On the sermons of Tyrone Williams
A lay preacher, as well as the distinguished poet, critic, and English professor I had known him to be, Tyrone had delivered the sermons at the Winton Community Free Methodist Church in Cincinnati, where he worshipped from 1987, when he began teaching full time at Xavier, until he took his position as a distinguished chair in the English Department at Buffalo in Spring 2022.
Six months after Tyrone Williams died from cancer at age seventy on March 11, 2024, I accessed the texts of seventeen sermons he had composed and that were now housed in the “Theological, 2001-2021” section of his archive at SUNY Buffalo.
Rhyme-off of off-rhyme
Moon, wrist in Iceland(ic)
On the eve of my first Að landa post, the sky over Reykjavík plunged from pink to indigo when the last light dwindled near 17:30. Jupiter rose in the north as I set up my tripod, charged my camera battery. Holding a wrist near eye level to block the city lights, I scanned the horizon above Mount Esja for hints of moonlight.
Nicolas Billon taught me the wrist trick during his first visit to Iceland in October. I’d been curious to meet him, a fellow Canadian who'd authored Iceland. And so we found ourselves at Stykkishólmur’s Library of Water. New moon. Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl and I had just finished a poetry performance; we gathered outside of the library to stare at northern lights, partly obscured by high, thin clouds. Nicolas raised his wrist and coaxed us to follow his lead. With the electric harbour lights of Stykkishólmur blocked, we could see the aurora.