Vertigo & Ghost
A poetry collection that uses Greek mythology and classical references to examine sexual violence, trauma, and the female body. It weaves personal experience with mythic motifs to illuminate contemporary issues.
Work Information
A poetry collection that uses Greek mythology and classical references to examine sexual violence, trauma, and the female body. It weaves personal experience with mythic motifs to illuminate contemporary issues.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Jonathan Cape
- Published
- 2019-01-03
- Pages
- 112 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 12.8 x 1.4 x 19.6 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781787330818
- ISBN-10
- 1787330818
- Price
- 2655 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Poetry/Ancient, Classical & Medieval
**WINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION 2019** **WINNER OF THE ROEHAMPTON PRIZE FOR BEST POETRY COLLECTION 2019** Violence hangs over this book like an electric storm. Beginning with a poem about the teenage dawning of sexuality, Vertigo & Ghost pitches quickly into a long sequence of graphic, stunning pieces about Zeus as a serial rapist, for whom woman are prey and sex is weaponised. These are frank, brilliant, devastating poems of vulnerability and rage, and as Zeus is confronted with aggressions both personal and historical, his house comes crumbling down. A disturbing contemporary world is exposed, in which violent acts against women continue to be perpetrated on a daily – hourly – basis. The book shifts, in its second half, to an intimate and lyrical document of depression and family life. It sounds out the complex and ambivalent terrain of early motherhood – its anxieties and claustrophobias as well as its gifts of tenderness and love – reclaiming the sanctuary of domestic private life, and the right to raise children in peace and safety. Vertigo & Ghost is an important, necessary book, hugely impressive in its range and risk, and dramatic in its currency: a collection that speaks out with clarity, grace and bravery against the abuse of power. **SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE** **SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 T. S. ELIOT PRIZE** ‘Misogynistic violence, ancient myth and modern rage confront each other in moving and dynamic verse’ Financial Times
Fiona Benson lives in Devon with her husband and their two daughters. She has published three previous collections of poetry, all of which were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize: Bright Travellers , which won the 2015 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry's Prize for First Full Collection, Vertigo & Ghost , which was shortlisted for the 2019 Rathbones Folio Prize and won both the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and Ephemeron , which was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the London Hellenic Prize.
Reviews
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I heard Eurofighter Typhoon on R4 and had to buy this book. That poem is something of an abberation here though, and I found the rest of the collection harder going. But these are beautiful and heart-hitting poems. Thanks Fiona - after a 30 years you brought me back to poetry.
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I literally could not put this book down until I had finished it. These poems stick in your head for a long time after reading. Very powerful stuff, loved it. Just ordered the first book too.
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Bought before this won the Forward Prize for Poetry 2019
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The collection is fantastic, as the other reviews suggest. But the conversion to ebook is lamentable, in particular the fact that it's not possible to change the (tiny) font size; in order to read it, I have to zoom in on every page. Plus multiple poems are on the same page, which really doesn't work at all.
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Fiona Bensons talent shines out from this book of potent poems.