Down to Earth

by John Wilkinson

John Wilkinson's Down to Earth is his darkest work to a disturbing road poem of the American mid-West, an epic of migration, an examination of now-ubiquitous borders, and a meteorological tour of our growing energy crises. Global and internal flows of capital, consumer products, waste, labour and body parts all shape its contorted map of the 21st century. Narrative poems echoing traditional forms, are intercut with damaged and damaging lyrics; these various styles have their analogues in the sculpture several passages praise and deprecate. In addition, Down to Earth incorporates an extended homage to Artemis of Ephasus. Wilkinson's book forms one single thematically-interrelated poem, and although its materials are bleak, the book's caesura-driven prosody honours the hopes and courage of the people involved in mass migration and local struggles. Like every book by John Wilkinson, Down to Earth knows no limit to poetry's ambition, dodging every border post, down every highway, like the ocelot running through its narratives, and struggling to create a sheltering place in often pitiless landscapes.

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

John Lawton Wilkinson (born 1953) is a contemporary English poet.

From 1972 to 1975, he studied English at Jesus College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, where he founded, with Charlie Bulbeck and Charles Lambert, the Blue Room, a society devoted to the propagation of poetry and the other fine arts.

His collection of poetry, Useful Reforms (1976), Reckitt’s Blue (2013), Ghost Nets (2016) and My Reef My Manifest Array (2019). A selected poems, Schedule of Unrest (2014). His work is referenced in the standard guides and histories of recent British poetry and of Modernist poetry. His critical publications include a collection of essays, The Lyric Touch (2007), Lyric in Its Times: Temporalities in Verse, Breath and Stone (2019).

Reviews

[Jack Alexander Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking wire-taps of youth; its destruction, instrumentalisation, and sacrifice.

Illuminating to read 18 years after the fact, when life is just as gutted, only more so.

[jess sanford · Rating 1 out of 5]

The language is beautiful at times, but 99% of this book consists of the most painfully overwrought poetry I've ever put my eyes on.