Patricia Williams

CONTACT:
E1910 County Road C
Iola, WI 54945
Email: ninegables.studio@gmail.com
Website: www.ninegablesstudio.com 

BIO:
Patricia Williams, originally from the Chicago area, taught Art and Design, earning a PhD from Leeds University in England, and spent 27 years as a professor at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point. Art, design, music and poetry, she feels, are natural partners, all creatively examining life and living.

Williams began writing poetry in 2013 after retirement, learned by reading, attending workshops and doing rewrites, rewrites and more rewrites. Her work appears in journals and anthologies including About Place, Bramble, Midwest Review, Poetry Quarterly, Stoneboat, Third Wednesday and others.

Her chapbook, The Port Side of Shadows (Finishing Line Press) was released in 2017. The Wisconsin Library Association gave her collection of 2018, Midwest Medley (Kelsay Books), an Outstanding Poetry Book Award. The Waupaca Wisconsin Arts Committee chose her poem as one of 16 imprinted in the sidewalks along Waupaca’s Main Street. Patricia’s second collection, Rejection to Acceptance: 57 Poems That Finally Made It, is a hybrid of poetry and commentary, published by Kelsay Books in 2023.

PUBLICATIONS:
Available from the publishers or from Amazon.

Chapbook: The Port Side of Shadows: Poems of Travel -- Inner, Outer and Uncharted Places (2017). Finishing Line Press
Collection: Midwest Medley: Places & People, Wild Things & Weather (2018) Kelsay Books/Aldrich Press
Collection: Rejection to Acceptance: 57 Poems That Finally Made It (2023) Kelsay Books/Aldrich Press

Poetry

Feral Tenacity

I’m not a hothouse flower,
a rose with satin skin,
a blossom of waxy perfection,
here for merely a day.

I am a wild flower, 
a perennial in an open field
that explodes
with perfumed abundance ‒  
my essence
emerging like hidden fragrance.

I am a weed,
lithesome and supple,
sprouting free
in the cracks of a city sidewalk,                               
on the boundaries
of an uptown boulevard.                        

See me in the sunshine,
see me in the rain.
I’m not a hothouse flower,
here for merely a day.

 Pub. Mach, 2019, Catalog for Exhibition Women Speak, Paintings by Nancy Smith, Chapel Hill, NC

Ahead of Schedule

Children are a gift
– a gift you can’t keep –
one you hold a single season.

We prepared for the moment
– a moment, in some far tomorrow – 
when you would leave.

We just didn’t think
tomorrow would happen
–  so fast.

Pub. Midwest Medley: Places & People, Wild Things & Weather, Kelsay Books, Aug. 2018