SOURCE: “An Interview with C. K. Williams,” in Contemporary Literature, Vol. XXIX, No. 2, Summer, 1988, pp. 157–76.

In the following interview, originally conducted on November 21, 1985, Williams discusses the political role of poetry, his literary influences and preferred poets, his approach to writing and aesthetic concerns, his work as a translator, and his thoughts on contemporary poetry.

C. K. Williams recalls, in his poem “My Mother's Lips,” that throughout his childhood his mother had mouthed his words whenever he attempted to communicate “something important.” As recreated in the poem, the evening in his adolescence when he asked her not to do so—and for the first time felt himself having to find his own words and go on speaking by himself—marked his entry into poetry as well as adulthood. The poems that came to the lips of the solitary young man continued the speech he had previously directed toward his...