Architecture & Other Poems
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Architecture & Other Poems is a book about paradise dominated by two sequences.
‘Architecture’ is a fragmentary narrative spread across forty-one sonnets, which tells the story of a young poet and architect at the time of the Arts and Crafts movement. It is a tale of youthful idealism, love and friendship erased by the orgy of self-harm we call the First World War. It has messages for a generation facing climate change and further conflict.
‘Urban Pastorals’, a sequence of seven pieces of lyrical prose, looks at the poet’s South London childhood through the lens of pastoral poetry. They evoke an Arcadia touched with irony.
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Just before his death in March 2025, Clive Wilmer wrote these notes on this brilliant collection: ‘Paradise is real – not just a dream we work or hope for, not a fantasy, but part of our lived experience. It is easily disrupted, broken or lost, so representations of it are often poignant and sometimes haunted by tragedy.’
Architecture & Other Poems is a book about paradise dominated by two sequences.
‘Architecture’ is a fragmentary narrative spread across forty-one sonnets, which tells the story of a young poet and architect at the time of the Arts and Crafts movement. It is a tale of youthful idealism, love and friendship erased by the orgy of self-harm we call the First World War. It has messages for a generation facing climate change and further conflict.
‘Urban Pastorals’, a sequence of seven pieces of lyrical prose, looks at the poet’s South London childhood through the lens of pastoral poetry. They evoke an Arcadia touched with irony.
Published: 15 March 2026
ISBN: 978-1905208-555
Pages: 72
Praise for Clive Wilmer’s poetry
“Clive Wilmer’s poetry has always meant a lot to me – for its unfaltering clarity, for its delicacy of execution and weightiness of statement and for its faithfulness to subject matter, without attitudinising or lies.” – Thom Gunn
“These poems… breathe an unfashionable, utterly English faith in the language’s passionate reticence.” – Ruth Padel
“…boldly lyrical, broad in reference, felicitous in the craft of verse… Unmissable.” – Elizabeth Jennings
“It is refreshing, indeed salutary, to encounter a poet who places expression above self-expression, who has become so inward with his language that patterns and prosody appear effortless, while in fact being carefully wrought.” – Hilary Davies
Clive Wilmer (1945-2025) was a poet and scholar best known for his advocacy of the work of the Victorian artist and critic John Ruskin and of the poet Thom Gunn. He taught for 25 years at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where in 2012 he was made an emeritus fellow in English literature.
Wilmer began publishing poetry in the early 1970s, his first book appearing in 1977. Worple Press published four collections: The Falls (2000), Stigmata (2005), Urban Pastorals (2014) and Passio (2011), his translations of poems by János Pilinszky. His New and Collected Poems (2012) are published by Carcanet. Wilmer’s final book, Architecture & Other Poems, was published by Worple Press in 2026.
An occasional broadcaster, Wilmer fronted BBC Radio 3’s ‘Poet of the Month’ programmes in the early 1990s and his interviews are published as Poets Talking (Carcanet, 1994).
An obituary by Peter Carpenter is published in the Guardian (8 April 2025).
