June.12.2013.
Ian Williams in the National Post
Today is the Griffin Poetry Shortlist Readings and tomorrow is the awards presentation, when the winners of the $65,000 prizes will be announced. Last week, Mark Medley from the National Post talked to Ian Williams about his apartment, switching from psychiatry studies to English, and about making connections.
“Connection, or lack thereof, is one of the main themes of the book. The very idea of a personal ad is to forge a connection with someone else, and the people in Personals often struggle to connect with one another, whether it’s the young couple struggling to conceive in Rings, the ambitious poetry cycle that kicks off the collection, or the woman in Missed Connections: Walmart Automotive Dept – w4m – (Lunenburg MA) who longs for the employee who helped her with the debit machine: “You said,/ Turn your card the other way — remember? — and took my hand,/ not the card, took my hand with the card in it/ and swiped it through. Remember. Please.””