Judith Wilkinson is a British poet living in Groningen, the Netherlands. She has published four collections of her own poetry: Tightrope Dancer (2010), Canyon Journey (2016), with artwork by Ditty Doornbos, In Desert (2021) and her latest collection, Sphinx Moth (2026), which explores different aspects of transformation. Some of the poems in Tightrope Dancer have been performed by the London dance-theatre company The Kosh.
 
Wilkinson is also a translator of contemporary Dutch and Flemish poetry and has published twelve collections of translations, including Miriam Van hee’s Instead of Silence (Shoestring 2007), which was a PBS recommendation, and Toon Tellegen’s Raptors (Carcanet 2011), which was awarded the Popescu Prize.
 
Comments and Reviews –
 
On Sphinx Moth:
 

Sphinx Moth explores journeys of transformation and the courage it takes to redefine oneself. Whether it’s the trauma of war, life within a cult, the echo of a broken relationship or the confinement of a cocoon: there’s a persistent sense of entrapment – of something to break away from. By cleverly tying them together with recurring words and images, the 30+ poems form a journey of their own – one of reflecting on the past with self-compassion and flying into new-found freedom: ‘the debris of me/no longer my concern.’

 

Cecile Bol

 
 

Sphinx Moth is permeated by a ‘perfect hint of loss’, beautifully explored in poised and lucid language, but also by the perception that green shoots of hope may be tentatively growing. The sequence of lyrics in memory of the poet’s mother and her Jewish forebears is particularly intense and affecting, while the brilliant ‘Imagining Beethoven in His Deafness’ is typical of Wilkinson’s own deftness in finding ‘melody in muteness’ and ‘whirlwinds in silence’.

 

Helen Wilcox

 
 

On In Desert:
 

Identification with people under stress and estranged from the community extends widely: to explorers on challenging missions; a sculptor asserting her non-conformist idea of beauty; a boat-person whose dangerous journey leads to a new desolation (‘Letter to My Girlfriend in Aleppo’); a would-be immigrant who won’t make the USA, ‘scavenger fears circling us – / the stranglehold of a vacated sky’ (‘The Mexican Woman Who Died in the Desert’). A real landscape, studied for itself, becomes the vehicle for social history/personal history and reflection, moving truths and laments. This is achieved with the minimum of strained and ‘distancing’ effects.

 

Dilys Wood

 
 

On Tightrope Dancer:
 

Tightrope Dancer is a very powerful poem, superbly realised in the sustained circus metaphor, and I love the way it darts between first and third person. I read it greedily, over and over, heart pounding. I think Judith Wilkinson has a very rare gift, and her technique is so well-honed that you can scarcely notice it.

 

Sylvia Kantaris