The Afterlife
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Anthony Wilson’s poems explore the borderline territory between grief and laughter, memory and forgetting, illness and health. His central subject is the way we live within family and community, questioning the roles we construct, both alone and with others. The Afterlife continues to pursue themes developed in his last collection with Worple, Riddance: mortality, mental health, the relation between body and soul, and how to live fully in the present moment.
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Anthony Wilson’s poems explore the borderline territory between grief and laughter, memory and forgetting, illness and health. His central subject is the way we live within family and community, questioning the roles we construct, both alone and with others. The Afterlife continues to pursue themes developed in his last collection with Worple, Riddance: mortality, mental health, the relation between body and soul, and how to live fully in the present moment.
Anthony Wilson works in teacher and medical education at the University of Exeter where he is a member of the Centre for Research in Writing. He is the author of Lifesaving Poems (Bloodaxe, 2015) and Love for Now (Impress Books, 2012), a memoir of cancer. The Afterlife is his fifth collection of poems.
Teaching Writing Theory
On Tuesday I discovered if my cancer
had returned. Later I discussed teaching writing
to six-year-olds. We spun our arms
like windmills, then made chopstick-motions
with our fingers mirroring the motor control
functions we daily take for granted
even less think about as we stare at the page.
We looked at motivational theory. Taxonomies
and heuristics jammed the white-board,
a cacophony of formulations we all wanted
to witness taking flight. During self-study,
I watched students tap-tapping at mobiles
and tablets, all the while sustaining complex
discussions about pedagogy and dress codes
for their forthcoming Christmas parties.
If they were nervous of the outcome
of their assignments, none of them showed it.
Published: 06 September 2019
ISBN: 9781905208425
Pages: 96
“In these affecting, graceful poems, Anthony Wilson takes time to reflect on a life: ‘We cannot grasp what we have been given, or can give back’ and so offers his reader an essential book of (re)discovery, encounter and a true value of the present.” – Rebecca Goss
“Anthony Wilson’s poems are often meditative and always very, very readable, but don’t be fooled; the avuncular voice belies a restless interrogation of faith, love and loss, and Wilson moves from moments of everyday comedy to a wounded reckoning with the afterlife of cancer survival and poems of intense anger and grief.” – Fiona Benson
Anthony Wilson is a poet, writing tutor and lecturer at the University of Exeter. His books of poetry are The Afterlife (Worple Press, 2019), Riddance (Worple Press, 2012), Full Stretch: Poems 1996-2006 (Worple Press, 2006), Nowhere Better Than This (Worple Press, 2002) and How Far From Here is Home? (Stride, 1996). He is also the author of a prose memoir, Love for Now (Impress Books, 2012), detailing his experience of cancer.
Anthony has held writing residencies at The Poetry Society, The Times Educational Supplement, The Poetry Trust and Tate Britain, and he works as a tutor for the Arvon Foundation. He is editor of Creativity in Primary Education (Learning Matters, 2009), and co-editor of Making Poetry Matter (Continuum, 2013), and The Poetry Book for Primary Schools (Poetry Society, 1998).
His research is in the field of writing in education. In 2010-12 he was a co-convener of the ESRC Seminar Series Poetry Matters. In 2011 he compiled Creativity, Confidence and Challenge, a research report with Bath Festivals’ The Write Team on the impact of creative writers in schools.
He can be found online at www.anthonywilsonpoetry.com
