John Sibley Williams

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John Sibley Williams is the author of Scale Model of a Country at Dawn (Cider Press Review Book Award, 2021), The Drowning House (Elixir Press Poetry Award, 2021),  As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize, 2019), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press, 2019), Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize, 2019),  Disinheritance, and Controlled Hallucinations. He has also served as editor of two Northwest poetry anthologies, Alive at the Center (Ooligan Press, 2013) and Motionless from the Iron Bridge (barebones books, 2013). A twenty-six-time Pushcart nominee, John is the winner of numerous awards, including the Laux/Millar Prize, Wabash Prize, Philip Booth Award, Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize, American Literary Review Poetry Contest, Phyllis Smart-Young Prize, The 46er Prize, Nancy D. Hargrove Editors' Prize, Confrontation Poetry Prize, and Vallum Award for Poetry. Previous publishing credits include: Best American Poetry, Yale Review, Midwest Quarterly, Southern Review, Colorado Review, Sycamore Review, Prairie Schooner, Massachusetts Review, Poet Lore, Saranac Review, Atlanta Review, TriQuarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, Mid-American Review, Poetry Northwest, Third Coast, and various anthologies.  John holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rivier University and an MA in Book Publishing from Portland State University. He is the founder and head teacher of Caesura Poetry Workshop, a virtual workshop series, and serves as co-founder and editor of The Inflectionist Review. He also works as a poetry editor and book coach. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his partner and boisterous young twins, Kaiya and Addy. Source

Boatbuilding

And yes, we all learn to be boats by

navigating our mother’s sleeping

chests. Calm sea of linen on lung.

Two tiny oars growing less useless

every stroke. And yes, our fathers

stand taller than a hundred masts yet

tremble when handed the frailest of

bodies. Their heavy silence is a net

dragging empty behind us. And yes,

we’ll end up casting it all back to the

sea someday. Someday it will be our

turn to grieve, to distance. But how

close skin feels, briefly, now, as

we’re learning its edges.

Published:

2017

Length:

Shorty

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2022

Themes:

Childhood & Coming of Age

Literary Devices:

Alliteration

the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of words appearing in succession

Assonance

The repetition of similar vowel sounds that takes place in two or more words in proximity to each other within a line; usually refers to the repetition of internal vowel sounds in words that do not end the same.

Extended Metaphor

a metaphor that extends through several lines or even an entire poem

Media Res

a literary work that begins in the middle of the action (from the Latin “into the middle of things)

Metaphor

a comparison between two unrelated things through a shared characteristic