost, 2022). He holds a doctorate in English and Creative Writing from Ohio University, and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where he won the Brian Rattigan and Mary Doyle Curran Creative Scholarships. Williams has been selected as a Visiting Teaching Artist at the Poetry Foundation. He is a Blacksmith House Emerging Writer. His poem, ""These Kingdoms of Ours"" was a finalist for RHINO Magazine's Editors Prize. Brenda Shaughnessy selected his poem ""Ode to the Tongue"" for inclusion in the Best New Poets anthology. His writing has appeared on Boston's MBTA trains as a part of the city's Poetry on the T program, while his poems and prose are published in Pleiades, The Writer's Chronicle, Banshee, Poet Lore, Salamander, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Williams teaches writing courses online, and also works with individual clients to help them establish and reach their creative goals. He is an academic language editor and technical writer who has worked with scholars and researchers at numerous institutions and universities. He currently lives in Switzerland with his family. SHORTER BIO: Derek JG Williams is an American writer. He is the author of Poetry Is a Disease (Greying Ghost, 2022). His poems and prose are published in Pleiades, The Writer's Chronicle, Plume, Banshee, Salamander, Best New Poets, and Prairie Schooner, among others. He holds a doctorate in English and Creative Writing from Ohio University, and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He lives near Zurich with his family. Reading Water is his debut poetry collection.

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