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Written in 2020, Lockdown Journal is a sonnet sequence which explores his experience of the pandemic between 28 March and 21 April, reflecting on daily life in Garsdale as well as the wider world.
Fleur Adcock has commented:
"Hamish Wilson strikes me as a ‘sonnet native’, someone who has breathed in octaves and sestets almost since birth. This genre is particularly suited to his day-by-day record of a month of lockdown in rural Garsdale. April 2020 was exceptional for everyone, but it springs to vivid, pictorial life in these 14-line chunks of experience where the pandemic is viewed from a background of sky-larks, curlews and fells."
"Hamish Wilson strikes me as a ‘sonnet native’, someone who has breathed in octaves and sestets almost since birth. This genre is particularly suited to his day-by-day record of a month of lockdown in rural Garsdale. April 2020 was exceptional for everyone, but it springs to vivid, pictorial life in these 14-line chunks of experience where the pandemic is viewed from a background of sky-larks, curlews and fells."
Helen Mort comments:
"A profoundly moving chronicle of an unprecedented year. Hamish Wilson’s poems are wry, tender, compassionate and precise — each reflection, each piece stands alone but read together they have a cumulative power, capturing our collective sense of uncertainty."
"A profoundly moving chronicle of an unprecedented year. Hamish Wilson’s poems are wry, tender, compassionate and precise — each reflection, each piece stands alone but read together they have a cumulative power, capturing our collective sense of uncertainty."
and Paul Henry says:
"Lockdown Journal tilts movingly between personal and universal concerns, the constructed routines of 'lockdown' and a landscape where a skylark’s 'coal-black speck of dust in the empty sky' can amplify the sense of isolation. Both intimate and resonant, these new sonnets from Hamish Wilson are pellucid containers of a nation’s unsettled spirit. "
"Lockdown Journal tilts movingly between personal and universal concerns, the constructed routines of 'lockdown' and a landscape where a skylark’s 'coal-black speck of dust in the empty sky' can amplify the sense of isolation. Both intimate and resonant, these new sonnets from Hamish Wilson are pellucid containers of a nation’s unsettled spirit. "
