We’re happy to introduce Ashley Williamson, our selection for February’s Poetry at Ephemera. Thanks to Ashley and everyone who submitted in December, which was a chock full of great work! If you’d like to participate, we will be fielding submissions each month to publish one poem per issue from the same poet for the month. Each poet receives a $200 honorarium. For full rules and more info please see our designated post about Poetry at Ephemera. You can also submit via the button:
Ashley Williamson is a poet and multidisciplinary artist born on Florida’s Space Coast, raised in the Ozarks of Northwest Arkansas, and now living in the English Lake District. She loves writing, photography, and painting and can often be found on long nature walks, drawing inspiration from the natural world. By day, she works for Lowell Quality Testing as an industrial radiographer specializing in nondestructive testing in the aerospace industry. She is interested in how science and imagination meet and hopes she can inspire others to investigate their worlds with curiosity and wonder.
In 2023, she completed her undergraduate degree in creative writing at Oxford University and is now working on her first full-length poetry collection. She is thrilled to be Ephemera’s February 2024 featured Poet. Her poetry will be published in an upcoming issue of Liminal Spaces magazine and featured in recent editions of New Note Poetry, The Write Launch, The Festival Review, Beyond Words, La Piccioletta Barca, Cathexis Northwest Press, and Compass Rose.
I am captivated by the space where science, spirituality, myth, the physical world, and imagination meet. My work focuses on liminal spaces and the interconnectedness of everything. Science, spirit, mind, and heart are deeply tied. The natural world around us, our physical bodies inhabiting it, and our interior lives are vitally connected. Every ecosystem on the planet is entwined, sometimes with invisible threads. Poetry is how I explore these connections.
Wonder. Curiosity. Gratitude. Imagination. Inspiration. Creativity. Perseverance. Discovery. These make up the bright constellation of creativity that guides me.
Poetry encourages one to engage in the mysterious spaces inside of us, a way of exploring the places language has yet to map and then making connections to known things, not so much to demystify these places as to create a space on paper to experience them.
We live in a strange slice of history, and facing injustice, disaster, and despair can be overwhelming. But there is hope. We can take care of each other and the earth well. We can and should explore scientific discovery and ask questions about the ineffable. I hope my work leads readers to their bright constellation of ideas and that they, too, may become wonder junkies.
Poems
Each issue of Ephemera spanning February (and probably a lil into March) will feature one poem from Ashley Williamson. After each issue drops, the poem from that issue will then appear here as well. In this case, we’re launching Ashley’s first poem below as a preview before the full issue comes out. This post will remain on our Substack, free to view, for the year.
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Poem 2 of 4
Appears in the Feb.2 Issue
Poem 3 of 4
Appears in the Feb.3 Issue
Poem 4 of 4
Resemblance of Sisters
Appears in the Feb.4 Issue
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There is this, an interesting aspect of these poems, they break from the traditional lines making and conventional punctuation which make them unique. Liberty in poetry is fine as long as it is done well. Who knows what she or he is doing can break the rules. You've done well here going away from the normal or the standard of verse-making.
One has to admire experimentation in poetry when it comes across as poetic, and this is certainty that.
There is this, an interesting aspect of these poems, they break from the traditional lines making and conventional punctuation which make them unique. Liberty in poetry is fine as long as it is done well. Who knows what she or he is doing can break the rules. You've done well here going away from the normal or the standard of verse-making.
One has to admire experimentation in poetry when it comes across as poetic, and this is certainty that.