Keith S. Wilson

@keithwilsonpoet

Poet / Faculty @spaldingwriting.bsky.social

151 Following851 Followers125 Posts

Bluesky

Is this your profile?Claim it and keithwilsonpoet.dirty.social is yours.Claim profile

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· Jul 21

Greek myth appears a lot in my work, but this poem from my first book Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love is all about the Odyssey. Or all about being an astronaut. Or... Full text can be found at: www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

Text from Heliocentric. See link for a better way to read this poem

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· May 12

A visual poem and sentence diagram. The title of the poem is "Reparations." The sentence being diagrammed is, vaguely, "What will you do now that you're free." The center of the sentence diagram is empty / separated and many of the words are floating in space.

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· May 12

Something cool: I have some of my sentence diagram visual poems in in this anthropology studies anthology Naming and Being: Knowledges, Identities, and Cultural Politics. I actually have quite a few in here, but here are a few of them:

The book Naming and Being (blue paint strokes on a green background) on a black glass table. Beside the book is a succulent and a WW1 era windup duck.

A visual poem. The title is "So... Where are you from?" It is a sentence diagram (lines that connect verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc) but all the words are missing.

A photo of a page from the anthology. The page text is as follows:

35 The Cartography of a Name

Keith S. Wilson

"The Cartography of a Name" speaks directly to the way that Black people have traditionally had to adhere to the imperial standards of their country's language but move within it in ways that resist formalized boundaries-the "white space" of the page, the visual expressiveness of the diagrams, and the lyric language of the essay embodying, in one sense, a Black resistance movement.

At the bottom is a visual poem. It is 4 sentence diagrams rotated at 45 degrees so that they form a square. The sentences being diagrammed are all the same: "you can't park here." The title of the poem is "Gated Community."

A visual poem and sentence diagram. The sentence being diagrammed is "you are a wilson and a wilson never gives up." It is on a very high contrast map, with a label "negro houses"

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· May 8

Check out this brilliant writing about my book Games for Children by Noah Warren in the latest Cleveland Review of Books. None of my screenshots give it justice: clereviewofbooks.com/poetry-and-t...

Photo of Games for Children, Rock Flight, and the other books mentioned in this essay.

Keith Wilson: if (form===trap)

Keith Wilson's background in game design is reflected in Games for Children's flowcharts, matrices, and rogue sine waves. As such, the algorithm, for Wilson, signifies as a tangible series of operations and
logical moves, not as a mystified code. Indeed, the book functions as a primer in learning to think like a machine, prompting the reader through nested binary conditions toward aporia that reflect on the
conditions of American subjectivity.

The simultaneity of vacuousness and motion seems to be the point. Inherent in the diagrammatic form is the argument that
experience is ultimately diagrammable, permutations of a few variables, a repetitive paint-by-numbers affair.

The disorientation of encountering a poem that looks like this, and then trying to locate ourselves in its centripetal space, is its central emotional fact.

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· May 6

pigeons speak. Ask the closest pigeon for his number,
for her middle name, if they are ready to die, if the sky
gets crowded enough to consider war, if their stores are
closed on Sundays. I want to be ready for them to be
just like us, but more ready for them to be completely
different. I don't want to waste any time tracing a pigeon's
god to Abraham. I want to get started. Some of us feed
pigeons. I love, sometimes, our care. I love, I think, the
park bench. I love apples but I do not love pears. The
weather. I love the pigeons, the revolution of wheel
to sky. I love the newspaper greying in a different air.

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· May 6

And how they're all the same. How all the world is here
with them in hate, since they are rats adorned with angel
wings, and the children down the street are free to chase
their drag; they want to see a pigeon's rouge entirely.
Let the pigeon have her pigment. Consider the pigeon's
brown and green and everything, the brandishing of his
nakedness to the sun, as if nothing is absolute—I love the
pigeon's shoulders, tongues and wedding nights. I love
the pigeon's place in history, their obsession with living
in the letters of our signs. I love their minds, or what I've
come to believe is their theology. Who knows? Let the

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· May 6

sit in our hands. You can never know a language until
you quiet your own. I want people to write about them.
Their leaving ships for land, or standing on their own on
a marble statue in the shimmer of a field. I want to talk
about the term "rock dove," argue over whether or not
it's imperialist. I want the media to implicate us in the
pigeon problem, for a couple to sit with their asparagus
and kids and realize none of this is far from them,
whatever we think. I want oils and watercolors and inks.
I want still life with pigeons, since not a one has ever been
portrayed with soul: a flight of them around old bread.

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· May 6

I FIND MYSELF DEFENDING PIGEONS

I love how you never find their bodies, how they never
rest their eyes. I love how their breasts are comforters
unfolding by their breath. I love that pigeons live in the
city, that underestimation never stopped a pigeon from
unlatching itselfor being old. I want them all unspooling
in the air, and bridges that are half sigh and half pigeon. I
want to harbor their coo and utilize it for energy. I want
to learn to use them the way they want to be used. I
want to pigeontail into a quiet night, to let their oddness

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· May 6

My poem "I Find Myself Defending Pigeons" is in this cool new anthology, The New Sentience: Reimagining Animal Poetry! Not even the only poem about pigeons lol.

The book New Sentience. A blue amorphous shape, and below it a red one. On the blue shape, two abstractions of birds flying left. In the red shape, abstractions of a black horse and a green tree.

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· Apr 27

I have 7 short ekphrastic bird poems up at The Rumpus! Here's three of them—the rest can be found here: therumpus.net/2026/04/27/n...

Rose-breasted Grosbeak: Large finch, black head, back, bright red breast,

A common grackle: a small black bird with some green in its head feathers.

II. Common Grackle

i might go
to extremes. i am italicized
and a color that cannot be.
turquoise and purple and brown
and all the coloreds in between,
where light troubles itself
trying to decide. when i open my mouth
what you hear is common
grackle sounds.

III. Rose-breasted Grosbeak

i am an injury. i can
love through anything. but will i?
i take the question side-ways.
i move like the end of a rope swings
when the wind calls it.
when it says my birthname, i call back,
and together, we make it happen

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· Mar 30

Also here is part of the animation I debuted at the event. It's a transformation of a poem from my book called Linedance for an American Textbook

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· Mar 30

Didn't realize this had been published! Briana Reed did an awesome writeup of the design process of my book, featuring the arist who worked on my book (and cover!) Alex Guerra. It also covers the amazing convo I had with Chaun Webster & Douglas Kearney. milkweed.org/blog/changin...

A screenshot of the article linked to in the post. At the bottom, a photo of books on sale at the event by Keith S. Wilson, Chaun Webster, and Douglas Kearney

Artist Alex Guerra and poet Keith S. Wilson holding the poetry book Games for Children

Keith S. Wilson speaking from a chair on stage. Douglas Kearney and Chaun Webster watch him speak. In the background, a projection of a diagrammatic poem

Keith S. Wilson, Chaun Webster, and Douglas Kearney

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· Oct 3

What an honor! My book Games for Children is on the short list of the Chicago Review of Books awards! Thanks @chicagorevbooks.bsky.social !

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· Oct 6

or Barbara Kruger whose work on a piece by piece level is very legible, and probably meant to be read and wrestled with, but if you've ever seen her work at a museum setting is set up in ways that make reading it punishing because of angles, distance, or scope

A fish eye shot of a large gallery. Black and white words are on every surface: the walls, the floor included. There are big circular canvases that both have the very large word "You" in them, and a large word that says "face" on the floor but much of the rest of the text is hard to read at the distance the photo is taken.

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· Oct 6

so okay, maybe nearly none of that is meant to be read or CAN be read. but what about this piece by Susan Howe, where nearly every letter is recognizable under scrutiny but one has the sense we aren't truly meant to "read" it.

A white canvas with words that look like they have been cut and collaged, though no actual collaging has been done. They appear to be printed directly onto the canvas. The cuts are often at diagonals and the general shape of the collaged words is hard to describe but might be a sort of sideways tear drop and a triangle.

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· Oct 6

in the world of visual art, text is often used as a visual object only and is not meant to be read at all, certainly not in its entirety check out Glenn Ligon's "Mirror"

A painting of text that is so smeared it is almost entirely illegible, The first I few words read "see my smile" and the writing becomes darker and more smeared as you go further down the white canvas

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· Aug 11

i basically never post my visual work anywhere but on instagram (@keithing_it_real) but this is a piece i made a couple months ago. it's lasercut on cardstock and it's based on a geometric puzzle designed by 10th century Persian mathematician Abul Wafa (Abu al-Wafa' al-Buzjani)

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· Aug 8

My poems (including the red x)

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· Aug 2

I was chosen as one of Newcity Lit's Lit 50! Look at me not knowing what to do with my hands! Honored to be selected (and represent Chicago—can't believe I had never been to this part of the Harold Washington Library!) https://lit.newcity.com/2023/08/01/lit-50-2023-poetry/

Keith S. Wilson@keithwilsonpoet· Jul 31

Very late to share this but last year my first flash fiction piece ever was picked up by the Fairy Tale Review! It's a weird story about Mormo, a boogie monster (of Greek myth) when he was still a child https://keithswilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/The-Birth-of-Mormo-Fairy-Tale-Review.pdf