Overview
From the thumping heartbeat of the distance runner to the roar of soccer stadiums across the decades, Ben Wilkinson's debut poetry collection, Way More Than Luck, confronts the struggles and passions that come to shape a life. Beginning with an unflinching interrogation of experiences of clinical depression and the redemptive power of art and running, the collection centres on a series of vivid character portraits, giving life to the legends of the UK's Liverpool Football Club.Reviews
Ben Wilkinson is one to watch. A fine poet with a deft ear and a nice sense of how the external world presses on the inner one. – Nick Laird Wilkinson's poems are weighty and cinematic, and his gift for finding the poetry in football terraces as well as crafting lyrical intrigue demonstrate his range and place as an up-and-coming voice on the UK poetry scene. – The Poetry Book SocietyAuthor Biography
Ben Wilkinson was born in Staffordshire and now lives in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. In 2014 he won the Poetry Business Competition and a Northern Writers' Award, and in 2015 he was awarded a writers' grant from Arts Council England. He is a keen distance runner, lifelong Liverpool FC fan, and he writes criticism for The Guardian, The Poetry Review and the Times Literary Supplement. He lectures at the University of Bolton.