Joseph 'Count Slima' Williams was born in 1949 in Queens, New York, and raised in the Baruch Houses on Houston Street. A long-standing New Yorker, Slima has become a poetry legend in the East Village. He was formerly a member at CHARAS / El Bohio, a community center and activist group located at P.S 64. He is a pool shark at Sophie's bar and a former employee at Two Boots Pizza, where he worked for nearly 30 years. Slima's art can be found on the ceiling at Sophie's bar, and a mural poem is viewable out of the window in the back room at Mona's bar.

His nickname ‘Slima’ was given to him by his grade school teacher, meaning 'peace' in Hebrew. Slima's poems are a stream of consciousness laboriously stenciled with pencil and marker on poster board. Topics include angels, bar nights and parties, the four seasons, pretty ladies, the Knicks, and social issues surrounding NYC. A prolific writer, Slima aims to write a poem every day, sometimes staying up all night to finish lettering the last word. He works in series, and numbers each poem at the top left hand.
In recent years, Count Slima has exhibited in group exhibitions at downtown galleries David Peter Francis (2025), Helena Anrather (2024), and Citygroup Bulletin (2022). Count Slima’s first solo exhibition, SLIMAFEST, was held at Foreign & Domestic (New York) in December 2023.

In the summer of 2024, a group of artists recreated one of Slima’s poems as a large mural painted onto a barn at Bracket Creek Exhibitions in Bozeman, Montana, giving its title to the group exhibition Open Your Eyes Space Is Not Poluted Until People From Earth Gets There This Is The Greatest Place Earth If You Keep On Destroying It Really Bad Taste There Is So Meny Lies You Never Know If There Is The Truth Or Is It A Lie.

Very Special consists of a series of 24 poems specially created for Count Slima’s exhibition at Ordinance Gallery in Melbourne, Australia, his first outside the United States.

Our gratitute to Count Slima and Alex at Foreign and Domestic.