Daniel John Pilkington primarily writes poetry and aphorisms, though his writing practice also extends to short fiction, artists' books, and the lyric essay. He was the recipient of the 2024 Peter Steele Poetry Award and is currently completing his first book-length poetry manuscript. His poetry often combines lyric modes with formal experimentation, including constraint-based writing and conceptual procedures. His writing is concerned with the limits and materiality of language, linguistic coincidence and verbal play, and philosophical reflection through metaphysical conceit.
Books
X (SOd Books, 2026)
X is an artist's book, a photo book, a visual poem, a found poem, and a lyric sequence. Composed of photographs of the symbol X taken throughout Melbourne during and after the COVID-19 lockdowns alongside a series of poetic definitions of the symbol, it explores the intersection of language, image and social space.
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Poetry
Daniel holds a PhD in poetry from the University of Melbourne and was briefly enrolled in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts. His poems have appeared in Meanjin, Island Magazine, Southerly, Cordite Poetry Review, Peripheries, Marrickville Pause, Otoliths, Meniscus, and Unusual Work.
Selected poems
My Spine, Your Pillow (Southerly)
You & I (Meniscus)
The Wall Follower (Peripheries)
The Moderns (Cordite)
Split, Self, and A Printed Mirror (Marrickville Pause)
You Want it Darker (Cordite)
Mask (Cordite)
Aphorisms
Daniel has been writing aphorisms for more than twenty years. For him, this is a practice of contemplation, an exploration of literary compression, and a form of life writing. He intends to publish a collection of these later in life, allowing them to reflect a lifelong commitment to writing as an act of intellectual and spiritual inquiry.
Selected aphorisms
For every branch that reaches for the sky there is a root that wrestles with the earth.
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No home can weather the imagination.
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I welcomed the end of my childhood dreams by wearing out my shoes.
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Light never stagnates.
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Love is the poetry and the poetics of time.
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Every time I’m ecstatic I envy myself and return.
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To be still is to move with a greater vehicle.
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The line between the earth and the sky can be drawn around everything.
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Every time I leave home the world changes what it means to be me.
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When the mind idles it slowly pollutes itself.
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Call despair what it is and there is immediately hope.
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Life rejoices in play.
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There is no growth without the superfluous.
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As love creates the truth that love creates it is the essence of truth.
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Silence is the quintessential artifact.
© Copyright - Daniel John Pilkington 2025