Both imaginative and lucid, Skin Memory offers a rich cartography of our world as we’ve made it, a world of overlapping skins (human, animal, earth) that caress and wound and scar one another. Here there is no false nature/culture binary, but earth as palimpsest – a body made up of bodies, histories, and dreams of the future. Like the tattered fragments of Borges’ Map of the Empire, Williams’ world is always charged with mystery alongside human desire and folly: wherever our endeavors mark the landscape, there too the scrub grass peeks through.  

- Sarah Rose Nordgren

In John Sibley Williams’ new book Skin Memory, a child inherits an earth haunted by the violence of the past—landscape of his own skin. What then, identity? Skin memory, as opposed to blood memory, is porous. In these poems, Williams feels himself across its divide, experiencing “the shrapnel seeing leaves behind in things,” and does so in language mesmerizing as “the slow pulse oaks bring to the forest.” I don’t often encounter poems deep enough to settle into that are, at the same time, this deeply unsettling.

- Melissa Kwasny

There is a quiet assurance about this collection that speaks to confidence, a kind of intense reflectivity that arrives when a poet is no longer seeking approval or attempting with flash and frenetic earnestness to impress, to startle, to demand praise. Instead, there is a finely shaped vulnerability here, and the intent is to present the self, the imagination full of contradiction and discovery to the reader. These poems move with unhurried purposefulness so that you trust the seething urgency and deliberateness of lines like “memory is a language that’s survived its skin” or the painfully earned benediction and expression of resigned hope in “whatever finally breaks me, I cannot refuse it.” Splendid poetry, never seeking to be pandering in its accessibility, but always, nonetheless, as plainspoken as each complex idea will allow.

- Kwame Dawes, judge

* Review in The Oregonian: https://www.oregonlive.com/books/2019/11/4-oregon-poets-new-collections-plumb-the-past-and-illuminate-the-present.html

“Written as prose poetry and free verse, the sweep is as vast as a life cycle: from childhood to parenthood to the loss of a parent, invoking an overall vision that is clear-eyed and skinned, yet somehow courageous and even hopeful. Williams takes a marked leap with this collection, solidifying his place as an exceptional talent, one whose skill matches his keen sensibility.”

* Interview in Bellingham Review: http://bhreview.org/2020/01/17/contributor-spotlight-john-sibley-williams-2/

“Do we write to be cool, to be popular, to make money? We write because we have to, because we love crafting stories and poems, because stringing words together into meaning is one of life’s true joys.” 

* Review in Independent Book Review: https://independentbookreview.com/2020/02/25/skin-memory/

“An arresting poetry collection rich in both language and meaning, taking the reader through the visceral landscape of an outstanding poetic voice. Skin Memory certainly presents John Sibley Williams as a type of poetic tour de force with his lyrical dexterity. The collection is strong, playful, and curated with continuity. These poems are to be discussed, cherished, protected, read aloud and performed, but most of all, to be enjoyed.”

* Review in Grist: https://gristjournal.com/skin-memory-by-john-sibley-williams-reviewed-by-rachel-harper/

“Williams uses language which conjures a sense of the bucolic, allowing readers to explore their own associations with memory and past, culture and ancestry, experience and emotion. In this way, he manages to translate his own history into a representation of the universal experience of losing times passed and intentionally stepping, with hope, into the moments still to come, a personal confrontation all readers can identify with.”

* Review on Tinderbox: https://tinderboxpoetry.com/review-skin-memory-by-john-sibley-williams?fbclid=IwAR2y5RwThggJ4R2nab3CjpfMJwoFnEWgUnsTifuctmI-zeb1Vdc5SxFMwiQ 

“This is the place where we dwell in Skin Memory, in the hoovering spaces of witness and observer, and it is exciting to read of fields, woods, the ocean, and trees and volcanoes from this perspective, the perspective of the skin of the world at times and at others, the view from after this shedding.”

* Review in The Adroit Journal: https://theadroitjournal.org/2020/04/03/memory-is-a-language-thats-survived-its-skin-a-review-of-john-sibley-williamss-skin-memory/

“The speaker has traveled far from the beginning of his journey. Just as this book speaks to the strength of memory as “a language that’s survived its skin,” it is also a reminder that we all have agency over the individual narratives of our lives. As I read and reread Skin Memory, the more riches it revealed to me. With its haunting and multi-layered imagery, it provides a profound and lingering experience.” 

* Review on Bellingham Review: http://bhreview.org/2020/03/11/memory-membranes/?fbclid=IwAR34vUvcCFXAZENaHrOI6XU8RujsjBLpvLq-LMl3A0pph04nh3Zn_fakiK4

“Skin Memory is a meditation on the nature of humanity in a constantly morphing and increasingly interconnected world. Williams explores how we are molded by this world, weaving and meandering through landscapes that feel both familiar and fresh. To read this collection is to rejoice in the power of words. It’s rare to come across poetry this refreshing and deliberate in its craft, serving as a powerful reminder of what is possible through the power of language.”

* Review in Broadkill Review: https://www.broadkillreview.com/post/a-review-of-john-sibley-williams-skin-memory-winner-of-the-backwaters-press-prize 

"Part of the collection’s ethos is control, and Williams deftly shapes the Memory via blocks of poetry, suggesting that through creation, through the naming of things, one can control the worst impulses that lay just under the skin, be it grief, suicidal ideation, or the hard work of making a home.”

* Review in Counterclock: https://counterclock.org/blog/ocampo-as-if-history

"Despite its namesake, this collection is one that seeps far beneath your skin and memory—and stays there. Williams’ voice is accessible but reveals all; it makes a home in your bones and pays rent by urging you to look inside yourself wholly and honestly and look into the world just as intensely.” 

* Review in After the Pause: https://afterthepause.com/2019/08/15/review-of-skin-memory-john-sibley-williams/?fbclid=IwAR23cQG8ToBrrvWFRGr8m8cvrFuissVSyCimhoWHC74foD1uu2aH4OYJ8n8

“While dissecting humanity’s cruelty toward nature and itself, he yet invokes a tenderness, a final hope that maybe we can still bend our swords into plowshares."

* Review on Amos Lassen’s blog: http://reviewsbyamoslassen.com/?p=73174

“These are stories about loss and love, abuse and maturing, and they contain enough space between the words and the line that allow us to enter ourselves into each one. Above all, we see the importance of landscape as it weaves its way through the collection, and what is memory after all but part of the landscape of our minds?”

* Review in San Francisco Review of Books: http://www.sanfranciscoreviewofbooks.com/2019/11/book-review-skin-memory-by-john-sibley.html

“Oregon poet John Sibley Williams is becoming one of America’s leading poetic voices.”

* “From the Desk of John Sibley Williams: Don’t Assume It’s All True”: Article on University of Nebraska Press’ blog: https://unpblog.com/2019/04/18/from-the-desk-of-john-sibley-williams-dont-assume-its-all-true/

“Those tender moments of collective empathy, of raw humanity, of words resonating beyond the page to speak directly to a stranger’s life, is part of why I write.” 

* Review in iacoustic: https://isacoustic.com/2019/12/04/skin-memory-poems-john-sibley-williams/

“Williams is a shaper of gestural remains and this is a leaving work that does not abandon but instead occupies enough clock for time to question the faith it’s put in stories told by jet-lagged prophets.” 

* Review in Savvy Verse & Wit: https://savvyverseandwit.com/2019/12/skin-memory-by-john-sibley-williams.html

“Skin Memory is an amazing collection that tackles large themes while grounding each moment in real life. A harrowing collection that strives for peace and hope, a journey into the self and outside of it.” 

* Review in Stay Thirsty Magazine: https://staythirstymagazine.blogspot.com/p/jette-sibley-williams.html

“…his work presents readers with poems so acutely human that the hidden pain of the ordinary becomes palpable.”

* Review in Sacred Chickens: https://www.sacredchickens.com/sacred-chickens-blog/poetry-review-skin-memory

“I highly recommend it. This is a collection that you will want to read again. One that sticks with you.” 

* Review in River Heron Review: https://www.riverheronreview.com/reviews-1/2020/2/16/review-by-jo-freehand-john-sibley-williams-skin-memory

“Williams gives us plenty of opportunity to slow down and meet poems face-to-face. Plenty of opportunity to engage in deep conversation, to develop deep listening, to examine quick assumptions, and to see things anew. Plenty of opportunity to feel. Plenty of opportunity to resonate. Plenty of opportunity to connect.”