Skin Memory

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Skin Memory

John Sibley Williams

The Backwaters Prize in Poetry Series

96 pages

Paperback

November 2019

978-1-935218-50-0

$15.95 Add to Cart
eBook (PDF)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

November 2019

978-1-935218-53-1

$15.95 Add to Cart
eBook (EPUB)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

November 2019

978-1-935218-51-7

$15.95 Add to Cart

About the Book

2020 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist in Poetry 
Finalist in Poetry for the National Indie Excellence Awards

A stark, visceral collection of free verse and prose poetry, Skin Memory scours a wild landscape haunted by personal tragedy and the cruel consequences of human acts in search of tenderness and regeneration. In this book of daring and introspection, John Sibley Williams considers the capriciousness of youth, the terrifying loss of cultural identity and self-identity, and what it means to live in an imperfect world. He reveals each body as made up of all bodies, histories, and shared dreams of the future.

In these poems absence can be held, the body’s dust is just dust, and though childhood is but a poorly edited memory and even our well-intentioned gestures tend toward ruin, Williams nonetheless says, “I’m pretty sure, everything within us says something beautiful.”
 

Author Bio

John Sibley Williams serves as editor of the Inflectionist Review and works as a literary agent. He is the author of four poetry collections, including As One Fire Consumes Another, which won the Orison Poetry Prize; Disinheritance; and Controlled Hallucinations. He lives in Portland, Oregon. 
 

Praise

"As I read and reread Skin Memory, the more riches it revealed to me. With its haunting and multi-layered imagery, it provides a profound and lingering experience."—Linda Lown-Klein, Adriot Journal

"Skin Memory by John Sibley Williams is about the impressions and imprints we leave on the world. Both physically and psychologically, Williams recognizes the haunting interconnectedness of all things, the ever-evolving nature of the world and the scars we trade with it. While dissecting humanity's cruelty toward nature and itself, he yet invokes a tenderness, a final hope that maybe we can still bend our swords into plowshares."—Michael Prihoda, After the Pause

"This collection is one that seeps far beneath your skin and memory—and stays there."—Noreen Ocampo, Counter Clock

"Throughout the pages of this mesmerizing book John allows us time to ponder about the concepts he places into poems—grief, loss, death and dying, identity, tragedy, awakening to some greater aura of being. The poems are grounded in reality, all the more available to enter our philosophy into the stages John creates. . . . There is no doubt that John Sibley Williams is a major voice in poetry today."—San Francisco Review of Books

"John Sibley Williams, with his new collection, winner of The Backwaters Prize in Poetry, plunges readers into the heart of a seething memory-scape where everything feels fraught and perilous, but darkly gorgeous, too."—Danielle Vermette, Oregonian

"Skin Memory by John Sibley Williams is an amazing collection that tackles large themes while grounding each moment in real life. A harrowing collection that strives for peace and hope, a journey into the self and outside of it. We have a memory, and there’s a memory of life that surrounds us. When the skin of us is gone, where do those memories go, how do they live on? They live on in the words we share, the stories we tell, and the moments we cherish with others. Connection is the greatest gift of all."—savvyverseandwit.com

"This is a collection that you will want to read again. One that sticks with you."—Jarad Johnson, Sacred Chickens 

"In Skin Memory, Williams gives us plenty of opportunity to slow down and meet poems face-to-face. Plenty of opportunity to engage in deep conversation, to develop deep listening, to examine quick assumptions, and to see things anew. Plenty of opportunity to feel. Plenty of opportunity to resonate. Plenty of opportunity to connect."—Jo Freehand, River Heron Review

"Skin Memory certainly presents John Sibley Williams as a type of poetic tour de force with his lyrical dexterity. The collection is strong, playful, and curated with continuity. These poems are to be discussed, cherished, protected, read aloud and performed, but most of all, to be enjoyed."—Liam Anthony, Independent Book Review

"Williams’s newest collection is rain-soaked in past emotional and rural landscapes where nature runs riot, even in winter."—Stephen Scott Whitaker, Broadkill Review

Table of Contents

Skin Memory
¤
Snake. Tree. Rope. Wall.
Dewpoint
Hekla (Revised)
St. Helens [1980]
Then We Will Make Our Own Demons
It Was a Golden Age of Monsters
Sons of No One
Spectral 
Symptoms of Shelter 
Everything Must Belong Somewhere 
There is Still 
Nocturne
New Farmer’s Almanac 
On Being Told: You Must Learn to Burn Like This 
¤
Advice Picked up Along the Way 
Swing 
Adagio 
Killing Lesson 
For C. D. Wright 
Rules of Common Landscape 
On Being Told: You Must Learn to Pray 
Always Greener 
Dear Nowhere 
Tonight’s Synonyms for Sky 
Closure 
Prelude to Again 
As Above, So Below 
Star Count 
As a Child, Drawing Purgatory 
Off Season 
Variations on a Theme 
Fog 
Death is a Work in Progress 
Poison Oak 
The Animal 
Compared to Even the Smallest Star, the Moon is a Child
On Being Told: White is a Color without Hue 
Salt is for Curing 
Than the Dead 
Inventing Fire in Northern Michigan in December 
One Horse Town 
Absence Makes the Heart 
We Can Make a Home of It Still 
On Being Told: You Must Learn to Love the Violence 
Father as Papercut 
Says a Father to the Night from His Emptied Nest 
Outage 
A Brief History of a Perfect Storm 
The Length of the Field 
Natural History 
Anything Can Be Made a Halo 
After-Bruise 
Sanctum 
Before, and the Birds After 
[this is only a test] 
¤
Forge 

Awards

2020 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist in Poetry 
Finalist in Poetry for the National Indie Excellence Awards

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