Books Books
Category: Ebooks, Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 64
ISBN: 9781781726488
Publication date: February 28, 2022
Price: £9.99
Category: Ebooks, Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 64
ISBN: 9781781726501
Publication date: February 28, 2022
Price: £7.99
Out of stock
“Formally dextrous… likes to keep the reader on their toes.” – The Poetry Review
This ambitious new collection from poet and critic Ben Wilkinson finds its author experimenting with poetic voice and the dramatic monologue. Carefully crafted yet charged with contemporary language, the book brims with everyone from cage fighters to boy-racers, cancer patients to whales in captivity.
Several poems unpick the preconceptions and prejudices that can inform so many of our encounters – with the world, art, and one another – while others take a sideways glance at everything from male depression to the history of meat-eating; from the philosophy behind athletic competition to surreal yet familiar emotions.
Notable here are poems that wrestle with the mystery of failed and successful relationships, both providing moments of transcendence and despair. There are well-observed pieces about sport, particularly the rewards of running, from a noted devotee.
Wilkinson has also been deeply inspired by the French symbolist poet Paul Verlaine (1844-96) , ‘stepping into the shoes’ and finding affinity with that poet’s astringent tone and ruthless clarity, borrowing his ‘punchy and musical’ phrasing. These add to the volume’s tonal and imaginative range.
While empathetic and often moving, Same Difference is a collection that seeks to undermine the confessional mode, keeping the reader on their toes and asking just who is doing the talking. It is also formally elegant, often using traditional rhyme and metre to weave its arguments.
Ben Wilkinson
Ben Wilkinson was born in the English Midlands and now lives in Sheffield, Yorkshire. His poems, criticism and journalism regularly appear in national publications including The Guardian, The Poetry Review, The New Statesman, The Spectator, and the TLS. In 2014 he won both a Northern Writers’ Award and the Poetry Business International Pamphlet Competition. He lectures in creative writing at the University of Bolton. His debut collection, Way More Than Luck, was published in 2018 and highly commended in the Forward Prizes for Poetry. His second collection Same Difference was published in 2022.
“Wilkinson’s poems are visually beautiful on the page and his range in form and content makes this collection a must-buy.”
Caroline Bracken, Nation.Cymru
“In Same Difference, Ben Wilkinson showcases precise and thoughtful verse… Aubades and laments intertwine with poems of love and joy, in writing that, in style, is toned and athletic, able to turn to any subject or mood… it’s a pleasure to jog, pace, and perambulate through it.”
Mab Jones, Buzz Magazine
“These are beautifully configured poems… The sense of the world having fled, severing subject from object and insinuating the narrator in a liminal plane of uncertainty dominates this fine collection… a book of glittering gems.”
The Yorkshire Times
“On reading these poems, we are quickly aware of the range of form and subject the writer has in his tool box. The poems are moving, funny, compelling and span the personal and the profound… It’s rare to read a collection that reaches out to the reader with such emotional integrity while being so easy to relate to. Everything about these poems is tender and inclusive. Even when Wilkinson is being brutally honest, he still writes with such care for the language and for the sequencing of the poems. This really is a ‘good read’ in every sense.”
Pat Edwards, The London Grip
“The range of this book is far-reaching and restless – its territory the shifting ground upon which is built the idea of a self – offering us the chance to think again about the intricate, sometimes delusional, stories we tell ourselves, ones that Wilkinson, here and with great clarity and verve, tells for us.”
Greta Stoddart
“Same Difference is pitch-perfect. The poems and sonnets are remarkable for their emotional truth and craft; the versions of Verlaine are exquisite echo-chambers of the originals; and the dramatic monologues are utterly compelling.”
David Morley
“Colloquial, straight-talking, ‘less deceived’ than Philip Larkin, Wilkinson brings a spiky 21st-century realism as well as formal adroitness to the contemporary lyric. In Same Difference he further expands his range with an interwoven series, ‘After Verlaine’, in which he discloses the French poet’s capacity for ‘hard thinking’ and accesses a newly sensuous and shadowy depth in his own imagination.”
Carol Rumens
Ben Wilkinson reads his poem ‘This Year’
Watch Ben reading ‘Northern Anecdotal’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvqLHFovEQc
