I Own My Views - an interview with David Williams

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David Williams is a poet and playwright, a founding member of The Red Button Theatre and author of several collections of poems. He generously publishes much of his work-in-progress on-line, and has a built a reputation for potent, entertaining drama that does not shy away from politicising the everyday scenarios he often chooses as his focus... (Much of his work is archived by the National Library of Wales.)

David Williams 

Your poetry often veers into prose and vice versa. How would you define ‘poetry’ and is it the same thing as ‘the poetic’?

First of all thank you Remy for taking the time to read my work (and especially Diolch for setting up IAWN, a resource that is desperately needed by writers in Wales).

As a former English & Drama teacher I am ashamed to say that I don’t know the difference between poetry and prose. They are all just words to me that come out in whatever form or order they do and that is why on my Amazon author’s spotlight I say that my poetry is really a collection of angry words.

To me, poetry is the shortened form, a precis or lyrical form of the long winded. Perhaps my opinion of poetry and the poetic is best summed up in a poem wot I wrote : ‘Poetry is Cool’

There are many overt political references in your writing, are some of these the views of the character espousing them and not your own? Do you catch a lot of flak from people misunderstanding the idea of fiction in poetry?

Every character, play or short short story I write is me...

...continue reading this interview on The Scrawl.