Reading Down t'South

Friday 19th September at The Betsey Trotwood, 56 Farringdon Road, Clerkenwell, London @ 7.30pm: £5

BroadCast presents a reading by poets from the tall-lighthouse Pilot Series, pamphlets by poets aged 30 and under. Readings from Gareth Jones, Kate Potts and Retta Bowen, plus the next two poets in the series Emily Berry and Ben Wilkinson, and series editor Roddy Lumsden.

Comments

BarbaraS said…

Best of luck! Enjoy yourself :)

2:05 pm

Oliver Mantell said…

Hi Ben - hope the reading goes well.

10:19 pm

Ben Wilkinson said…

Thanks Barbara and Oliver - I'm looking forward to it.

3:45 pm

Claire Askew said…

Hi Ben,

Just thought I’d let you know that I’ve been following your blog for a little while, and I've linked to it on mine (www.onenightstanzas.com) and written a quick review of it as part of an article about young poets who blog. Give it a quick look & check it’s OK!
If you think it’s alright, any reciprocal link would be much appreciated… though not necessarily expected!

http://www.readthismagazine.co.uk/onenightstanzas/?p=104

Cheers!
C

5:44 pm

Way More Than Luck: 27.2.18 - the launch

Poetry in Motion

POETRY IN MOTION
Why one Reds supporter is committing his love for Liverpool FC to verse

Liverpool FC and poetry have a lot of previous – from John Toshack’s Gosh It’s Tosh collection in the late 70s, to the verse of Dave Kirby and Peter Etherington in the fanzine Red All Over the Land, to the lines written by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, a University of Liverpool graduate, in the aftermath of 2012’s Hillsborough findings. Now there’s Ben Wilkinson, Reds fan and book critic for The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement, who’s compiling a series of poems commemorating the club’s legends. “Football is part of the fabric of life, and anything that’s important to people finds its way into poetry,” he says. “Wilfred Owen’s poem 'Disabled' describes a soldier who loses the use of his legs, meaning he can never play football again. Philip Larkin’s 'MCMXIV' compares boys queuing to join the army to fans outside Villa Park. These poems have stood the test of time because t…

Way More Than Luck (Seren Books, 2018)

From the thumping heartbeat of the distance runner to the roar of football terraces across the decades, Ben Wilkinson’s debut confronts the struggles and passions that come to shape a life. Beginning with an interrogation of experiences of clinical depression and the redemptive power of art and running, the collection centres on a series of vivid character portraits, giving life to some of football's legends. By turns frank, comic, sinister and meditative – ‘the trouble with you, son, is that all your brains are in your head’ – these poems uncover the beautiful game’s magic and absurdity, hopes and disappointments, as striking metaphors for our everyday dramas. Elsewhere there are tender love poems, political satire and strange dream worlds, in an urgently lyrical book of poems that take many forms and modes of address: pantoum, sonnet, sestina; epistle, confession, dramatic monologue. All are united by a desire to speak with searching clarity about matters of the heart. Way More …

Ben Wilkinson

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