Jonathan Wilkins, "Love Poems"

Jonathan Wilkins, by himself

I am 67. I have a gorgeous wife Annie and two beautiful sons; I love to write. I am a retired teacher, lapsed Waterstone's bookseller and former Basketball Coach. I taught for twenty years and coached women’s basketball for over thirty years before taking up writing seriously. 

These days, I regularly teach at creative writing workshops in and around Leicester and I take notes for students with Special Needs at Leicester University. 

I have always loved books and reading, but nine years at Waterstone's nearly put paid to that!

I love to write poetry. I feel this is the best way to show emotion in writing and it gives me a wonderful sense of well-being.

I’ve had a work commissioned by the UK Arts Council and had several pieces published traditionally as well as on-line. I have had some of my work placed in magazines and anthologies and also exhibited in art galleries, studios, museums and at Huddersfield Railway Station Waiting Room. I have my writing on various blogs.

About Love Poems, by Jonathan Wilkins

This is a collection of love poetry written since 2011. The poems show how love can affect us all in so many different ways. This includes the pain that love can bring: the pain of loss and the bewilderment we sometimes feel when we are in love. How should we react to love's embrace? I am not sure I will ever know. What I do know is that I am in love and have been since I met my wife.

Below, you can read a poem from the collection. 

From Love Poems

GARDENING TIMES

I was weeding in my garden and between
the digging and forking and ripping
out of roots and grass and weeds and alien 
shoots I thought how good it would be if we could 
pick the parts of our memories we wanted 
to keep and throw away the rest. I know
that we need bad things to make us 
realise that what we have is good, but when the 
memories scar and refuse to let us move 
on then why should we keep a hold of them? 
How do we dispose of our dark times?
Too many lie back in the memories of the 
past, content to blame and fixate and never 
move forward because they see no point 
when in fact the very reason we have these 
memories is to show us what has been and 
what can be, so we live with hope afresh.
Why stagnate when it is your future that sets you free? 
Remove the weeds from your memory's soul, 
plant seeds and saplings and foster each with care. 
New dreams can and will come true, so dispose of the 
creeping roots that threaten to choke the 
fresh and embrace the life you deserve if 
you maintain your garden's fancy vagary.

Jonathan Wilkins, "Utrecht Snow"

About Jonathan Wilkins, by himself

I am sixty-six. I have a gorgeous wife Annie and two beautiful sons; I love to write. I am a retired teacher, lapsed Waterstone's bookseller, and former Basketball Coach. I taught for twenty years and coached women’s basketball for over thirty years before taking up writing seriously.

Up until Covid, I regularly taught Creative Writing workshops in and around Leicester and also via zoom. I currently take notes for students with Special Needs at Leicester University.

I have always loved books and reading, but nine years at Waterstone’s nearly put paid to that!

I’ve had a work commissioned by the UK Arts Council, and had several non-fiction pieces published traditionally as well as fiction online. I have had some of my work placed in magazines and anthologies and also exhibited in art galleries, studios, museums and at Huddersfield Railway Station Waiting Room. I have my writing on various blogs. I love writing poetry.

I enjoy presenting papers at Crime Fiction conferences. It keeps my mind active through the research process and is a great way to meet new people and gain fresh ideas for writing.

As well as my Utrecht Murders Trilogy, I am writing a crime series set at the end of the Great War and into the early 1920s. 

My website is here. 

About Utrecht Snow, by Jonathan Wilkins

In Utrecht Snow, a crime novel initially written as my MA Creative Writing dissertation, we meet widow Caes Heda, Hoofdinspecteur at Kroonstraat police station, and his daughter Truus, a student at the local University. Caes is head of crime whilst his daughter is fed up with her studies and links up with private investigator Thijs Orman. Girls go missing from Utrecht and the police and Truus investigate kidnapping and murder. This is the first of a trilogy set in the beautiful city of Utrecht.

From Utrecht Snow

Caes Heda was normally about six foot two inches tall; but today he was hunched up against the cold and felt like a goblin, at half his normal size. He shivered yet again and breathed out the cold air, imagining it freezing on his neatly trimmed beard and moustache.

Caes could just see the Gothic Dom Bell Tower outlined against the grey morning sky. It was towering above everything, and it made him smile. Even as the snow feathered down it was still the centre of their universe. It watched over Utrecht from a height of what, over one hundred and ten metres, and could more or less be seen in Utrecht from wherever anyone stood, whatever the weather. True, it was a bit faint today, covered as it was in snow. No melting due to no heat leaving the building, the Dom was always cold, always frozen, it mirrored how he felt. Cold and alone, he just wanted to be alone. All of a sudden, Caes just didn’t fancy going to work. He just wanted some peace and quiet and to be left on his own, to wallow in his sudden misery.

Unfortunately, all his defence mechanisms didn’t stop the woman from sitting next to him - well, almost sitting on him in fact, as the bus picked up from Bleekstreet. She wedged Caes against the window and started talking to herself, or was it to him? He opened his left eye and taking a closer look, saw what it was. Dirty faux fur coat and then the sickly smell of snowy dampness and then, yes it was urine. Caes had to start breathing through his mouth to try to avoid the smell. He couldn’t get his arm away from her; he was stuck and she muttered on, words incomprehensible to him, Greek? Russian? He couldn’t tell, maybe it wasn’t a language at all; he was suddenly too tired to think. The half hour it took the bus to get to his office on Kroonstraat was a torment, where had she arrived from? He’d never seen her before on this route, though to be honest he did spend most of his journeys to work with his eyes closed.

It was such a welcome relief when she stood and got off the bus. Her smell, though, was hanging in the air. He hoped it wouldn’t hang on his clothes. The pressure on him at last relented as she moved; typical, it was also his stop. She shambled to the exit. Caes followed the smell.

He got off and found himself trailing the woman as she shuffled across the road and through the snow. Her muttering increased, talking to no one but everyone. People avoided her, even in the snow they could see her and they must have thought she was mad. She was going his way; in fact, she was going all the way. She entered the Bureau at Kroonstraat. Caes followed.

Caes Heda was Hoofdinspecteur in Utrecht. Thirty-nine and in charge of Crime at Kroonstraat Police Bureau, not committing it obviously, but tidying up after it had been committed. If he could catch them great, but he felt there was not much chance of stopping them all. It was a full-time job!

He did enjoy it, though, it was a bit like a game, but he was never sure who was winning. They had success and then the criminals had a win. They locked some up, but more and more were getting community service and prisons were closing due to lack of customers. He had always thought that saving money this way was a false economy as there seemed no deterrent anymore, but there again, he was but a simple policeman.

Jonathan Wilkins, "Poppy Flowers at the Front"

Jonathan Wilkins is 65. He has a gorgeous wife Annie and two beautiful sons; he loves to write. He is a retired teacher, lapsed Waterstones’ bookseller and former Basketball Coach. He taught for twenty years and coached women’s basketball for over thirty years before taking up writing seriously. These days, he regularly teaches Creative Writing workshops in and around Leicester and takes notes for students with Special Needs at Leicester University. 

He has always loved books and reading, but nine years at Waterstone’s nearly put paid to that! He has had a work commissioned by the UK Arts Council and had several pieces published traditionally as well as on-line. He's had some of his work placed in magazines and anthologies and also exhibited in art galleries, studios, museums and at Huddersfield Railway Station Waiting Room. He has writing on various blogs. He loves writing poetry. He enjoys presenting papers at Crime Fiction conferences - it keeps his mind active through the research process and is a great way to meet new people and gain fresh ideas for writing. 

For his recent MA, he wrote a crime novel, Utrecht Snow. It is part of a series of murder mysteries he has planned based in the Dutch city. He followed it up with Utrecht Rain and self-published both. Poppy flowers at the Front is the first of a crime series starting at the end of the Great War and meandering into the early Twenties. Poppy Blooms at Nemesis Hall  is the second part, Poppy Knows Best the third.

Jonathan is undertaking a Creative Writing PhD at Aberystwyth University where he will be writing about his Poppy novels and Golden Age Crime Fiction.

Jonathan is on Twitter @WriterJWilkins. His website is here. 

About Poppy Flowers at the Front

By Jonathan Wilkins

Two women fight on two fronts, prejudice and war.

With her father, Lord Loveday in the British secret service, and her brother Alfie in the trenches, is it any wonder that Lady Pandora Ophelia Loveday, Poppy to her friends, decided to volunteer to drive ambulances in France? We follow her adventures in France as she races to get wounded men to the Casualty Clearing Station and then the Base Hospital as safely as possible.

She finds Élodie Proux, a French nurse, at a roadside clutching the body of a soldier and takes her back to her base. Élodie becomes her dearest girl as they fall in love.

Poppy and Élodie meet a series of frightening adversaries during the closing weeks of World War 1: saboteurs at the Front, spies in Paris, a psychotic arsonist at home in Wales, all culminating in a frantic quest to save … No … I think you had better read the book ...

You can read a review of Poppy Flowers at the Front on Everybody's Reviewing here. Below, you can read an extract from the novel. 

From Poppy Flowers at the Front

 … it was the screaming that really got to me. I could put up with most things and to be honest I had done so these past few months. The sound of the bombs didn’t really faze me, nor the constantly falling rain and cloying mud. The fleas I found in my hair or clothes were just a nuisance as long as you caught them early. What I did hate was the screaming. It made my blood run cold, the screaming of men in agony, men who had lost their sight or had lost a limb. It ripped my heart out. Young boys in pain, a pain they did not deserve. Boys who screamed in terror, far from their homes and their mothers. Boys who screamed at things that weren’t there, at memories of falling friends. Boys who screamed when they should be at home having fun. The number of times I had lied to a dying boy with the words ‘mam’s here now, son’ were countless. I lied to help them, to reassure them, to remind them of their mother’s love, the love they would never feel again as they died in this foreign field. I often wanted a hug from my mother, I knew what they were missing. Writing this down seems so easy. Doing it all is rather more difficult. Like I am in two worlds. A world of the reality and nasty business of war and then this calmness that seems to envelop me when I write. So, rain and wind, snow, and ice, all this I can put up with. Incessant screaming, though, is another thing all together. It is unseen. They are behind me in the ambulance. Unless I have to load it up when we are an orderly short, all I do is hear them. Then when I park up at the Clearing Station or at the ambulance train I have the honour of seeing them. Mangled bodies, missing limbs, gas burns, trench foot, gangrene … all the pleasures of this so called modern war. All the pleasures plus the screaming that never seems to end.