Phillip B. Williams, a Master of Fine Arts candidate in creative writing in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is one of five young poets awarded a $15,000 scholarship from the Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine.
The 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowships, announced recently, are intended to encourage the further study and writing of poetry. The program is open to all U.S. poets between 21 and 31 years of age.
Williams, a Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow at WUSTL, was born in Chicago in 1986. He is the
author of the chapbooks Bruised Gospels (Arts in Bloom Inc., 2011)
and Burn (YesYes Books, 2013).
“I sit down. I write. Or, I sit down and I stare at the page,” said Phillips in an interview with the Hunger Mountain arts website.
“My process is one of jumping into it and waiting to see what happens.
Usually if I am staring at the page for too long, I’ll scribble down
images. Eventually connections will surface and I find myself following
whatever paths become available.”
Williams is a Cave Canem graduate and the
poetry editor of the online journal Vinyl Poetry. His work has
appeared or is forthcoming in Blackbird, Callaloo, Kenyon Review Online,
Painted Bride Quarterly, The Southern Review and West Branch, among others.
Poetry by Williams and the four other 2013 fellowship recipients will be featured in Poetry magazine’s November issue and on poetryfoundation.org.
Other 2013 recipients are Harmony Holiday, Matthew Nienow, Hannah Sanghee Park and Natalie Shapero.
The Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship program is organized and administered by the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, publisher of Poetry magazine.
“Since Harriet Monroe’s founding of Poetry in 1912, to
Ruth Lilly’s endowment of these fellowships in 1989, to our constant
search for fresh new voices today, Poetry has always sought work that
enlivens our sense of what poetry is worth and what it can do,” said Don
Share, editor of Poetry magazine, in announcing the 2013 winners.
“This
year’s group of fellows — which includes poets whose passions range from
community service to woodworking to scholarship — is especially inspiring
because their extraordinary talents are so deeply informed by the way in
which they have composed their lives.”