William Woolfitt is the author of four poetry collections, two story collections, and an essay collection. Ring of Earth (stories) was published by Madville Publishing in 2023; The Night the Rain Had Nowhere to Go (poems) was published by Belle Point Press in 2024; Eyes Moving Through the Dark (essays) is forthcoming from Orison Books. His fiction chapbook The Boy with Fire in His Mouth (2014) won the Epiphany Editions contest judged by Darin Strauss. His writings have appeared in AGNI, Blackbird, Image, Tin House, The Threepenny Review, Gettysburg Review, Poetry International, African American Review, Indiana Review, Ruminate, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Missouri Review, Epoch, and other journals. He is the recipient of the Howard Nemerov Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and the Denny C. Plattner Award from Appalachian Review.

Other poems by William Woolfitt in Verse Daily:
June 3, 2021:   "The Sea Turtles of Barra de Parismina" "I have read that early monasteries..."

Other poems on the web by William Woolfitt:
Five poems
"The Night the Rain Had Nowhere to Go"
"Manzanar: Rough Work"
"Tether"
Three poems

William Woolfitt's Website.

William Woolfitt on Twitter.

About The Night the Rain Had Nowhere to Go:

"The Night the Rain Had Nowhere to Go by Will Woolfitt is a bittersweet hymn for the author's West Virginian upbringing and the undeniable legacies of a mining town—where 'the fires in the mountains will not stop burning.' These poems are both elegiac and reverent, grounding in their histories and stunning in their imagery. The Night the Rain Had Nowhere to Go reminds me why poetry can do what no other art form can—both testimony and revelation, it binds us to the past even as it enables us to envision new futures. As Woolfitt writes of Appalachia—'Here, the mouths I feed, / the fuels I go through like water, / the smoldering earth where they'll bury me.' In this world 'where the living / cry to their buried ones, and a bent woman reads from her holy book / by candlelight,' these poems exist as a geography of home and a cartography of Appalachian roots—'meadows laced with unseen / cavities—an understory of tunnels.'"
—Joan Kwon Glass

"Here is a people's history of Appalachia mired in coal slurry and sawdust, thick with the stink of industrial toxins. But do not despair; The Night the Rain Had Nowhere to Go is not a death knell but more like a church bell ringing clear across a valley and calling us home. Will Woolfitt's poetic practice uses not dread but song and singing to bring a vital music to these 'stories choked by grief.' Here is a people's history of Appalachia whose melodies are brutally honest, unforgettable, and reminiscent of 'what it's like to be alive to wonder and dread.'"
—Marianne Worthington

"Woolfitt's slow-burning lyrics haunt and illuminate, telling of waters sickened with coal mine run-off, tree limbs rattling like dry bones, smoldering earth. These poems testify about the devastation wrought by greed and privilege while also daring to imagine a new story, where the refinery captain has thrown his watch away and where weeds transform into flowers under a little boy's gaze. Deftly balancing tenderness and truth, these poems are an admirable addition to Woolfitt's already impressive collection of work."
—Leah Silvieus