Ben Wilkinson

Edited by Roddy Lumsden , and tall-lighthouse press’s Pilot series is an exciting, enterprising and much-needed addition to the world of poetry publishing: showcasing the work of eighteen up-and-coming and wonderfully varied poets, all under the age of thirty. Adam O’Riordan is one of the first to receive the Pilot treatment, and his wonderful pamphlet showcases the fruition of his years studying under both Andrew Motion and the late great Michael Donaghy. The first thing you notice in reading this selection of O’Riordan’s work is the sheer ambition and range of his subject matter. Opener ‘Trawling’ takes the sweeping birds eye view of Larkin’s ‘Here’ to the zooming precision of the ‘Google Earth’ level: encompassing the ‘satellite / as it travels in Trappist silence’ through to a coffee cup ‘slid[ing] along the galley’ of a ‘lonely trawler’; ‘the smell of spilt diesel, fish guts, / blood and brine, gravity in flux’. The off-kilter half rhyme here is perfectly executed: the reader get

Here's a draft of a new poem. I'll leave it up for comments and ideas for the next few days. ... it's gone now ...

This brilliant and affecting song appears repeatedly in the recent film The Darjeeling Limited from Wes Anderson, the director of The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic . Once you've seen the film (and accompanying short, Hotel Chevalier ) this song will no doubt become embedded in your thoughts. If it does, then you'll understand my saying that it's not necessarily a bad thing. A wonderful piece of music, and a wonderful film, which is generating new and deserved interest in Peter Sarstedt's songs.