Urban Pastorals
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Clive Wilmer’s new sequence of prose poems that deals with the powerful place of memory and vivid childhood experiences in the blessed landscape of post-war South East London, specifically the author’s family home in Tooting Bec. The sequence favourably brings to mind Geoffrey Hill’s ‘Mercian Hymns’ and further explores Wilmer’s fascination with the notion of building an earthly paradise. A cast of characters from Louis Armstrong to teachers such as Miss Inkpen populate the hiding places of Wilmer’s powers.
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Clive Wilmer’s new sequence of prose poems that deals with the powerful place of memory and vivid childhood experiences in the blessed landscape of post-war South East London, specifically the author’s family home in Tooting Bec. The sequence favourably brings to mind Geoffrey Hill’s ‘Mercian Hymns’ and further explores Wilmer’s fascination with the notion of building an earthly paradise. A cast of characters from Louis Armstrong to teachers such as Miss Inkpen populate the hiding places of Wilmer’s powers.
Published: 5 November 2014
ISBN: 978 1 905208 26 5
Pages: 22
“Clive Wilmer’s beautifully poised writing never runs the danger of forfeiting its tone of recognition: the past’s importance is registered precisely because it is the past.”
Ian Brinton
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, will be published by Worple Press in 2025.
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).
