Author: Anthony Wilson

I am a lecturer, poet and writing tutor. I work in teacher and medical education at the University of Exeter. My anthology Lifesaving Poems was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015. In 2012 I published Riddance (Worple Press), a collection of poems, and Love for Now (Impress Books), a memoir, about my experience of cancer. The Wind and the Rain, my sixth collection of poems, is available now from Blue Diode Publishing. My current research project, funded by the Foyle Foundation, is Young Poets' Stories: https://youngpoetsstories.com/. This blog is archived by the British Library.

Advent meditation

I like to think of myself as a pretty consistent person. I look askance with a certain smugness at the … More

The Wind and the Rain – due in June 2023

I’m delighted to announce that The Wind and the Rain, my sixth collection of poems, will be published with Blue … More

UCU Strike: reflections and resources

Thank you to everyone who stopped by and liked or commented on yesterday’s blog post about the UCU strike action … More

UCU Strike: a list of poems about work

Today was not a normal day of work for me. Instead of teaching my amazing students, I chose to participate … More

The Kevin Jackson Award

I was privileged to meet and work with the late writer and critic Kevin Jackson in 2011. We tutored a … More

Not much

What’s been happening? Well, not much. Which is another, deflecting, way of saying quite a lot, actually. So much that … More

Lifesaving Lines: Pobble, by Heather Trickey

Heather Trickey was a social research scientist, charity worker, Quaker and poet. In 2020, during the first Covid lockdown, she … More

Lifesaving Lines: The Job of Paradise, by Roger Robinson

My personal poetry highlight of the summer was listening to Roger Robinson read and be in conversation with Pádraig Ó … More

Lifesaving Lines: History, by Tomaž Šalamun

The other day I bumped into Tomaž Šalamun. I was enjoying the last few hours of walking around Ljubljana, took … More

A new review of Riddance… from 2013

A huge thank you to Ken Head and Helen Ivory at Ink Sweat & Tears for this review of Riddance … More

A new review of Lifesaving Poems… from 2015

A huge shout out and massive thank you to Maria Taylor and her wonderful Commonplace blog, where yesterday I discovered … More

Lifesaving Lines: “Still Do I Keep My Look, My Identity…”, by Gwendolyn Brooks

It was the dying of the light of my time on Twitter. Days when I miss it, I think of … More

Lifesaving Lines: An October Salmon, by Ted Hughes

I walked into the middle of a Ted Hughes poem the other week. An early morning dog walk, like any … More

Lifesaving Lines: The Trees, by Philip Larkin

Early May. Sitting in the bay window upstairs at Cricklewood revising for finals. My pink vest and purple jeans phase. … More

More places of hope

I said here a couple of years ago that Natalie Jabbar’s blog of curated poems each April is like a … More

Lifesaving Lines: Edge, by Sylvia Plath

But first came Plath. After Ursuala Le Guin, the only female author we studied (OK – Jane Austen). Her name … More

Lifesaving Lines: Spring, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Our tiny minds blown by ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’, ‘Spelt From Sibyl’s Leaves’ and ‘As Kingfisher’s Catch Fire’, we … More

John Foggin’s review of The Afterlife

John Foggin has been kind enough to review The Afterlife on his blog. You can read the full review here. … More