Word Problems

by Ian Williams

From Ian Williams, author of Reproduction, winner of the Giller Prize and a June 2020 Indie Next Great Read

Frustrated by how tough the issues of our time are to solve - racial inequality, our pernicious depression, the troubled relationships we have with other people - Ian Williams revisits the seemingly simple questions of grade school for inspiration: if Billy has five nickels and Jane has three dimes, how many Black men will be murdered by police? He finds no satisfaction, realizing that maybe there are no easy answers to ineffable questions.

Williams uses his characteristic inventiveness to find not just new answers but new questions, reconsidering what poetry can be, using math and grammar lessons to shape poems that invite us to participate. Two long poems cut through the text like vibrating basenotes, curiosities circle endlessly, and microaggressions spin into lyric. And all done with a light touch and a joyful sense of humour.

Genres: Poetry, Canada

112 pages, Paperback

First published October 13, 2020

About the author

Ian Williams is the author of Personals, shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award; Not Anyone’s Anything, winner of the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first collection of short fiction in Canada; and You Know Who You Are, a finalist for the ReLit Prize for poetry. He was named as one of ten Canadian writers to watch by CBC.

Williams completed his Ph.D. in English at the University of Toronto and works as an English professor.

In 2014-2015, Williams was the Canadian Writer-in-Residence for the Calgary Distinguished Writers Program at the University of Calgary. He has also held residencies or fellowships at the Leighton Artists’ Colony at the Banff Centre, Vermont Studio Center, Cave Canem, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Palazzo Rinaldi in Italy. He was a scholar at the National Humanities Center Summer Institute for Literary Study. His writing has appeared in several North American journals and anthologies.

He is currently working on his first novel.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Coach House Books for an ARC!

Where to start? First of all, the formatting of these poems are so crucial to creating the mood. All throughout, the reader gets almost a claustrophobic sense as the book is framed by a microaggression that happens at an airport. As the reader tackles other racial injustice concepts, the reader is never allowed to forget about this experience. A telling reflection of what it means to be a black man. These poems are meant to be re-read and re-reflected on. I loved how Williams took a concept like a math problem and then let us remember how confused we were as students and applied it to contemporary social constructs. These poems will cut and make you think and there's a reason Ian Williams is an award winning author/poet.

[Kris (My Novelesque Life) · Rating 5 out of 5]

RATING: 5 STARS

This is my first work by Canadian author, Ian Williams, but definitely not my last! I loved this collection of poetry. The visual presentation really helped me slow down and savour the words, lines and poems. Williams takes on big topics and issues, that I am passionate about as well, so this book was right up my alley!

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without giving away the story of Reproduction, at first I thought that the zeros and ones were typos. They were not. Ian Williams also plays with type in his collection of poetry, Word Problems. His humour also bubbles to the surface as the narrators in his poems address tricky social situations, such as Hair in My Drain.

Well done.

[E. Taillon]

Brilliant and striking poetry collection that explores space on the page and the unexpected ways lines and subjects can run together. By turns humorous, breathtakingly serious, and clever, it touches on everything from loneliness to oppression to the ways language can be playfully and insightfully deconstructed.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the experimentation with form in this poetry collection and how it allowed you to interact with the poems in different ways. However, most of the actual poems were largely not my thing. Some felt more like novelties that should have stayed in the drafts a little longer.

Might come back later to highlight the ones I really liked/disliked.

[Biljana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun, challenging, heart-rending, perception-destroying, angering, empathy-building. The author's Black maleness is a problem, a "problem", that prevents him from enjoying overprices scones unharrassed, that threatens his safety in his home, that threatens his career. Like great authors, he shows, doesn't tell, both the daily petty indignities, and the potentially life-destroying encounters with security guards, hiring committees, entitled white women. These events are ruminations in poetic format, and become a part of the reader's job, the reader's imperative, to integrate into their readerly being; they are problems to be "solved" just like the horrendous word problems from grade school math class that haunt one, years later.

[Stephen Novik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ian Williams has written a wonderful, intriguing collection of poems and enclosed them in a book entitled "Word Problems". I have enjoyed thoroughly this book. Er, should I remove I? No. I shall not. Instead, I will mark this book 5 stars out of 5 stars. I suggest to yo (c how ez it is to slip into Spanish?)
that yo do the same. But first, read this book.

[Carie Gall · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of poetry encouraged you to think about common experiences and contrasted how they played out if you were black or white. Also very creative in how the words were placed on the page. Quick read worth doing!

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the complexity of this collection and how Ian used the blank space on the page. I love poetry that deviates from left justified alignment and experiments with what a poem looks like. This work has inspired me to experiment with form and structure in new ways.

[Catherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my style but it's definitely thought-provoking.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly inventive. I was drawn into every single sucker punch and couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry.

[e · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clever, unexpected, intelligent and playful

[Barbara McVeigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed the clever word play & a variety of text forms. Check out the ticker tape poem running across the pages.

[Rhiley Jade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fuck. I can't even think straight after finishing this. It was so powerful. So monumental. It'll take me awhile to get it out of my head.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh

[Janeen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best poetry anthology I’ve read in a long long long long time

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Williams' eye and ear for intriguing and often moving personal observation is juxtaposed with powerful social and racial issues, buttressed with intricate intersections and configurations of text on the page.

[Bookworm Adventure Girl · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my full review, please follow the link below:
https://www.bookwormadventuregirl.com...