Ian Williams

 

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Praise for
You Know Who You Are

Frenetic is the word that comes to mind. Pure. Electric. Genius.

--Naomi Benaron, 2010 winner of the Bellwether Prize

Ian Williams' You Know Who You Are x-rays our social masks, our deceitful, greeting-card and billboard and video slogans, to show us up as who we really are--still human despite all the technology that makes us sound like idiots and prods us to feel nothing. Williams don't care bout e-mail poses or cellphone attitude; he tears away at our language of bleeps and downloads and broadcasts to show us vulnerable, full of hurt and desire. What's he like? Think Atwood, Coupland's Generation X, and Bok: avant-garde cool, intelligent saying. Pick it up, get hooked up, see you seeing you clearer.

 --George Elliott Clarke, Laureate, 2001 Governor-General's Award for Poetry


Reading Ian Williams' poems I am both shattered and revived. They conjure a dazzling concoction of loneliness and hope, a wild display of the endless sparks and twists that become our lives. You Know Who You Are is an electric addition to Canadian poetry. What a debut!

--Carolyn Smart, author of Hooked