John Sibley Williams is the author of nine poetry collections, including Scale Model of a Country at Dawn (Cider Press Review Poetry Award), The Drowning House (Elixir Press Poetry Award), As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press), and Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize).). His book Sky Burial: New & Selected Poems is forthcoming in translated form by the Portuguese press do lado esquerdo. A twenty-seven-time Pushcart nominee, John is the winner of numerous awards, including the Wabash Prize for Poetry, Philip Booth Award, Phyllis Smart-Young Prize, and Laux/Millar Prize. He serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and founder of the Caesura Poetry Workshop series. Previous publishing credits include Best American Poetry, Yale Review, Verse Daily, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and TriQuarterly.

Other poems by John Sibley Williams in Verse Daily:
July 13, 2020:   "Counterglow" "Consider the meteorite..."
May 11, 2020:   "Picture Day" "Now let's see..."
March 17, 2020:   "Reparations" "Maybe not for the dead exactly..."

Books by John Sibley Williams:

Other poems on the web by John Sibley Williams:
"half-life of a different country"
Two poems
"sky burial"
"The White Album"
Two poems
Two poems
"Pilgrimage"
"Summer Boys"
Two poems
"Daedalus/Oppenheimer"
"A Brief History of the Perfect Storm"
"Fail Me"
"Back when you were a country"
"Bestiary"
"Encroachment"

John Sibley Williams's Website.

John Sibley Williams on Twitter.

About The Drowning House:

"In The Drowning House, John Sibley Williams grapples with ghosts, the predators outside and in, those closer than our own hearts. In American landscapes haunted by nooses and wolves, burning crosses and floods, Williams holds a light before his path. These are keen-edged poems, kneeling before us, asking forgiveness for what our ancestors have done and have had to live through. He offers himself as a sacrifice for our sins: 'here, love, is the tree of my body // to learn to climb. Far from here. From me. To touch / whatever's still up there, beautifully above us.'"
—Philip Metres

"On every page of The Drowning House, you'll find deftly crafted stanzas, radiant imagery, and muscular music. John Sibley Williams is a gifted poet who, in this book, refuses to turn away from injustice. He makes visible the darkness that connects us, that divides us. This is work that troubles the page. This is risky but vital work."
—Eduardo Corral

"In the dark and shifting world of The Drowning House, Williams dives deep to try to understand the ghosts of our country and our history - the violence inherent in displacement, in wiping away. These poems that populate this doomed architecture reach out in every direction to try to find purchase on truths that often shift as quickly as the tides."
—John A. Nieves