David-Antoine Williams

My professional interest in twentieth century poetry was lit in my third year of university, in Helen Vendler’s course on Seamus Heaney. This led to a senior thesis on Heaney’s “poetic theory,” an idea I came back to when I returned to academia after a short stint working for an internet start-up in London, England. I completed a research MPhil on Heaney and T. S. Eliot at the University of St. Andrews, on the North Sea coast of Scotland, and then moved on to Balliol College, Oxford to write a doctoral thesis on poetry and ethics in the twentieth century, centering on the verse and prose works of Heaney, the Russian and (latterly) American poet Joseph Brodsky, and the English poet Geoffrey Hill. After a short time at the University of York (England), I came back to Oxford on a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, this time to Hertford College, a pretty little place with a serene quad and a venetianesque bridge, situated just across from Radcliffe Square and the Bodleian Library. I came home to Canada in 2010 to teach modern and contemporary literature of the British Isles.

My current research is on contemporary British and Irish poetry, etymology, dictionary studies (primarily the Oxford English Dictionary), and the Digital Humanities. I regularly post about work in progress on my research blog.

The content that follows may only represent a portion of the Faculty member’s work.

Books

The Life of Words: Etymology and Modern Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Defending Poetry: Art and Ethics in Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, and Geoffrey Hill. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Chapters

‘Poetry in the Oxford English Dictionary: A Quantitative Profile’ in Poetry and the Dictionary, edited by Andrew Blades and Piers Pennington. Liverpool University Press, 2020: 57-80.

Articles

‘Antedating (in) the Oxford English Dictionary’ in Notes and Queries 71.1 (2024): 95–8. PDF link.

‘Women’s Words and the Words of Women in the Oxford English Dictionary’ in Review of English Studies. June 2023. PDF link.

‘“Alien” vs. Editor: World English in the Oxford English Dictionary; Policies, Practices, and Outcomes 1884–2020’ in International Journal of Lexicography Vol. 34.1 (2021): 39-65.

‘The “Oxford Dictionary” in T. S. Eliot’ in Notes & Queries 63.2 (2016): 293-296. PDF link.

‘T. S. Eliot in The Oxford English Dictionary’ in Notes & Queries 63.2 (2016): 296-301. PDF link.

‘All corruptible things: Geoffrey Hill's Etymological Crux’ in Modern Philology 112.3 (Feb, 2015): 522-553. PDF link.

‘Poetic Antagonyms’ in The Comparatist 37 (May, 2013): 169-85. PDF link.

‘Tête-à-tête, Face-à-face : Brodsky, Levinas, and the Ethics of Poetry’ in Poetics Today 30.2 (2009): 207-35. PDF link.

Open Access

Unlost: Anne Carson Relational Bibliography

The Life of Words (Research Blog)

‘Yarrowrhyme, or, Paul Muldoon’s Soundprint’ v.1 2018, v.2 2024.

The Life of Words Poetry Anthologies (2016-2019)

‘Interview with Paul Muldoon’ (2015)

Reviews

A review of Stephen Turton, Before the Word Was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary 1600-1930 in Review of English Studies 75.322 (2025)

A review of Craig Dworkin, Dictionary Poetics: Toward a Radical Lexicography, in Dictionaries: The Journal of the Dictionary Society of America 45.2 (2024): 413–18.

ENGL 100B: Poetry

ENGL 200B: English Literatures 2

ENGL 251: Literary Theory and Criticism

ENGL 460C: Literature of the Postwar Period in the United Kingdom and Ireland

ENGL 460D: Contemporary Literature of the United Kingdom and Ireland

ENGL 470B: History of Literary Criticism

Poetry and/or poetics of the last hundred years or so.

Please contact Professor Williams if you are a prospective and/or current graduate student wanting to pursue advanced research in some aspect of this area.

Grants

Insight Grant – Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2022-2027)

Early Researcher Award – Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation with matching funds from University of Waterloo and St. Jerome's University (2015-2022)

Insight Development Grant: ‘Poetry and Contingency’ – Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and University of Waterloo (2011-2013)

Faculty Research Grants (2011, 2013, 2017)

Fellowships

British Academy Post Doctoral Fellowship – The British Academy (2007-2010)

Junior Research Fellowship in English – Hertford College, Oxford (2007-2010)

The content that follows may only represent a portion of the Faculty member’s work. 

Administrative

St Jerome’s University

Chair, Department of English (2022-2024, 2025-2028)

Research Officer (2025-2027)

Committee on Research and Scholarship (2014-2015, 2020-2022, 2025-2027)

Renewal, Tenure, and Promotions Committee (2019-2022)

St. Jerome's Academic Staff Association

Grievance Office (2019-2025)

Chief Negotiating Officer, Full-time Collective Agreement (2023-2024)

University of Waterloo

Undergraduate Studies Committee (2022-2027)

English Graduate Studies Committee (2014-2016, 2018-2021)