Ben Wilkinson

Remember that poem right at the end of Don Paterson’s God’s Gift to Women (1997)? The last in the book’s muddled sequence of poems that take their titles from the defunct Dundee-Newtyle railway line, it comes a handful of blank pages – actual blank pages, just to be clear, not the blank-page poems Paterson has a proclivity for – after the notes, isn’t listed in the contents, and got up the noses of a fair few critics with its mid-parentheses, mid-sentence, ostentatious ending. Really, though, nothing can disguise its intrinsic revelatory weight and significance, how ever much the poet seems at pains to undermine any naïve, earnest hunt for intellectual or spiritual meaning: the white page of its printing likened to snow, which in turn becomes a deity’s “shredded evidence”, falling from the skies. Well, for those who haven’t spotted this already, you might want to check the copyright page of Landing Light (2003), Paterson’s equally acclaimed follow-up volume (if one discounts the mag...

In his collection of essays Music at Night , Aldous Huxley famously remarked that "after silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music". The idea is by no means a new one: where words fall short, music can often seem uniquely placed to articulate our subtlest moods, thoughts and emotions. Yet few can have explored this concept, or its wider complexities, with the delicacy and originality of thought that Katharine Towers achieves in this ambitious, powerful and memorable debut, longlisted for the Guardian first book award. In their deft harnessing of the music intrinsic to language – that which fuels poetry's thrilling confusion of sense with sound – Towers's poems are akin to those moments of quiet clarity amid the bustle and blur of daily life. The book's opening poem, "Amber", is a terse vignette that sets the tone with an elegant metaphor: figured as a frail "thought" and, by extension, a stay against confusion, ...

Just a quick note for those interested: my review of Fiere , Jackie Kay 's new book of poems and her first with Picador , appears in today's Guardian Review . It's also on Guardian .co.uk . Brief pieces from previous supplements - on books by David Wheatley , Anna Woodford , Brian Turner , John Haynes , Penelope Shuttle , and Dan Wyke - are also in the poetry reviews archive, here .

Alongside a slightly lengthier piece on John Fuller 's latest collection, Pebble and I , by William Wootten, the current week's TLS (29 October) contains my review of Simon Armitage 's latest book, the PBS Choice (and so automatically T.S. Eliot prize-shortlisted) Seeing Stars . A new direction for his work, sure, but is it actually any good?

OK, OK... I know there are easier targets to pick on in the world of hackneyed, cliché-ridden song lyric writing than the otherwise talented Dizzee Rascal . I'm actually a pretty big fan of some of his work, particularly 'Fix Up, Look Sharp' from his precociously impressive first album, Boy in da Corner , and the unfortunately titled but belting Brit-hop Grime single 'Pussy'Ole (Old Skool)' from his third release, Maths + English . But this little snippet of comedy gold is just too good to ignore, revealing as it does the way in which music artists half-disguise such lyrical junk with their vocalisations - which in Dizzee's case, is through rapid-fire, often double dutch style rapping. Get a well-spoken, middle-class radio presenter called Carrie to 'rap' along to the song's tune, however, and what makes for highly danceable Brit-hop descends into the complete farce it lyrically is, and not just because the girl can't rap or sing. I'd rec...

Just a bit of news in the form of my critical perspective of Anglo-German Faber poet Michael Hofmann's work going up on the British Council's Contemporary Writers website, here . Later in the week, I'll hopefully find time to do a write-up of the music and poetry goings-on at Latitude Festival (see post below).

Just a snippet of news in that my critical perspective of Don Paterson's work to date is now up on the British Council's Contemporary Writers database, here . A critical perspective of Simon Armitage's poetry, novels and translation will follow.

Just some brief news: my critical perspectives on excellent contemporary poets Daljit Nagra and Penelope Shuttle are both now up on the British Council Contemporary Writers website.

Just some brief news in the recent publication of the latest issue of Pomegranate , the online magazine that publishes exciting new poems, reviews and features by young writers. As well as a strong and varied selection of new poems by Claire Askew , George Ttoouli , Ben Davison and many others, there are articles on putting together a first collection by recent T.S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet Frances Leviston , on the politics behind poetry by Richard O'Brien, and on poetic voice by co-editor Emily Tesh. There's also a new poem by myself . An illuminating and interesting interview with Canadian poet and UK Oxfam Writer In Residence Todd Swift also rounds the issue off, covering poetry and its crossover with the possibilities of the digital age, publishing work and getting noticed, and the emerging UK poets to look out for in the not-too-distant future. Well worth a read. In fact, along with the latest issue of Magma and Roddy Lumsden 's article on working with youn...

A few things have appeared online and dropped through the letterbox of late. The first is the new issue of Magma, No.40 , which is edited by Roddy Lumsden and one of the strongest and most exciting to date. Its focus, quite accidentally down to the 'fine poems starting to appear from so many young writers' received in submission for the issue, is on young poets, featuring an interview with the likes of Foyles Young Poet of the Year winner Richard O'Brien and tall-lighthouse poet Jay Bernard, as well as poems from a wide range of impressive young writers, and more established talents such as Ros Barber, Claire Crowther and Sarah Wardle. It's well worth a read, with particular highlights including Mark Waldron's 'I called the plumber...' (that rare beast: the successful funny poem) and Tony Williams 's richly descriptive 'Argument About the Definition of Red'. And Eloise Stonborough , a young Oxford poet and blogger, has an excellent piece, 'J...

Matt Merritt linked to an interesting article in the Telegraph recently, addressing Larkin's poetry and its tendency to 'tell the reader what to think'. Of course, all this is a matter of opinion, as Larkin isn't necessarily telling the reader what to think in even his most forthright poems. After all, despite what A.N. Wilson says, 'Life is first boredom, then fear' (from 'Dockery and Son') ultimately amounts to no more than a certain viewpoint, whether or not this particular opinion matches up with the views Larkin held, or indeed, the way he lived his life. Larkin's intention wasn't to tell us what to think, but to offer us a way of thinking. In fact, I still return to his work now, and while I may be more inclined than some to agree or sympathise with a handful of the near-statements Larkin's poems make, I don't see that what he offers us are mere emotional, social or spiritual dead ends. Just think of the possibility of transcenden...

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 ‘...

I'll leave this poem up for about 24 hours for comments, ideas and suggestions . ... it's gone now...

It's been a long time since I posted on Deconstructive Wasteland, and it's largely (if not entirely) to do with my complete lack of internet connection. But now I've started studying on the Writing MA at Sheffield Hallam I have access to their ample IT facilities, so I can do more than check emails while perched on a stool in a charging internet cafe. Hence this brief post. If you're reading this, then, thanks for returning after a month of complete inactivity. This week, two things I've written have appeared online: first, a review of Tim Turnbull's collection, Stranded in Sub-Atomica , is up on Todd Swift's blog Eyewear , and second, my choice for poem of the month at the Philip Larkin Society's site is up, 'As Bad as a Mile' . Aside from that, I'm loving being back in Sheffield, and amid sorting out everything in my new place I've started writing critical perspectives of contemporary authors for the British Council, the first of which...

As David Caddy's 'Letters from Poetic England' note, this coming Sunday (12th) marks 180 years since the once overlooked, now seminal and hugely significant, poet William Blake's death. This year is also significant as it marks 250 years, come November 28th, since the poet was born. To mark the occasion, I thought I'd post this critical essay which I wrote sometime ago, exploring the social concern evident in arguably Blake's most important work, Songs of Innocence and of Experience . May Blake's memory remain as one of poetry's richest and most groundbreakingly subversive talents. Social Criticism and Concern in Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience In 1940, George Orwell, the great author and socio-political commentator, remarked of Blake’s ‘London’ that ‘there is more understanding of the nature of capitalist society in [this] poem… than in three-quarters of Socialist literature.’ Such a statement is neither unwarranted nor, arguably, hyperbo...