My name is Jason Alan Wilkinson. I live in New York. Blue is my favourite colour. I love animals. Particularly cats.

What do you write about?

I do not make a regular habit of writing a poem with the restricted view of exploiting one idea or event-yet like so many others, I have yielded my hand to the practice, ever and anon. I sometimes prefer to create scenery with words, rather than depict a linear narrative.
My work seeks the expansion of an often limited capacity to ingest poetry, to challenge our perception of it, to alter the way we read it and the expectations we have of it.

What has been your proudest moment as a writer?

Seeing my work appear through so many university and college presses. It always feels good to know that what I am doing has the potential to influence young people.

What would you like to see happen in the future with your writing?

To be able to share it with an ever-broadening circle.

Besides writing what are you most passionate about?

The Lord. Those with whom He hath blessed me. Yankees Baseball. Good music. Life.

If you could give a new writer advice what would that be?

Read. Read a lot. Devour the classics. Never become emotionally involved with what you write. Never lie to yourself. Be the best editor that you can be. Be your own worst critic. Be you. Stay humble. Stay open-minded. Always remember that true writers don’t need inspiration-writing is a disease for which no cure exists, therefore it requires no extrinsic prompt.

Where can people find your work?

My latest collection of poetry can be found here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/jason-wilkinson/when-our-lights-flutter-off-you-can-play-among-the-shadows/ebook/product-17475210.html

G.E.

The perspicacity of her train
bore illuminating firmament
through burthened age
censing that ivy-trimmed corridor
a fairer parfum
than the dulcet ambrosias Elysium
e‘er tiled beneath its golden floor;
her monody a ponderous dash of stars
beyond whose diaphanous bloom
my mind loitered in violent sanctuary
nor possessed among that ether
could any lush seraph’s down
have failed to strike me prone
where the soft calico of her affections lay
motionless, within a pallid arbour
my love is burnished and drowsy.

Would that your mother were a toad, it is
my opinion that such an altered state
should convey unto her a dubious credit,
her being none the less foul, yet far
easier to dispense with.

That it should ever be of moment to
question what led your mother to
assume all the baser qualities of a
winsome trollop, I presume that my
testimony would be of tremendous
leverage, nor might it fail to address the
characteristics of physical appearance
that we have been said to hold in
common.

Though it may be quite obvious to the
regular cast of individuals who bear the
misfortune of transacting life within the
close precincts of your mother, that she
were ill-described for the function of
airline stewardess, her being of what
science has already taken great pains to
delineate as a gargantuan frame, it is
my confidence that air transit were not
completely impossible for her yet,
especially so, perhaps, if a tractor beam
could be made of use.

Rumour has it that your mother was something of an equestrian in her day, and though I pretend at no extensive knowledge upon that refined subject, I should equally make no secret of my cloying desire to know precisely how grand(for so she must have seemed), prancing among the summer grass beneath the weight of her polished saddle.

In regard to the vast pool of well recognized, yet unpleasant-looking members of the Animal Kingdom, to which your mother is often compared, I have heard no argument to produce such unmitigated laudation, than that which propounds a clear similitude between her maternal visage and that of a senile gorilla, bloated with constipation, in whose defence(the gorilla’s, to be sure) it must clearly be noted, that a creature of such mark is rarely discovered with steady access to pharmaceuticals, nor can this knowledge in any form resolve the injury done to those stocky, grizzle-haired beasts, whom have suffered, quite regretfully, far worse by the association.

Supposing, for argument’s sake, that your mother were human…ah, but there are occasions upon which we expect far too much from a knowing audience.