John Wilkinson is a poet and student of poetics who joined the English department in 2010. He serves as Director of the Program in Creative Writing and Chair of the Divisional Committee on Poetics.

His first collection of poetry, Useful Reforms, was published in 1976. Recent publications include Reckitt’s Blue (Seagull Books 2013), Ghost Nets (Omnidawn 2016) and My Reef My Manifest Array (Carcanet 2019). A selected poems, Schedule of Unrest, was published by Salt in 2014. Wilkinson's work is referenced in the standard guides and histories of recent British poetry and of Modernist poetry.

Wilkinson's critical publications include a collection of essays, The Lyric Touch (Salt 2007), which includes essays on poetics; on ‘Cambridge School’ poetry including J.H. Prynne, Denise Riley, and John James; and on American poetry, notably John Wieners. His second critical book, Lyric in Its Times: Temporalities in Verse, Breath and Stone (Bloomsbury 2019) ranges from the Renaissance to the New York School, notably Frank O’Hara and Barbara Guest, mid-century British poets such as Dylan Thomas and W. S. Graham, and contemporary poets including Layli Long Soldier and Cody-Rose Clevidence. It also discusses visual artists as various as Veronese, Peter Lanyon, Aaron Siskind and Ian Hamilton Finlay.

To learn more about Wilkinson's work, please visit his faculty page.