Ben Wilkinson

"There were well over sixty poems eligible for the 2012 Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, all from strong emerging voices curated by a variety of different editors, which has made for an especially rich field from which to have to pick particular flowers. Of the many poems I read and returned to again and again, five left enduring imprints no matter how often I re-read them - imaginatively, musically, in terms of the authority and associative power with which they explored the worlds they dramatised. They were Nicholas Laughlin's complex and thought-provoking 'Reading History', Candy Neubert's delicately building, quietly explosive 'ways to leave', Richard Scott's sensuous, highly charged 'Maz', Ben Wilkinson's 'The Nightmare' with its compelling fusion of the visionary and the real, and finally Kayo Chingonyi's winning poems from 'calling a spade a spade'." - from Jane Draycott's judge's report. The Geoffrey...

The fifth issue of literary ezine Blackbox Manifold has just been published, and well worth reading it is too; the usual mix of big names and new voices and poems of all styles, subjects and schools. And so you can read new work from George Szirtes , Sharon Olds , Vidyan Ravinthiran , Carolyn Hart and Susan Wicks , among others. I've a couple of poems included, too. There are also reviews by Vahni Capildeo , an exciting young poet in her own right (check out her stuff in Roddy Lumsden's recent generational anthology, Identity Parade ) , and by Adam Piette , co-founder and editor of the magazine. Also worth checking out is the prose and poetry forum Ink, Sweat & Tear s , which features a new poem, piece of prose writing or visual artwork almost every day. Recent highlights include Helen Mort 's 'The Lovesick', which somehow manages to conjure genuine emotion from a Carry On scene, Helen Ivory 's amusing account of her time at Latitude Festival, and Dan Wyk...

The latest issue of Poetry Review , Our Disappearing World (100:1, Spring 2010) has just been published, and features a broad array of interesting poems, features, and reviews: just received my copy the other day, so haven't had chance to enjoy it in full, but so far Alison Brackenbury's article on the work of John Clare, Jacqueline Gabbitas's round-up of recent pamphlets, and poems by Glyn Maxwell, John Stammers, James Midgley and Liz Berry have all caught and held my attention. In particular, Liz Berry's "In the Steam Room" is impressive: a minutely detailed, gorgeously sensual and descriptive poem that is also, in parts, that touch uncomfortable - great stuff. I'm particularly pleased, then, to see it included in a section of the magazine, "Now and Then", which takes its title from a poem of mine, also in issue, and also includes poems by Alex McRae, Tamar Yoseloff, Tom Gilliver , and Daniel Weissbort . The issue also features the winners o...

  A list of some of poems which have recently appeared in magazines and other publications. 'Church of the Sunday Long Run', METER: the runner's review , Winter 2020 'Try living in a house', Magma , issue 75 (Winter 2020) 'The Flower Carrier' and 'The Champion' , Wild Court , 5 July 2019 'Northern Anecdotal', Magma , issue 73 (Spring 2019) 'Cage' and 'The Bull', The Spectator , 26 January and 16 February 2019 'Patient' and 'Your anxiety', The Spectator , 26 May and 9 June 2018 'Graft' , METER: the runner's review , issue #02, Fall 2015 'Building A Brighter, More Secure Future', The Morning Star , 7 July 2015 ' Days ', The Spectator , 8 August 2015 'King Kenny', Official Liverpool FC Monthly Magazine , issue 27, November 2014 'John Barnes', The Pride and the Passion: Offside Stories anthology   'The Catch', The Saturday...

For months it sits unplugged, collecting spider webs spun and undone, while dust complicates sunlight through the shed’s single window at the broken egg of dawn. Or nursing the dregs of blackness that settle in its gut as you haul it out onto the lawn, plug it in or fill it, yank at its ripcord – the sudden hum of blades and the patch of mown green, now glowing. It churns like a stomach hungry for anything: leaves, daisies, insects, dogshit; the sheer weight of things bulked to a cube inside of it. Afterwards, the lines of the garden shimmer like wood grain, pious tree rings unravelled and planed down to chair legs. Or the glint of varnish as you empty the basket into the brown bin: the painted toy man of a toy set or model village, still smiling. poem by Ben Wilkinson first published in Brittle Star , issue 17, summer 2007

Just wandered across to the Tower Poetry site (a poetry venture run by poet-critic Peter McDonald at Christ Church College, Oxford) to find that the latest issue of Poetry Matters is up. And it's good to see more poetry than prose there for a change - its reviews, though always engaging and worth reading, are something of a regular feature compared to new writing. But in this issue, no less than four poets grace its webpages, including Stephen Romer , Emily Middleton , and Paul Abbott, whose Flood I reviewed for PM last year. There're also a couple of my own new(ish) poems . If you're not about to head out and enjoy the good weather, then, do head across and have a read. There's also a review of Peter Porter's cheekily named Better Than God , by Vidyan Ravinthiran , which, at least for me, provided an interesting window on a well-established poet whom I'm criminally unfamiliar with.