The Glazier's Choice

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Charles Wilkinson’s The Glazier’s Choice is the first substantial gathering of work by a writer who has published two previous short collections of poetry. Many of these pieces, written over a ten-year period, are characterised by a powerful sense of place, a consistently lyrical voice and a preoccupation with the liminal, numinous and half hidden. Wilkinson’s often oblique narratives eschew the first person in favour of a verse that is open and various in its technical procedures, neither mainstream nor egregiously avant-garde. A melancholic strain is sometimes leavened by humour and playful use of form.

Charles Wilkinson’s work includes The Snowman and Other Poems (Iron Press, 1987) and The Pain Tree and Other Stories (London Magazine Editions, 2000). His poems have appeared in Poetry Wales, Poetry Salzburg (Austria), Shearsman, The Reader, New Walk, Magma,Under the Radar, Tears in the Fence, Scintilla, Envoi, Orbis, Stand, The Warwick Review, Snow lit rev, Gargoyle (USA) and other journals. A pamphlet, Ag & Au, came out from Flarestack Poets in 2013. A Twist in the Eye, his collection of weird fiction and strange tales, was published by Egaeus Press in 2016. Splendid in Ash, from the same publisher, came out in 2018. He lives in Powys, Wales.

Charles Wilkinson has clearly absorbed a range of modernist and post-modernist poetic approaches and developed his own special path. He wears his wide
knowledge lightly. He is more concerned with creating poetic space and allowing the reader access to the unknown and less well known. He employs a wide
range of poetic effects, linking lineation with sound and sense, and takes the reader on an explorative journey. His open- and sharp-eyed focus, delving deep
into language and experience, allows for a range of registers and responses. Reading Wilkinson is both joyous and profound. He can be provocative and laugh
out loud funny. Enjoy! — David Caddy