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John Wilkinson's
Down to Earth is his darkest work to date: 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.
List of contents
- Like Substances
- In Tempo
- Intervention
- Present Company Excepted
- Stamp of Origin
- Oversight
- Next to Nothing
- Number One
- Excuse Me
- Collaboration
- Condensation
- The Indiana Toll
- Back of Beyond
- Travel Plaza
- Stopover
- Rust Belt
- All Those Gates
- The Confronter
- Crumple Zone
- Like by David Smith
- Harlem Air Shaft
- Like Feeling
- Ravenous At Noon
- Hunter At Dusk
- Lying In Late
- Drifting Out
- The Defeat of Artemis
- Bound South
- South Unbound
- Acknowledgements
About the author
John Wilkinson grew up on the Cornish coast, on Dartmoor, and in boarding schools. He worked in mental health services, in Birmingham, Swansea and London. Subsequently he taught literature and creative writing at the universities of Notre Dame and Chicago. He now lives in Cambridge.
