Jeni Williams is Senior Lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Wales: Trinity Saint David where she teaches on both the undergraduate programme and the MA in Creative Writing.
 
As a cultural critic she responds to issues of marginality, employing postcolonial, psychoanalytic and gendered critiques in relation to literature and fine art. Her publications range from Medieval Literature, to Welsh Writing in English, Art History, and Women’s Writing. She is an External Examiner for Bedfordshire University degrees in English Literature and Translation Studies offered by MSA University, Cairo.
Since 2004 she has been working directly with the socially and politically marginalised and has run a series of creative writing workshops with women asylum seekers and refugees from many different countries. These have led to public performances (e.g. AWEN International Festival of Poetry and Film Atrium, Cardiff, 2009; Swansea Museum 2012; Dinefwr Literature Festival, Llandeilo 2014). This practical work has fed back into academic papers exploring creativity and place (e.g. ‘Framing refugees: creative writing choices in a context of disbelief, paranoia and malicious rumour’, Brighton, 2015), and publications (e.g. Fragments from the Dark, Hafan, 2008, ‘Place, Space and Self: Site-Responsive Art in a Globalised World’, Journal of Writing and Creative Practice 8.1/2: 2016).
The creative exchange of working with people of other cultures has influenced her practice and her interest in the materiality of language. She has, for example, been experimenting with the effects of removing key consonants. Her poem, ‘The White Room’, which was written without the consonant ‘d’, was longlisted for the 2016 University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize (published in the 2016 anthology). This year she was also shortlisted for the 2016 Live Canon International poetry prize with ‘Histories’ (performed London in November, published in the 2016 Live Canon poetry anthology)
She has published poetry in a wide range of magazines, including Agenda, New Writing, New Welsh Review, Orbis, Planet, Poetry Wales and The London Magazine, and has contributed work to anthologies and exhibitions.
Her first collection, Being the Famous Ones, appeared in 2009 with Parthian books. She is currently completing her second collection, Without.
Coracle Europe Literary Residency  2017