Writer Ian Williams hopes to inspire a national conversation with his 2024 CBC Massey Lectures

Q29:43Ian Williams on courageous conversations, cancel culture and taking risks

Award-winning poet and writerIan Williamsis the newest name to join a long list of contemporary thinkers, writers and scholars, as the 2024 CBC Massey lecturer.

Since 1961, the Massey Lectures created by CBC, and now in partnership with House of Anansi and the University of Toronto's Massey College have explored pressing issues of our time. Former notable speakers include Martin Luther King Jr., Ursula Franklin, Jane Jacobs, and Thomas King.

The annual five-part lecture series has become a Canadian institution since its inception and Williams says he's excited to be added to the distinguished list of former Massey lecturers.

Q host Tom Power spoke to Ian Williams about his upcoming Massey Lectures and asked him why he chose to focus on the theme "conversations."

"We're living at a point now where we can barely talk to each other, right? Like it seems incredibly urgent these days, with increasing polarization, and online forms of talking," Williams said.

"It seems really timely that we kind of step back and say, 'Why can't we talk to each other? How can we talk to each other? What do we need to talk about right now in 2024? And create an environmental space to make that happen."

WATCH | Ian Williams's conversation with Q's Tom Power:

Williams hopes to ignite a national conversation with his lectures. As he told Power, he wants to make space for "conversations without agenda. Conversations without the intent to persuade and to convert just conversations for the sake of relating one human being to another."

He adds that understanding the importance of what he calls "courageous silence" and working at creating the right balance in a conversation can be revolutionary.

"We ought to realize that one-half of our conversations is, in fact, listening," Williams said.

"Is it courageous to speak or courageous to hold your peace until someone else has said something contradictory to you and not rush in to contradict them to prove your point, but to just listen graciously, to let it settle, to offer no comment or whatever and just let it be."

Award-winning freedom

Williams has published six books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. His most recent book,Disorientation: Being Black in the World, is an essay collection that was shortlisted for the 2021 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

The accomplished author has won several awards for his work, including the Raymond Souster Award from the League of Canadian Poets and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first collection of short fiction in Canada. His collectionPersonalswas also shortlisted for the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize.

Winning the Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel Reproductionin 2019 gave him the unique opportunity to publicly thank a former Massey lecturer for their inspiring work in his acceptance speech.

"You have no idea how special this is for me. So I've got notes but I'll start with my heart first. Margaret Atwood, over there, is the first book I bought with my own money at a bookstore in Brampton," Williams said at the Giller Prize ceremony.

That book was The Circle Game, Margaret Atwood's poetry collection published in 1964. He added that reading Atwood's writing over decades and following her progression felt like an intimate relationship that Williams says all readers can have with writers without writers ever knowing.

Williams admits thatwinning the Giller Prize was liberating, as it gave him the freedom to be deeply himself without limiting his behaviour to please anyone.

"To know that you've achieved something that you don't need to achieve again, or you don't need to prove X or Y. I'm rolling my eyes at this comparison I'm about to make, but does Beyonc need to win a Grammy again? Right? You know, I feel there comes a point where, okay, you have been granted permission to do whatever you want to do with your mind in your life. And that is the greatest gift,"Williams told Power.

"I mean, to symbolize it in the form of an award that's one thing. But I wish we could bestow this on people without the actual material award or cheques or whatever to say, 'Hey, you are free to live your life and to do whatever you want with your life. That's a big, big gift of the Giller for me."

Listen to the full conversation with Ian Williams and Tom Power by downloadingthe Q podcast from your favourite app.