John Wilkinson Biography
John Wilkinson was born in London in 1953 and grew up in Cornwall and Devon. He gained a B.A. in English from the University of Cambridge in 1975 and passed a year at Harvard working on the poetry of John Wieners. Thereafter he trained as a psychiatric nurse and worked over twenty years in mental health services in England, being the Head of Mental Health and Assistant Director of Public Health at East London & The City Health Authority. From 2005-2010 Wilkinson was Writer in Residence and thereafter Research Professor in the Department of English at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Since 2010 he is a Professor of Practice of the Arts at the University of Chicago.
A treatise divides between its several heads, yellow
safe as its green is matter-of-fact, ladies-mantle
bunched lustrous jar, converges & is close to oceanic -
No more no more. The earth bread, the millet, maize,
...
In summer
in country places
it's the custom yet
to fill
hearth or grate
...
They bash their fists on the asphalt playground, as if
they could crush the stone below; soft fists splinter
A) ache, B) pale white secure, C) deep white safeline
Sparks from the mica fan into veins, & tar-thick milk
...
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