Truths of the Unremembered Things

Wilkins Paul

This collection moves from secrecy to candour, as the poet begins to remember things, people and events that made and marred him. He sets them in order and discloses, in the rapt contemplation of Hokusai, in the stories of John Cheever, in film and music, the truth that they contain. He invents America, Cordoba, Kameido: photographs and paintings are set in motion and as they move tell their truths about life and the kinds of love which elude convention and transform the body and heart.

Wilkins is a thrifty story-teller. He builds phrase by phrase, now hesitant, now headlong with desire. His pacing and his renewing courage with traditional forms and shapes make his poems at once accessible and richly unfamiliar.

About the Author

Born in 1951, Paul Wilkins grew up in south London and lived in Northern Ireland from 1970. After studying English at the University of Ulster in Derry and Coleraine, he taught at St Columb's College in Derry from 1976 to 1997. In the autumn of 1984 he was Schoolmaster Fellow Commoner at Churchill College, Cambridge. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1978 and his first book of poems, "Pasts", was published by Carcanet in 1979, and "Truths of the Unremembered Things" followed two decades later. He spent his final seven years as a librarian at Lumen Christi College, where he made a deep impression. He died on 31 January 2007 in Derry.

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