Ben Wilkinson

Wow. Cock-ups on the Royal Mail’s part aside, and Jay Bernard’s first pamphlet (from the peeps at Tall Lighthouse ) was well worth waiting for. What I like about her poems – and what this short gathering of only fourteen demonstrates – is a young, lively and energetic voice sounding itself out, but with a musical and rhythmical conviction that demonstrates a young poet who’s well read, yet unafraid to take what she likes and make it that bit more freer, exciting and wonderfully weird. Take opener ‘Kites’: Is it true that I was frightened of the dark? If I sat alone and watched the shadows of the room, it is because I stood with my ear against the wall: the words I heard were like a corpse beside my bed or a hole that appeared in the centre of the moon. That’s just the first stanza and it’s a strong, beguiling opening that unfolds into a vivid, sensual poem. Here, the ‘quiet voice’ from the poem’s narrator ‘chim[ing] through the country of […] youth’ may bear resemblance to Duffy, but ‘

For those readers who haven't heard it already, there's an interesting discussion from last week's The Verb on Radio 3, dealing with the curiousness and problems that surround unfinished writing. Presented by Ian MacMillan, it includes a handful of novelists and poet Roddy Lumsden, talking about his unfinished poem, 'Sea Air', among others. Well worth listening to if you get chance - I believe the thing's available until tomorrow @ 9pm, when the next Verb's broadcast. Link's here .

Alongside reviews of Frances Leviston 's Public Dream and Sophie Hannah 's Pessimism for Beginners, my review of Jean Sprackland 's Costa Award-winning third collection, Tilt , is available, in the latest issue of Tower Poetry's Poetry Matters . You can find it here .

A new draft of a poem. As ever, comments, ideas, sugggestions etc are welcome. I'll leave it up for a day or so. Dusk ...it's gone now...

Glyn Maxwell seems an interesting and extremely varied writer of poems, and a poet I intend to read more of in the coming months, having only come across bits of his collaborations with Armitage way back in Moon Country , written when the New Gen promo packed the two off to Iceland together. But he's come to my attention recently in spotting this wonderful and inventive poem in The Guardian Review just after xmas; an impressive long poem which is by turns exhilarating and humorous, but also wonderfully rhymed and metrically well executed. But then with the following review quotes spanning his decade-and-some writing career so far, I feel like I must've been missing out on something good: No-one treats English quite like the clapped-out motor Maxwell clearly thinks it is. He kicks it, he re-vamps it, he customizes it. He leads you up syntactic blind alleys and gets you doing semantic U-turns that leave the hair bristling - Adam Thorpe, Observer Glyn Maxwell covers a greater di

Mountaineering (and more generally exploring) is something that interests me, albeit from a distance, so when I recently found out that the great New Zealand mountaineer and explorer Edmund Hilary, one of the first men to climb to the summit of Everest, had passed away, I had the idea to write a narrative poem (something I rarely do) imagining, alongside a bit of research into the facts of the expedition, his climb to the great mountain's summit. The fruits of this exercise are below. As ever, comments and suggestions are welcome. I might leave this poem up permanently. Everest i.m. Edmund Hillary (mountaineer and explorer, 1919 – 2008) [removed by author]

  Don Paterson: Writers and their Work ( Liverpool University Press , December 2021, hbk; December 2023, pbk)   Don Paterson is one of Britain’s leading contemporary poets. A popular writer as well as a formidably intelligent one, he has won both a dedicated readership and most of Britain’s major poetry prizes, including the T. S. Eliot Prize on two occasions, the Forward Prize in every category, and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. In this first comprehensive study of Paterson’s poetry, Ben Wilkinson presents him as a modern-day metaphysical, whose work is characterised by guileful use of form, musicality, colloquial diction and playful wit, in pursuit of poetry as a moral and philosophical project. Drawing on a wide range of commentators, Wilkinson traces Paterson’s development from collection to collection, providing detailed analyses of the poems framed by theoretical and literary contexts. An essential guide for students, specialists, and the general reader of contemporary poet

    Live Literature presents: Ben Wilkinson launches his new collection Same Difference , with support from BA Creative Writing graduates Stuart Beveridge and Romina Ramos - Tuesday 8th March 2018, 6-8pm @ Bolton Central Library, BL1 1SN (free event and no need to book)     Seren Books presents: Virtual First Thursdays: Ben Wilkinson digitally launches his collection Same Difference, with a reading from John Challis - 3 March 2022, 7:30pm (GMT) @ tickets available to book via Eventbrite Sheffield Hallam University presents: MA Masterclass: Ben Wilkinson and Suzannah Evans -  TBC December 2018  @ Sheffield Hallam City Campus, Sheffield S1 Poets & Players presents: Ben Wilkinson and John Glenday + musicians (TBC) -  Saturday 15 September 2018, 2.30-4.30pm  @ Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester Seren Books presents: First Thursdays: Ben Wilkinson, Ross Cogan, Dan Tyte + open mic -  Thursday 5th July 2018, 7.30-9.30pm  @ Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Wales Live Literature

The Sparks , Tall-Lighthouse , £4. ISBN 978-1-904551-56-0 SHORTLISTED FOR THE ERIC GREGORY AWARD 2009 & 2010 SHORTLISTED FOR THE INAUGURAL PICADOR POETRY PRIZE In The Sparks , Ben Wilkinson meets a dark world with a light touch. These are poems of the city in the night and a young man's place at its heart. Even when the poems move out from an urban focus, it is to a rural world of missing walkers and lurking cars, a shifting pitch-black beach or a black-misted sea where trawlers roll like beasts. But the dark is lit by sparks of electricity, glowing cigarettes and a strange sun recalled from childhood. These are neat and clever poems. Poems from this publication previously appeared in Blackbox Manifold , Magma , Other Poetry , Poetry London , Poetry Review , The Frogmore Papers , The London Magazine , and the Times Literary Supplement . The Sparks is poetry responsive to the elemental layers that underscore the material sheen of our early twenty-first century. I