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Scott Williams' book of poetry, A Tooting of Horns, is available at this link.Author’s Poetry Bio
I was born in the Staten Island Naval Hospital while my father was in World War II. My parents settled in Baltimore where I, the sole family member of my generation, was raised from 1948 to 1964.
I can think of four driving forces in my life: Mathematics, Music, Writing, and Psychology. My mother had graduate degrees in Math and English, my father in Psychology, both parents made a living from music to pay for their college education. I followed the first three forces until college in 1960 when I dropped Writing.
While studying mathematics in graduate school at Lehigh University (1964-1969), I also wrote a lot of poetry no doubt influenced from attending readings there by Gregory Corso and Jack Gilbert, and actually meeting Allen Ginsberg. I began to read poetry at open readings in coffee shops. I earned a PhD in Mathematics in 1969 and became a post-doc at Penn State where open readings occurred in bars rather than coffee shops or book stores.
Who could not be affected by the assassinations of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy. The poetry of The Last Poets, Nikki Giovanni, LeRoi Jones (birth name of Amiri Baraka) and Don Lee (birth name of Haki Madhubuti) influenced the Black Liberation kind of poetry I wrote (1964-1971). My first poetry publications were in a supplement, called The Sunday Review, the Sunday supplement to a local newspaper in The Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton area of Pennsylvania.
In 1970 I discovered Gurdjieff (and a connection to Psychology), though I would not say I was student of his teachings until I came to The University of Buffalo in 1971. As I became focused upon a career of research mathematician, upon my family (I was first married in 1974 and have three daughters) and upon the Teachings of Gurdjieff, my extra-curricular activities diminished. In particular I wrote very little. Sometimes months might pass between poems.
I have lectured on my mathematical research in over a hundred institutions in 11 countries. The strongest memories of those times come from a year I spent in Czechoslovakia (when it was still communist), 4 months in the Virgin Islands, 3 months in China, a week in New Zealand and a week in Brazil. Even today, I write poems reflecting upon those experiences.
When I discovered my daughters were more interested in writing and poetry, than they were in mathematics and science, I began again to write frequently in the mid 1990s. One my greatest pleasures during that time was to have, thanks to Liz Mariani, a “family” poetry reading with my two eldest daughters Rachael and Rebekah at the old Coffee Bean Café on Main Street. In the late 1990s I was invited to submit a poem to a collection called Coffeehouse: Writings from the Web. My second wife has appreciated my poetry.
Aside: Dating back to the famed Harlem Renaissance writer Jean Toomer in the 1920s, there has been a minor concurrence of studying poetry within the Gurdjieff Work. In 2005 the writer Martha Heynemann (born in 1926), returned to western New York and participated in Gurdjieff School known as The Rochester Folk Art Guild located between Canandaigua and Geneva. Martha has written two books and numerous articles for the magazine Parabola.
In the summer of 2006 I participated in the second of Martha’s weekend poetry sessions at The Folk Art Guild, and I have participated in many since. Every Tuesday we would have writing poetry sessions. This past November was the most recent poetry session with Martha. In 2009 Martha began to finish the third day of her poetry sessions with ghazals in the sense of Robert Bly or what I call anti-ghazals. This caught my interest in a way no other form has done. When I encountered the ghazals of Galway Kinnell and Jim Harrison I was sold.
When Martha fell and was hospitalized in 2011 literally moments before a three day poetry session in Toronto, I was one of those she asked to help lead the session. Since 2010 in Buffalo, I have held six poetry writing sessions with from six to nine participants, the last three have been on writing anti-ghazals. 12/19/14
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