My Reef My Manifest Array

In 1487 Sir Henry Bodrugan, pursued for treason, leapt from a Cornish clifftop into a waiting boat and fled to France. Bodrugans Leap, as the clifftop has come to be known, lies close to John Wilkinsons childhood home, and supplies the title for the central cycle of poems in My Reef My Manifest Array. That totemic image of exile feeds an interest in borders and partings that runs throughout the collection. The Cornish landscape of the poets childhood, loaded with new significance following the death of his sister, is Wilkinsons primary locus, but he ventures flees, perhaps farther afield, to Portland (Maine), Chicago, Sydney and Busan. Combining extended sequences with brief lyrics, Wilkinsons lines tie minuscule linguistic knots that give pleasure when unwoven. The reading becomes archaeological as layers and layers of meaning, of feeling, of reason are exposed. See more