Love, stereotypes, and city streets fill this stunning debut from a young, black poet.
Ian Williams writes challenging poetry. His poems address the crisis of young, black masculinity in cities, paint starkly urban portraits of life and break open stereotypes. Sly humour laces the collection, and Williams is adept at playing with language to change meanings in unexpected ways. For him it's easy to turn the word go into gone.
You
Know Who You Are reconfigures the relations
between reader and speaker. It fixates on the difficulty
of genuine expression, especially when set against the noise
of contemporary life. Poems interrupt themselves, question
themselves, compete with their own noise, and the overall
effect is lively, polyphonic, and hybrid.
Pre-publication attention:
Semi finalist Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize (2007)
Semi finalist Elixir
Press Poetry Award (2007)
From “What remains of us”
There are things about you I
know
and do not say.
Misshapen.
There are things about you I
know
and do not say, We are all we have.
We have been reduced
to this. No cruelty.
From “Not answering”
I have a name,
you remind me. You are not my anything.
Certainly not some youknowwho Hello? Can
you hear me?
the kind of woman who sleeps on her side, curlers in,
and wonders What went wrong?
What happened to pookie?
Careful
now, don’t be calling no one pookie.
From “Mistakes”
people like you
you like people
people like you make
people like you