Daniel John Pilkington was the recipient of the 2024 Peter Steele Poetry Award and is currently working on his first book-length poetry manuscript.
He has a PhD in poetry from the University of Melbourne and was briefly enrolled in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts.
Poems:
My Spine, Your Pillow (Southerly)
The Wall Follower (Peripheries)
The Moderns (Cordite)
Split, Self, and A Printed Mirror (Marrickville Pause)
You Want it Darker (Cordite)
Mask (Cordite)
Daniel has been writing aphorisms for over 20 years. He intends to publish a collection of these late in life, to reflect his lifelong commitment to writing as an act of intellectual and spiritual contemplation.
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
