Blackbox Manifold and Ink, Sweat & Tears

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 & Tears, 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 Wyke's atmospheric 'Saturday Night in St Ives'. Yesterday, my short version of Eugenio Montale's 'Il Balcone' also appeared there: an absolutely beautiful short poem in the original Italian I'm told. I at least hope I've captured its general feel. In any case, do drop in on the zine's site from time to time: there's sure to be plenty more fascinating stuff added in the future.

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Our Disappearing World

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 of this year's National Poetry Competition: Helen Dunmore's "The Malarkey", Ian Pindar's "Mrs Beltinska In The Bath", and John Stammers's "Mr Punch in Soho".

I'll also add, before I embark on the immensely dull chore of general housework, that it was an unexpected pleasure, on the same day as receiving my copy of Poetry Review, to stumble across this very generous and attentive review of my pamphlet, The Sparks, at Tom Chivers's online literary review, Hand and Star. Always heartening and reassuring to know that someone has come away from reading your stuff with a real sense of what you - often dimly, in my case at least! - feel you're trying to achieve.

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Mowing

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

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New Poetry @ Poetry Matters

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.

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Published and Forthcoming Poems

Below is a select chronological list of those of my poems which have appeared, or are forthcoming, in publications to date.







'Open Return', Poetry Review (forthcoming)



'The Umbrella', Times Literary Supplement, no. 5636, 8 April 2011



'Season', Fourteen magazine, issue 11, February 2011



'Bearing', Picador Poetry (taken from a portfolio shortlisted for the Picador Poetry Prize 2010), November 2010



'The River Don', The Spectator, 11 September 2010



'New Flat', Iota 88, Autumn 2010, commended in the Iota International Poetry Competition 2009



'Monday' and 'Fame', Blackbox Manifold, issue 5, July 2010



'First Glance', Times Literary Supplement, no. 5592, 5 June 2010



'Invocation', New Welsh Review, issue 88, May 2010



'Now and Then', Poetry Review, Vol. 100 No.1, April 2010



'Closed Shop', Horizon Review, issue 3, 2009



'Camouflage', Poetry London, No. 63, July 2009



‘Sonnet’ and ‘Lament’, Poetry Matters, April 2009



‘Home’ and ‘Sunday’, Poetry London, No. 61, October 2008



‘Definition’ and ‘Hex’, Magma, issue 42, October 2008



‘Lights Out’, The London Magazine, August/September 2008



‘Insomnia’, Blackbox Manifold, issue 1, July 2008



‘The Mole’, Times Literary Supplement, no. 5482, 25 April 2008



'Reflections', Magma, issue 40, March 2008



‘Memory’, Fourteen Magazine, issue 6, January 2008



‘Surrealism’, Other Poetry, Series III, No.1, 2007



‘The Horizon’, The Red Wheelbarrow, issue 15, November 2007



‘Mowing’, Brittle Star, issue 17, Summer 2007



‘Filter’, Poetry Review, vol. 97 no.1, April 2007



‘The Quiet’, The Frogmore Papers, issue 69, March 2007



‘Girl’ and ‘Epiphany’, Nthposition, March 2007



‘The Tesla Coil’, Times Literary Supplement, no. 5421, 23 February 2007



‘S.O.S’, The Red Wheelbarrow, issue 14, February 2007



‘Seed’, Poetry Matters, October 2006



‘Rarebit’, The Red Wheelbarrow, issue 13, July 2006

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