With a shaggy beard, gauged ears, and tattoos running up and down his arms, William James looks more like a hardcore punk rock singer than a poet. That isn’t a coincidence.
It took him many years to come to terms with being labeled a poet, writing his “pre-teen angst” out in middle school before taking writing more seriously in college.
“That wasn’t necessarily trying to write poems. That was, ‘I want to be in a punk rock band and all I can do is yell, so I’m going to write song lyrics and hope that somebody will start a band with me,’” James admitted.
Many failed bands later, he began to realize that penning poetry wasn’t as far away from his original goal as he has originally thought.
“The lyricist of a band will end up writing far more than what his musician bandmates can keep up with, so he’ll have this whole backlog of words written, and at some point you decide, ‘What the hell? I might as well let them stand on their own merit, put them in a chapbook, and say that now I’m a poet, too,’” he explained.
Residing just outside of Pittsburgh, James discovered the city’s slam poetry scene in 2007, which he felt had a mindset towards structure that “really, really appealed to the leftover remnants” of his “angsty, teenage punk rock years.” He has since become a member of the Steel City Slam and the host of the Young Steel Youth Slam.
“After years and years and years of trying to figure out how to be a poet, I realized that it wasn’t as difficult as I was making it out to be…There’s this whole other world that doesn’t have to follow rules of rhyme scheme and form. I mean, I couldn’t even spell ‘iambic pentameter,’” he joked.
He found his own voice through stubborn persistence, writing thousands of pages constantly, expanding his influences to classic poets, and immersing himself in the vibrant and diverse writing and poetry scene in his area. He eventually took his act on the road, performing nationally at over 300 readings, slams, and even punk shows with accompaniment from bands.
Now 29, he finds inspiration in man’s struggle to survive at all costs.
“Any time I’m performing in front of an audience, be it of one or one thousand, everything that I write and everything that I perform can essentially, in some way, be traced back to the basic premise of this whole being alive and being human thing is kind of an awful struggle and it’s difficult. The only way we’re ever gong to get through it is to kind of hold each other up, so let’s do this thing,” he explained.
The parallels between music and poetry also continue to this day for James. Much like he turned to his favorite bands to get through these hard times, he has found that his own work has had the same impact on others.
“They say to me, ‘You had that poem that you closed your set with that was talking about when you tried to commit suicide and you didn’t, and I’ve never told anybody this, but I was there just not too long ago,’” he said.
With three self-published chapbooks and a new mini-chapbook under his belt, James is currently working with an editor on a full manuscript and will make his third appearance in Scranton at New Visions Studio and Gallery, 201 Vine St., at its third free Writers Showcase on Saturday, March 31, He promises the show will have all of the “energy” and “violence” of the punk rock shows that inspired his origins as a writer.
“I’m just going to get up, I’m going to stand in the middle of the floor, and I’m going to yell at you, and it’s going to sound like poetry.”
If you go
WHAT: Writers Showcase with William James, Keith Gilman, Charlie O’Donnell, Reena Ranells, Rachael Goetzke, Sandee Gertz Umbach, hosted by Brian Fanelli and Jason Lucarelli
WHERE: New Visions Studio and Gallery, 201 Vine St., Scranton
WHEN: Saturday, March 31 at 7 p.m.
COST: Free