Interview

by Jay Ward

I first met Phillip B. Williams in 2018. I had just read Thief of the Interior and was fortunate enough to be in attendance for a craft talk he was teaching (one of the best I’ve ever heard). The talk included works from Diana Khoi Nguyen and Jonah Mixon-Webster, and changed my view forever of what creativity and boundaries in poetry can look like. 

Since that time Williams has published Mutiny (2021) and now Ours, a novel that Penguin Random House describes as being informed by Black surrealism, mythology, and spirituality. We had the chance to briefly reunite via email recently, where we discussed his new novel, leading with imagination, and advice for poets seeking to expand into fiction writing.

JW: Congrats again on the publishing of Ours! When we met up at the Griot & Grey Owl Black [Southern] Writers’ Conference (GGO) I believe you said you’ve been a fiction writer for a long time, perhaps even before being a poet, or at least longer than some might assume. Can you walk us through how this story (Ours) emerged and how you knew this story in particular needed to unfold via your fiction roots?

PBW: Ours emerged first as a short story in undergrad. I needed money bad and decided to take my chances on a writing contest the English Department hosted. I won 4th place by Crystal Wilkinson’s judgment, but she had left a note saying that the piece signaled the beginning of something bigger. I took that to heart, as I had thought the same thing.

I’ve always written fiction, so this story coming to me via prose makes sense. It’s sprawling, has many characters who all need their lives to unfold in complex ways. It never dawned on me to even try writing poems for this idea. I also wanted to honor the stories my mother told me about her father and his mixture of Christian and hoodoo practices. This mixture is more common than not. Why not write a story that digs more deeply into the spiritual practices in a mythical way?

JW: As I was reading Ours I was reminded of my first time reading Sula, meaning the words lifted off the page and sang to me, meaning my poetry “Spidey senses” were buzzing, meaning I fell deeper into the story. Can you describe the difference in your editing/revision process, if there is any, between a work like this and a collection of poetry?

PBW: There is only the difference of plot. I take care that my lyrical disposition appears in all things I write. Revision for sound and clarity takes precedence always. But with the novel, I had to juggle storyline with plot and dialogue … The collaboration between working parts in fiction requires a different type of detail orientation where a reader must have anchors to secure them to the world.

Poems require anchors to a logic that unfolds as the poem unfolds, and it needs to happen quickly. I can leave a bit of mystery in poems that allow multiple readings and interpretations. Fiction, not so much.

JW: My first poetry school was poetry slam and performance poetry. When I began my publishing journey, I noticed (or at least I hoped) that the passion, urgency, and rhythm I utilized in performance poems worked to elevate my poems on the page. Does that translate to fiction writing as well? How does poetic language enhance prose writing?

PBW: I’ve been told that the best fiction writers have a background in poetry. Maybe a poet’s attention to detail brings a richness to the worlds and lives in the novel. We know how an apple’s crunch feels in the mouth and not arbitrarily; the crunch, the juice, the unleashed scent tell the reader character traits important to understanding someone’s motivations or interior world.

For Ours, those sonic qualities of spoken language resonate as investigations/expressions of the oral tradition in Black storytelling. The narrator of the novel is often conversational, sometimes dramatic, but always in the voice of someone embodying the griot/storyteller/gossip. The narrator can be known or felt as a character because of those reasons, folding into the novel as a unique voice and perspective.

JW: One thing I found immediately intriguing, even just initially looking through Ours, is the texture. There are various section lengths within the chapters. Some stories are inset within the margins. There are lists. Poets are often thinking about the visual texture of a poem or collection of poems. Was the use of white space a consideration when developing or revising this story, or is it something that naturally occurred as the story unraveled?

PBW: It naturally occurred as the story progressed. Some aspects of the novel needed a shift in the margins to depict how something written is experienced by the character reading it. In a section that is the fourteen-part ghost story, each section builds from the last as would a crown of sonnets to show the interconnectedness of before and after. Every decision serves the plot.

JW: During our discussion at GGO, you mentioned “leading with imagination.” Can you elaborate on that?

PBW: Meaning leading with what is not there instead of what is obvious, present, and known; using what is familiar only to dig more deeply into the unfamiliar; challenging my own comfort to find where vulnerability may take charge. I’m neither a journalist nor a historian. My work is to think up new ways of being and comprehension, new ways of being in community with one another.

JW: Do you have advice for a poet looking to branch into fiction, or vice versa, a prose writer looking to add poetic elements?

PBW: Read everything. Study, study, study. And mimic. Write down favorite poems and paragraphs and annotate how they function. It’s tricky for me because I always have written in both genres, so some things come to me simultaneously, meaning I learn writing techniques that can be applied to anything I write.

Maybe that’s it—apply all you learn to everything you do. Experiment. Take risks. Learn the rules so you have a better understanding of how to be flexible with said rules. Often I find myself discovering a new way to get at a poem or story by ambition alone: “What would happen if I wrote this poem only using words that begin with M?” Then I go about finding the answer.

JW: I do understand some things have to be held close to the vest, but is there anything you can tell us about what’s next for you creatively: a novel, a collection of poetry, something different altogether?

PBW: Another novel is in the works. No details about it yet (not even a chapter is ready). I also have a new collection of poems called Lift Every Voice, coming out in 2026.

JW: Exciting! Thank you so much for sharing your time and responses with us so generously, and for inspiring us in multiple genres!

PBW: Thank you for having me!

PHILLIP B. WILLIAMS

Phillip B. Williams is from Chicago, Illinois, and is the author of two collections of poetry: Thief in the Interior, which was the winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award, and Mutiny, which was a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection and the winner of a 2022 American Book Award. Williams is also the recipient of a Whiting Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently teaches in the MFA creative writing program at New York University and is founding faculty of the Randolph College Low-res MFA.

Junious ‘Jay’ Ward is a poet and teaching artist. He is a National Slam champion (2018), an Individual World Poetry Slam champion (2019), author of Sing Me A Lesser Wound (Bull City Press 2020) and Composition (Button Poetry 2023). Jay currently serves as Charlotte's inaugural Poet Laureate and is a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Ward has attended Breadloaf Writers Conference, Callaloo, The Watering Hole and Tin House Winter Workshop. His work can be found in Columbia Journal, Four Way Review, DIAGRAM, Diode Poetry Journal and elsewhere.