Williams was born in Greenville, South Carolina, grew up in Virginia, and lived in Europe from 1949 to 1966.
Williams studied poetry with John Crowe Ransom at Kenyon College, anthropology at the University of Paris, and worked as an assistant to the ethnologist Paul Radin in Switzerland.
[1] In the 1960s, Williams was the European coordinator of Fluxus and worked closely with French artist Robert Filliou, and a founding member of the Domaine Poetique in Paris, France.
Williams was a guest artist in residence teaching at Mount Holyoke College from September 1975 to June 1976.
He translated Daniel Spoerri's Topographie Anecdotee du Hasard (An Anecdoted Topography of Chance), collaborated with Claes Oldenburg on Store Days, and edited An Anthology of Concrete Poetry, all published by the Something Else Press, which was owned and managed by fellow Fluxus artist Dick Higgins.