William’s poems have been published in various magazines, including Anon, Envoi, Iota, The Interpreter’s House, The North, Orbis, Pennine Platform, The Rialto and Sentinel Literary Quarterly. He has won or been shortlisted for competitions including the Rialto Pamphlet Competition, The Live Canon International Poetry Prize, the Nantwich Words and Music Festival Prize and The Interpreter’s House Open House Competition. He has been longlisted for the National Poetry Competition. He has judged the Cheshire Prize for Literature and edited an anthology of winning stories, Island Chain (University of Chester Press, 2019).
He has published numerous research articles and book chapters, as well as three academic books: Gonzo Republic: Hunter S. Thompson’s America (Continuum, 2011), Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman: A Reader’s Guide (Continuum, 2007) and Writers and their Work: John Fowles (Northcote, 2003).
Judges and reviewers have described his writing as:
- ‘quirky, refreshingly different and wide-ranging in its cultural references. Data made interesting in a way I would never have expected or anticipated in poetic form’ (Sarah James)
- conveying ‘the time lag, the stutter that any technology has (especially in its less mature phase) in trying to render reality, which is where VR is right now. The buffering pixels, the table crowded with integers – technology is never as smooth or as complete as it promises to be’ (Rishi Dastidar)
- setting up a world where ‘words slip away from their original meanings, become jargon, trademarks, or symbols on a broken keyboard’ (Tim Love)
- ‘exemplary, meticulous in its vocabularic choices, hard-hitting with each beat’ (Khairani Barokka)
- ‘Every poem here is just so quixotic, surprising and absorbing! I was dazzled! Each poem is a new topography. Everything is underpinned by thrilling research and collecting of language and found texts. But even when quoted, nothing feels borrowed. Everything is made new and Poundian.’ (Richard Scott)
This is William’s Amazon author page and here is his University of Chester profile page (links will open in a new tab / window).