Chawley P. Williams, a poet, counselor and mentor to generations of younger Pittsburgh writers, died of cancer early Wednesday. He was 73.

Mr. Williams, the director of the Kuntu Writers Workshop, was the last surviving member of the Centre Avenue Poets' Theater Workshop, an influential group of Pittsburgh artists who celebrated and criticized the conditions of black American life in a period of political and cultural unrest. The most well known of the quartet was the late playwright August Wilson, who was just one of a line of writers influenced by their association with the charismatic Mr. Williams, who was raised and lived many years in the Hill District but later moved to Sheraden.

The other members of the Centre Avenue group were the writers Nick Flournoy and Rob Penny, a playwright who later chaired the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Africana Studies.

In "The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson," Sandra G. Shannon described Mr. Wilson's involvement in the Centre Avenue group as a significant influence on the career that would produce the acclaimed cycle of plays chronicling the black experience in 20th-century America.

"This trio of black artists also guided the neophyte cultural nationalist in his search for substance and voice by educating him about important contemporary writers," Ms. Shannon wrote.

In a preface to Mr. Wilson's "Fences," the director, Lloyd Richards, described Mr. Williams as "a poet who transformed himself from a man of the streets," who would serve as "one of a series of surrogate black fathers" in Mr. Wilson's life.

But Mr. Williams' influence extended well beyond his more famous associate.

"He enjoyed life immensely; he had a love for sharing his gift," said Dr. Vernell A. Lillie, a Pitt scholar who founded the Kuntu Repertory Theatre with Mr. Penny and Mr. Wilson. "He was the kind of person I could take someone's writing to, no matter how large or small, and Chawley would read it and help move the writer along his way."

Mr. Penny and Mr. Wilson also founded the Kuntu Writers' Workshop, which is also affiliated with the Department of Africana Studies, and their friend Mr. Williams served as its director after Mr. Penny's death.

Mr. Williams' work was informed by the realities of mid-century urban life. He made no secret of his early brush with drug addiction, or of his past as a numbers runner -- "a digitarian," as he described to the critic and writer John Lahr.

The insights from those early years informed not just his writing but a parallel career as a drug and alcohol counselor. He worked as a counselor at Gateway Rehabilitation Center for the last decade of his life. He began his career in counseling after going back to school late in life, earning his degree from Pitt in 1999.

"I don't know if he could have been a poet without the Hill,'' his friend, the filmmaker Billy Jackson, said of his upbringing in a community scarred both by poverty and misguided attempts at urban renewal. "He pretty much exposed those layers of life to view and showed their relationships -- the Hill, poverty, blues, and the good guy against the hustle ... he didn't sugarcoat it but it did have sweetness to it."

Sala Udin, the former city councilman who directs Pittsburgh's Coro Foundation, said Mr. Williams' work had served as "part of the artistic arm of the civil rights movement.''

"Chawley came from the street academy,'' Mr. Udin said. "He was a recovering drug addict, had been in the streets most of his life and he got his life together and made productive use of his life through writing poetry. ... It was pungent, no-nonsense, self-critical but also critical of the environment that he was describing.''

Associates described the rich, rhythmic baritone that marked Mr. Williams' recitations of his poetry in venues that ranged from formal theaters to Hill District bars.

"Sometimes we would have drummers, conga and bongo players, and we would have jazz for the intro, and then each poet would come in and do their own thing,'' Mr. Williams said in a 2002 profile of Mr. Wilson in the British newspaper, "The Guardian."

"Sometimes we had 'free-for-alls,' where everyone would free-associate and say whatever connected to what they were hearing, straight out of their hearts.''

Mr. Williams "loved to recite poetry; he believed that poetry was written to be spoken, not read," Dr. Lillie recalled. "[His work] had a pulsating beat; here was a kind of a melody of the blues, jazz, references that flowed like music.''

But despite such fond reminisces, and the literary influence described by a litany of other writers, no commercial publication of Mr. Williams' work exists.

"That was his last thing; he just didn't have time,'' said his wife of 31 years, Darzetta Williams. "I have so many poems in boxes here.''

"We were working at the end to try to put together an anthology of his work and the Kuntu Writers' work,'' said Amir Rashidd, another writer. "When I first came to Pittsburgh, when I was 23, Chawley was my hero poet.''

In addition to his wife, Mr. Williams is survived by daughter Zena Smith of Chicago; sons Eugene of Sheraden and Charles Jr. of Bloomfield; stepson Rufus Smith of Sheraden; stepdaughters Darla Smith of Longview, Texas, Keely Smith of Sheraden, and Tony Means of Hazelwood; 24 grandchildren; and 22 great-grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements are incomplete. They are being handled by the Samuel J. Jones Funeral Home in the Hill District.

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