Everything Is a Storehouse of Inspiration

INTRVW BY CJ

It is by convention that we go on our daily lives experiencing things as they are. From the thrills of the morning air or the inviting scent of an afternoon coffee, all things mundane often remain solely within our senses.

However, for someone like John Sibley Williams, he shares,

”...I believe everything is a storehouse of inspiration. “

It is fascinating and truly imposing to have the mind of a writing virtuoso and twenty-seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee (along with other multiple awards) indulging NRM with how he translates his perception of things into compelling literature.

Getting started, John hasn’t always been into poetry until he was 21. As he remembers it, it was in the summer and by a lake where he first had his poetic recognition of things around him. There were “Impressions” as he describes it along with other things.

“What was it? Impressions. Colors. Emotions. Strange images. I didn’t have any paper, so I used a marker to write a series of phrases on my arm. “

Surreal and confusing, that moment remains as a marker in his mind where he awakened his writer’s eye. An eye for seeing things differently and uniquely his own. Since then, poetry has become his obsession and is now his life’s work 19 years forward.

“I have multiple notebooks filled with individual lines, words, images without context, and I tend to flip through these while writing to see if any previous little inspirations might tie into the new world”

He has a few notes when beginning to write. John starts with a single image, idea, or theme from which he begins to weave a world around it. This is important in his process as he finds his poem’s story to be more organic and convincing if he lets this single random thing find its voice. From the poem’s form aside, another key element that defines his style of poetry is how particular he is with its sound. “Poems are music”, according to him and it shows how he appreciates language’s ability to communicate, be it by message or tone. He harnesses this by making use of language’s internal inflections, rhythms, and cadences that can only be recognized when read aloud.

“It all depends on the author’s curiosity…from overheard conversations and history, from memories and mythology and the way a bridge sways against the sky and my son’s hand brushing against mine…from weather patterns and animals and cityscapes and rivers and the bridges that span them. And sometimes ideas seem to materialize from the ether, as if they never existed until that moment. “

Being a writer, he takes a lot of his inspiration from a wide range of themes such as family, tradition, art, culture, history, politics, landscapes, and seasons with differing approaches from narrative to prose poems. It is in his layered metaphors and the innate use of the musicality of language that express his concept’s shareable, universal experience—all of which translates into his poems’ form and sound carrying a resonance beyond literal and figurative meanings.

Even among the complex structures and themes of literature, John roots his works on human attachments and disconnects—the way things interact with things. His works are an art emanating from how man identifies with the living and inanimate or the abstract.

“I cannot pretend I don’t live in a tumultuous world where people repeat the same mistakes, often with violent consequences.”

His writings have always helped him make sense of the world’s entropy as the poems he writes about are a release on the themes he mentioned. To release such rich and careful experience, it is in sparking a conversation and creating a fresh connection that is his intention with writing. He allows his readers to contemplate how they attach, perceive, live amidst culture and politics, interact with landscapes, and feel hurt and healing.

“I don’t have a specific location or time of day, especially now that I’m a parent. I must steal every moment I can. However, even before fatherhood, I found that ideas and phrases and images emerge at the oddest times”

John is a Boston native but has lived in Portland, Oregon for about 12 years now. As a parent, he enjoys a large part of his life staying with the family. The situation of his family right now is in an adorably mixed environment. He has two beautiful daughters (part-Japanese) and one is transgender from which he makes an effort to understand more and be sensitive toward the community. He describes it as, “a lot of interesting

mixes in our house.”.

It helps that John has been banking his ideas from the momentous sparks he finds in everyday life. With that, being a parent does not stop him from busying his hands with writing his poems in their raw, rudimentary form. He does so by always carrying a pocket notebook, every day without mistake. This routine results in him with a notebook-ful of phrases and images splayed out before him. As he puts it, this routine’s goal is finding connective tissue, loose threads, and unexpected contents, from which a poem may emerge.

Briefly, he shares with NRMagazine how the pandemic has been different for him as a writer. The emergence of such a general crisis and problems from COVID-19 may be a loot of many ideas to write about, but its negative effect on people certainly cannot be denied. This is what happened with John, as he shares, “...my experience has been quite different.

Partly due to health and political fears, partly because my kids have been home so much more due to school closures and family illnesses, and partly because my twins have recently been diagnosed with neurodivergent disorders, the past few years have taken a toll on my own writing.”

He still has not strayed from his love of poetry and continues to read and work with other poets. A mere setback from pursuing writing: “I’m just having some continued trouble finding

words for my own experiences. But this will pass…I can

feel something akin to inspiration slowly blooming inside.”, as John puts it. With that, all hope is not lost, especially for someone as accomplished of an author as he is.

The effect of the pandemic on his writing is not something new to John as he has experienced getting creatively stalled before. He takes these setbacks in writing as nothing but a

fully needed break. The breaks he takes are those that allow him to revisit his hobbies and interests, allowing him to rest completely while also accumulating inspiration from the nonliterary world. To get back into writing, he usually tries to feel intuitive if the need to write is present. He does get back into writing in this way as he shares, “...as a warm up, I tend to

write a few choppy, rather poor poems that no one will ever see. Then, hopefully, the better writing returns in full force.”

“...I approach my other creative endeavors with the same perspective. I love language. I love teaching. I love to assist poets and authors on their road toward publication. So, I try to do as much as I can to further my own studies through my work assisting others.”

Founder of Caesura Poetry Workshop, John is no stranger in assisting other poets(and those who aspire to be). The workshop aims not to give a name to John himself but solely to assist poets and give prominence to poetry in our culture. By any means which he can and the scope he has available, he intends to allow writers to see poems breathe on their own, separated from intent and ego.

“Pertaining to my impact, that’s a profound question with no easy answer. Although I’d love to make some grand statement here, I’m under no illusions that I will be remembered as a poet when I’m gone. ”

Impact on a larger scale, as he sees it, is not something that can be acquired by anyone and is within his acceptance. To John, there are simply many incredible poets out there yet are subject to the reality which only a handful will likely be read in a generation or two. He addresses this subject by saying,

“Hopefully in the hearts of my children, of course, but not likely the public. And, difficult as it is for me to say it, that’s

okay. That’s how it’s meant to be.”. Instead, he shares that our motivation should be on moving or touching other people’s lives as he adds, “I hope my work moves people to question,

converse, break, and heal while I am here. Every little bit of good we do is a bit more good in the world.”.

Looking back, John hasn’t always been that guy living off of his creativity. He had numerous jobs relevant and outside the creative realm.

“I’ve taught middle and high school. I’ve worked for a small publisher. I’ve struggled through a few non-creative office jobs.”

It serves as a reminder that reality always takes its course, regardless of what degree or path you choose. His being in and out of the creative field serves as a reminder of this. Slowly and eventually in a non-linear way, and like John, those who persevere will always be back on track. Today, he cobbles together a professional life from workshops, book coaching, poetry critiquing, serving as a guest editor in Kelson Books, and much more relevant to his path of choice.

“As to advice, I would say keep growing your community. Keep adding new skillsets. Think outside the box in terms of the kinds of creative assistance you can offer others. And be very patient yet very persistent. ”

John reminds us that the work of being in the industry of writing is not an easy task. To add, a creative professional life, as he puts it, is as complicated as starting with a single poem or story where you go on with a first critique, first edited manuscript, first design book, first attempt at marketing, and first workshop. Poets and writers can get around by learning as they go. As such, one should be reminded of keeping track of your growing skills and taking into consideration what can be translated to employment.

“You need to study as many books as possible from authors of various genres and from various cultures. Listen to their voices.”

To end the interview, John leaves with us some advice for emerging writers which is to stick with the old “keep writing, keep reading”. He recommends developing one’s arsenal of various information and an eye for seeing language in how they’re manipulated by other authors. He remarks to read other books beyond just satisfaction: appreciate the themes and structure and take note of their recurring linguistic tools. Your study should coincide with writing—in a notebook, every moment and everywhere.

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