Ben Wilkinson
@benwilko85.bsky.social
Writer, poet, “refreshingly honest” critic, tutor. Poems: Way More Than Luck (2018), Same Difference (Seren Books 2022). Criticism: Don Paterson (LUP 2021). Writing has appeared in Guardian, New Statesman, Spectator, TLS, etc. Lifelong Red. Likes a jog.
AI art of all kinds is, without exception, irredeemable dross, and only impresses those with the aesthetic awareness of a six year old. It thrives, like most godawful things, on lack of education, be it self-taught or formal. Just to say the quiet part out loud like, and for avoidance of any doubt.
I’ve written a personal essay about my ongoing experience of the major illness next to no one is talking about. In part it’s a corrective to our collective delusion that individual effort can overcome all. I’m here to tell you that sometimes, it really can’t. benwilko.substack.com/p/another-bi...
Another Big C
The major illness next to no one is talking about
benwilko.substack.com
This #WorldMentalHealthDay, a poem that metaphorises one of the many guises in which depression might manifest itself. ‘The Bull’ features in my second collection of poems, 𝑆𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝐷𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 (Seren Books, 2022). #MentalHealthMatters
'The decision to slash funding for creative subjects comes despite the field being named as one of the UK’s “highest potential sectors” in the government’s industrial strategy.' 1/2
Cuts to creative courses ‘undermining government’s own strategy’
Arts institutions warn creative education is becoming increasingly hard to deliver as government slashes funding from September onwards
timeshighereducation.com
The AI revolution is here but, like most revolutions, it isn’t going to deliver what its proponents allege. The underlying purpose is to allow wealth hoarders to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth.
Poetry in Motion, my new Substack newsletter, is go! Join me for a jog, perambulation, and the occasional sprint through poetry, prose, and plenty else besides. Subscribe to get new posts to your email inbox each week. open.substack.com/pub/benwilko
Poetry in Motion | Ben Wilkinson | Substack
Join me for a jog, perambulation, and the occasional sprint through poetry, prose, and plenty else besides. Click to read Poetry in Motion, by Ben Wilkinson, a Substack publication. Launched 24 days a...
open.substack.com
“Another reason I chose to share my experience with long COVID was that I wanted to scare the shit out of people who weren’t taking it seriously. Think you’re too healthy or fit to end up like me?” Seems I found my new running crew: The Always Tired Club. www.8020endurance.com/dying-to-run...
Dying to Run, Episode 4: "The Always Tired Club" | 80/20 Endurance
Matt Fitzgerald has been a runner for almost his entire life, but his running days ended abruptly in 2020 when he developed long COVID, a post-viral chronic
8020endurance.com
Only waking up to this now as I’ve spent a chunk of 2024/25 under a rock, but what happened to the Next Generation Poets 2024, i.e. the fourth instalment in the PBS/Poetry Society’s promotional celebration of 20 new voices predicted to dominate British verse in the coming decade?
The politics of despair have engulfed Britain. But Zack Polanski is offering a way out | Owen Jones
The politics of despair have engulfed Britain. But Zack Polanski is offering a way out | Owen Jones
The leader of the Greens wants to focus on battles that unite – such as taxing wealth – without yielding an inch on minority rights, says Guardian columnist Owen Jones
theguardian.com
Football is like life: we meet with both triumph and disaster. True character is about treating both the same, with class and dignity. This new-look team will be special. Patience. Some folks need to check themselves, remember who we are, and who our boys lost over the summer.
You know we’re through the looking glass here in the UK when the radical right wing has ties to and defends Putin’s Russia, but tries to accuse the left of ‘communism’ for proposing such moderate conservative views as taxing billionaires and dismantling the rentier economy.
This #WorldMentalHealthDay, a poem that metaphorises one of the many guises in which depression might manifest itself. ‘The Bull’ features in my second collection of poems, 𝑆𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝐷𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 (Seren Books, 2022). #MentalHealthMatters
‘“Keeping It Together: How Not to Get So Burned Out That You Walk Out in the Middle of Class” will now be a slideshow presented in the haunted auditorium by Jim “Flip” Philips, head coach of the varsity TP team.’ www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...
The Faculty Mental Health Fair Has Been Postponed Again
Dear Faculty: Due to concerns expressed by the students, parents, and staff, you are invited to attend a mandatory emergency mental health fair in ...
mcsweeneys.net
Alan Carr just casually giving Toad of Toad Hall disguised as a washerwoman, escaping gaol in the Wind in the Willows. O Traitors, you’ve only gone and done it again. #CelebrityTraitors
Why does the Conservative Party hate Shakespeare, the Romantics, the Brontës, and all the world-renowned richness of British literary culture? Students who study English gain a whole raft of life skills: verbal and written communication; creative and critical thinking.
Totally behind everything Gary Neville says about using flags as a symbol of division and hate, and the need for unity and solidarity. I’m from an ordinary background, state schooled, and have worked hard all my life. What’s stood in my way has always been been privilege and greed, never diversity.
“Keeping It Together: How Not to Get So Burned Out That You Walk Out in the Middle of Class” will now be a slideshow presented in the haunted auditorium by Jim “Flip” Philips, head coach of the varsity TP team.
The Faculty Mental Health Fair Has Been Postponed Again
Dear Faculty: Due to concerns expressed by the students, parents, and staff, you are invited to attend a mandatory emergency mental health fair in ...
buff.ly
Literary prizes are a cheap distraction from the true purpose of reading great books, which is making people who haven't read them feel bad about themselves
Always reassuring when a prize shortlist consists of an appealing mix of established as well as newer voices (the latter poets with one to three collections, by any sensible definition). A new collection by Tom Paulin! I’ve some books to buy and reading to catch up with.
T. S. Eliot Prize@tseliotprize.bsky.social · last yr.We are thrilled to be able to reveal this year's T.S. Eliot Prize shortlist! Our judges have chosen ten books "of great range, suggestiveness and power; from Entebbe to Manitoba... there is something here for everyone." Find out more now: tseliot.com/prize/news/
The fact that the first AI actor is an archetypally attractive young woman who cannot and will not object to any cinematic scenario she is placed within says everything about the forces driving these ‘innovations’.
A walk from Leeds to Goole, via the River Aire, the Aire and Calder Navigation, the Knottingley and Goole Canal, the New Junction Canal and the Dutch River, 6.45am to 9.52pm Friday 26 September. An improvised, illustrated thread of indeterminate length, part reflection, part reconstruction. 1/
If you’ve flu-like symptoms at the moment, test for Covid. My year-long experience of long Covid has been utter hell; my advice to anyone is to rest up as much as you need before your body makes that decision for you, and do not gaslight yourself into trying to push through it.
‘“I am a genius of a writer”, Plath had written to her mother. “I am writing the best poems of my life; they will make my name.” She gathered up the neat typescript in a black spring-binder, discovered on her desk after her suicide just months later.’ www.the-tls.com/literature/p...
Lioness of God
“Well, I have finished a 2nd book of poems in this last month”, Sylvia Plath wrote home to her mother on November, 1962, “30 new poems.” Her first volume, The Colossus, had appeared two years before a...
the-tls.com
Ah, National Poetry Day. A worthy endeavour and well meaning, but it does tend to conjure poetry as a charity case, poets running after you imploring ‘come back! It doesn’t have to rhyme!’ When all’s said and done, I’m with Frank O’Hara: ‘if you don’t need poetry, bully for you.’
Ah yes, Tony Blair: a political figure famed for his grinning diplomacy, and not at all for war crimes in horrific Anglo-American pseudo-religious crusades. Trump says he’s a good guy, the best. I’m reminded of this furiously perfect sonnet by Don Paterson, which conjures Blair in Stalinist mode.
As for many poets uneasy in their class consciousness, Tony Harrison’s brilliant controversial long poem V. (1985) blew me away when I first read it. But his short lyrics were sharp, wise, and deeply moving, too, cut from lived life. Saddened to hear the great man has passed. RIP.
One of the defining errors of our age is the insidious notion that all opinions are equal and valid. They’re not. Undermining corroborated expertise in a dubious overextension of alleged ‘democratic’ values, we end up with a political leader spreading dangerous medical misinformation.
Put it on the banned list with shards, gossamer, and petrichor. Immediately.
