Emmett Williams (4 April 1925 – 14 February 2007) was an American
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...
and visual artist. He was married to British visual artist
Ann Noël.
Williams was born in
Greenville, South Carolina
Greenville (; locally ) is a city in and the seat of Greenville County, South Carolina, United States. With a population of 70,720 at the 2020 census, it is the sixth-largest city in the state. Greenville is located approximately halfway be ...
, grew up in
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
, and lived in
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
from 1949 to 1966. Williams studied poetry with
John Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom (April 30, 1888 – July 3, 1974) was an American educator, scholar, literary critic, poet, essayist and editor. He is considered to be a founder of the New Criticism school of literary criticism. As a faculty member at Kenyon ...
at
Kenyon College
Kenyon College is a private liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio. It was founded in 1824 by Philander Chase. Kenyon College is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission.
Kenyon has 1,708 undergraduates enrolled. Its 1,000-acre campus is se ...
, anthropology at the
University of Paris
, image_name = Coat of arms of the University of Paris.svg
, image_size = 150px
, caption = Coat of Arms
, latin_name = Universitas magistrorum et scholarium Parisiensis
, motto = ''Hic et ubique terrarum'' (Latin)
, mottoeng = Here and a ...
, and worked as an assistant to the ethnologist
Paul Radin
Paul may refer to:
*Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name)
*Paul (surname), a list of people
People
Christianity
*Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chris ...
in
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
.
As an artist and poet, Emmett Williams collaborated with
Daniel Spoerri
Daniel Spoerri (born 27 March 1930) is a Swiss artist and writer born in Romania. Spoerri is best known for his "snare-pictures," a type of assemblage or object art, in which he captures a group of objects, such as the remains of meals eaten by in ...
and German poet Claus Bremer in the
Darmstadt
Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...
circle of
concrete poetry
Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct mea ...
from 1957 to 1959. One of his notable pieces from this period is "Four-Directional Song of Doubt for Five Voices" (1957), in which five performers are each assigned one word of the phrase "You just never quite know", and say their word according to a grid on a card, keeping together with the beat of a metronome: when a black circle appears on the grid, the performer speaks the word, and when no circle appears they say nothing. In the resulting performance, the core phrase "you never quite know" is overshadowed by other combinations of words, such as "you know" and "quite just".
[Higgins, Hannah B. ''The Grid Book'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2009. p.197 ]
In the 1960s, Williams was the European coordinator of
Fluxus
Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...
and worked closely with French artist
Robert Filliou
Robert Filliou (17 January 1926 – 2 December 1987) was a French artist associated with Fluxus, who produced works as a filmmaker, "action poet," sculptor, and happenings maestro.
Life
In 1943, Filliou became a member of the French Communi ...
, and a founding member of the Domaine Poetique in
Paris, France
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
. Williams was friends with
Václav Havel
Václav Havel (; 5 October 193618 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and former dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992 and then as ...
during his dissident years' he translated some of Havel's work into English. Williams was a guest artist in residence teaching at
Mount Holyoke College
Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite historically women's colleges in the Northeastern United States.
...
from September 1975 to June 1976.
Williams' theater essays appeared in ''Das Neue Forum'', ''Berner Blatter'', ''Ulmer Theater'', and other European magazines. He translated Daniel Spoerri's ''Topographie Anecdotee du Hasard (
An Anecdoted Topography of Chance)'', collaborated with
Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg (January 28, 1929 – July 18, 2022) was a Swedish-born American sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring large replicas of everyday objects. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions ...
on ''Store Days'', and edited ''An Anthology of Concrete Poetry'', all published by the
Something Else Press
Something Else Press was founded by Dick Higgins in 1963. It published many important Intermedia texts and artworks by such Fluxus artists as Higgins, Ray Johnson, Alison Knowles, Allan Kaprow, George Brecht, Daniel Spoerri, Robert Filliou, Al ...
, which was owned and managed by fellow Fluxus artist
Dick Higgins
Dick Higgins (15 March 1938 – 25 October 1998) was an American artist, composer, art theorist, poet, publisher, printmaker, and a co-founder of the Fluxus international artistic movement (and community). Inspired by John Cage, Higgins was a ...
. From the mid-1960s through the early 1970s Williams was Editor in Chief of the Something Else Press.
In 1991, Williams published an autobiography, ''My Life in Fluxus - And Vice Versa'', published by Edition Hansjörg Mayer, Stuttgart, and reprinted the next year by
Thames and Hudson
Thames & Hudson (sometimes T&H for brevity) is a publisher of illustrated books in all visually creative categories: art, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and the performing arts. It also publishes books on archaeology, history, ...
.
In 1996, he was honored for his life work with the Hannah-Höch-Preis. He died in Berlin in 2007.
In 2014, Edition Zédélé published a reprint of ''SOLDIER'' (Reprint Collection, curated by Anne Moeglin-Delcroix and Clive Phillpot), first published in ''A Valentine for Noel'' (1973) by Something Else Press and Hansjörg Mayer.
References
Notes
External links
Archivio Conz*
1925 births
2007 deaths
Writers from Greenville, South Carolina
Fluxus
Kenyon College alumni
University of Paris alumni
American contemporary artists
American conceptual artists
20th-century American poets
{{US-artist-stub