Reviews of ‘Outside Temple Boundaries’

Excerpts from reviews

Outside Temple Boundaries Five Islands Press New Poets 5, 1998.

Cordite 6&7 2000
Elizabeth Treadwell

The book opens with a short series of three poems, starring Mary (the Virgin); poems which recall W. B. Yeats’ ‘The Mother of God’ via their evocation of sharp, clear cries from an interiority that is at once highly mythic and plain as your next door neighbour.

Beyond character, though, Williams’ writing seems to me to be concerned with patterns, and most importantly, with the blank spots between ourselves and our ways of thinking-or trying to think.

Clearly, prayer matters to this writer, and is central to this book, though quite satisfyingly problematized – and the problems lovingly, crisply rendered

Southerly 1999
Greg McLaren

One of the collection’s more exciting features for this reader, is the poetic approach of ‘11 Stations of the Cross’. Some sections of this longer poem appear to borrow from, or are reminiscent of, the haiku tradition. These pieces are impressive for the way their fragmentedness alludes to what follows: there is a sense of foreboding and movement in them, as well as sudden, crystalline insight traditionally associated with haiku.

Williams wites so convincingly and authentically of life’s spiritual dimension.