Word Problems

by Ian Williams

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781552454145
Publisher:	Coach House Books
Publication date:	10/13/2020
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ian Williams is the author of the Giller Prize–winning novel Reproduction. His last poetry collection Personals was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award. His short story collection, Not Anyone’s Anything, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first collection of short fiction in Canada. His first book, You Know Who You Are, was a finalist for the ReLit Poetry Prize.

Williams holds a Ph.D. in English at the University of Toronto and is currently an assistant professor of poetry in the Creative Writing program at the University of British Columbia. He was the 2014-2015 Canadian Writer-in-Residence for the University of Calgary’s Distinguished Writers Program. Ian Williams currently resides in Vancouver, BC.

Read an Excerpt

Norman drops part of his Hostess cupcake on the floor. He doesn’t want to get in trouble. If he picks it up and places it on his plate he will have to eat it. If he picks it up and places it on the placemat he will have to explain that he dropped it on the floor. He still wants to eat it. Yet he should not eat food that has fallen on the floor. Will the surveillance video be enough to convict the officer who shot his father?

Table of Contents

It is possible to move on without moving forward 13

I will never leave thee nor forsake thee 16

Word problems 17

Midas 22

Corrections 24

Affect | Affection 25

Mood disorder 26

Spontaneous overflow 28

Subject Verb Object 32

The Great Exhaustion 33

Iceberg 35

Cart 36

Gruyère 37

Pictures of cows 38

Cliché 39

Do you know everyone you know by name? 41

Resolution, a sonnet 42

Broad is the way 43

The end of the line 44

And lo I am with you always even unto the end of the world 45

It is possible to go back without going away 51

Hair is choking the drain 52

Where are you really from 53

Where are you 55

Tu me manques 56

Why does everything have to be about race with you people? 58

And Finished knowing - then - 60

Our eyes meet across yet another room 61

The past sometimes appears conditional 62

Intersections 63

Consolations 67

Convalescence 73

On the use of you 74

People forget that 76

After autumn 77

Busy 78

Tired 80

Cuando pierdo 82

Cuando me pierdo 84

Someone like you 85

Tell me when you will be fine 87

Quando quando quando 88

Träumerei 89

Post-traumatic 90

Notes and Acknowledgements 92

About the Author 95

Editorial Reviews

"Going in circles is structural ... in Ian Williams’s Word Problems, a challenge in this case not of nature but of white supremacist culture and its enforcement. —Event Magazine

"His word play is always in the service of a deadly seriousness, and recognizing the issues is critical to an improvement in relations among human beings." —The Ormsby Review

From the Publisher