Locust and Marlin
Locust and Marlin considers how, in lives bright and brief as a candle’s burn, we tell our stories and locate the places where we live and love. Where is the origin, our point in space from which we view the world? How much control do we have over who we are and what impact we have on the territory we inhabit? In a world whose boundaries and pathways are increasingly difficult to define, how do we find our way home?
On Locust and Marlin (Shearsman, 2014):
‘The slings and arrows of life are challenge enough and Williams celebrates all of our strengths in her poetry. Just as her words are rich with life and love, they’re also critical, and address the harsher blows of living. The poet refuses to shy away from the realities of life and instead accentuates their role in shaping us, and gives time and focus to the processes of recovery. Williams channels a sense of everything having a purpose in her poems, and she closes her collection with the haunting, thought-provoking return of the Heron.
The heron has a dream of blindness.
He starves, but it is beautiful;
the feeling of the fishes brushing his legs.
‘If Locust and Marlin were a house, estate agents would describe it as ‘full of character’. Some of its rooms are cluttered with possessions and photographs, each with their own story to tell, while some are clean and full of light. The corridors that link these rooms are ones we all walk down, deciding how and where to live, and who to share our lives with. Edinburgh-based poet, JL Williams, asks us to consider these questions in a beautifully-structured second collection which, before we even get to the poems meets us with its gorgeous matt cover, a lino-cut I think, by the printmaker Anupa Gardner, which is soft to the touch and introduces us to the sensuous world Williams creates.’ – Gutter, The Magazine of New Scottish Writing, August 2014
‘The star of the evening was JL Williams, with a pitch-perfect delivery that had the audience hanging on every dreamy word. Her poems were beautiful and mythic, conjuring evocative imagery that filled the room with magic.’ – Ever Dundas, The List, February 2014
‘There’s a refreshing brevity to Williams’ work, splashes of life and colour that aren’t afraid to let themselves stop ahead of schedule… A quiet confidence permeates the collection, in which the poet taps us on the shoulder to ask what we’re doing.’ – Russell Jones; Poet and Editor On Condition of Fire (Shearsman, 2011):
‘the haunting, incantatory poetry of JL Williams’
‘It begins in the dark and ends in the dark, moving from creation to a kind of muted apocalypse, passing on the way through many forms of natural and mythical transformation.
Williams writes short graceful lyrics shot through with, at her best, little scags of elemental terseness.
There is a distant echo of the Hughes of Crow, in the slightly absurd figure of the bat who reappears at intervals through the sequence like a kind of tutelary, demonic or totemic spirit.’ Lyndon Davies, Poetry Wales Spring 2012
‘Luscious, sensory, impressionistic, often non-literal, emotive, parallel universe lexigymnastics.’ Kate Tough, Writer
‘raw and delicate’
