Light Breaks

Robert Wilkinson, author of Raining Quinces, now brings out his second poetry collection, Light Breaks. Once more he tempers a pervading sense of bittersweet yearning with irony and humour. There's a resigned realism within these pages, but an irrepressible romance too. You'll find a medley of poetic styles - from the haiku and the limerick to the villanelle and the cut-up. A book for today, you might say: knowing, parodic, postmodern - yet serious in its search for epiphanic truth. Reviewers had this to say about Raining Quinces: 'Robert Wilkinson writes like the practised pilgrim he is in this warm and entertaining collection. Sometimes he makes us laugh, sometimes he jolts with a surprising image. An underlying sense of spiritual longing infuses the diverse collection. A delightful companion for the road.' ROY BAYFIELD 'Many things are incorporated into the poetry of this substantial book - spiritual insight, comic wordplay, personal confession . . . There is a Romantic simplicity about much of Robert's poetry. At points I'm reminded of Rilke and, in the lighter pieces, Wendy Cope and John Betjeman. This is poetry which lays its tune frankly on the air (as Basil Bunting put it). And he can be very funny. For a start, anyone who has not yet read his celebration of Nigella Lawson should buy this book. Of the more serious poems, I particularly liked Orpheus and Eurydice and Two Worlds in One - it was worth the price of the book for these two poems alone, I thought.' DOMINIC RIVRON