Jeni Williams – författare

Yolanda, Megan, Amber and Molly had the picture perfect start to their high school years. They were each members of the cheerleading squad, honor students, kind, beautiful and well liked. Little did they know, their high school years were going to be anything but picture perfect. Their stories include heartbreak, anxiety, childhood cancer, teenage pregnancy and mental illness and how the cheer team and community came together to support these girls. Their ability to see the positive when it would have been so easy to focus on the negative. These show what unconditional love and being on a team really means. Sometimes, life throws curve balls at us, and what might feel like rock bottom is actually just the moment before a miracle happens. And that miracle will show you what you're made of and teach you so much about yourself and what's important in life. The girls in this book are living proof of this.

The poetic nightingale is so familiar it seems hardly to merit serious attention. Yet its ubiquity is significant, suggesting associations with erotic love, pathos and art that cross culture and history. This book examines the different nightingales of European literature, starting with the Greek myth of Philomela, the raped girl, silenced by having her tongue cut out, and then transformed into the bird whose name means poet, poetry and nightingale simultaneously. Moving from the classical to the Christian worlds, Jeni Williams discusses nightingales and nature in the early church and sees the emergence of the figure as an emotive emblem of the aristocracy in mediaeval vernacular debate poetry. Her final chapters use the nightingale and the myth to examine Elizabeth Barrett Browning''s struggle for an active female voice in Victorian poetry.

The poetic nightingale is so familiar it seems hardly to merit serious attention. Yet its ubiquity is significant, suggesting associations with erotic love, pathos and art that cross culture and history. This book examines the different nightingales of European literature, starting with the Greek myth of Philomela, the raped girl, silenced by having her tongue cut out, and then transformed into the bird whose name means poet, poetry and nightingale simultaneously. Moving from the classical to the Christian worlds, Jeni Williams discusses nightingales and nature in the early church and sees the emergence of the figure as an emotive emblem of the aristocracy in mediaeval vernacular debate poetry. Her final chapters use the nightingale and the myth to examine Elizabeth Barrett Browning's struggle for an active female voice in Victorian poetry.

Choose a honeyed place to make a harbour…In her second poetry collection, Jeni Williams searches for sweetness in bitter times. In an uncertain and fractured world, cities shudder to smoking ruin; the lost and confused call out across hospital corridors; and too-small shoes come apart in the rain. But, through the cracks, there are glimpses of flowers and small joys – bluebells and celandines, jasmine and honeysuckle, pomegranate syrup and cinnamon cake – a huge expanse of sky. As light emerges from darkness the characters of these poems sing out, readying themselves to begin again. Still here, and very much alive.

Någonstans och Ingenstans kallas två grill- och festplatser som ligger utmed Svartån i Tranås, och som förr ofta användes när festsugna ungdomar ville vara i fred, långt borta från de vuxnas granskande blickar. Mellan Någonstans och Ingenstans heter antologin där det bjuds på poesi, både på svenska och engelska, i olika former. Allt från långa dikter till kortare poem och haiku. 29 poeter från hela världen som vistats i Tranås låter läsaren ta del av deras intryck av staden och dess människor, när de med utomståendes ögon blickar in i deras vardag, deras värld. En plats inte bara i ingenstans utan också i någonstans. Varken bättre eller sämre än andra städer. Tranås genom främlingars ögon: Jonas Bengt Svensson, Hanna Halgren, Bengt O Björklund, Joakim Becker, Ullias Berglund, Christer Boberg, Anthony Jones, Melanie Perry, Anisur Rahman Derek Coyle, Dominic Williams, Sine Ergün, Colm Ó Ciarnáin, Lucy Durneen, Ferhat Mahir Çakaloz, Dana Perry, Maria McManus, Freke Räihä, Ica Fisherstöm, Michelle Dooley Mahon, Chris Ozzard, Moheb Soliman, Inês Lampreia, Calvin Wharton, Tishani Doshi, Phelim Kavanagh, Eleanor Shaw, Rhian Elizabeth, Jeni Williams, Natalie Holborow