Ephemeron

Benson retells the Greek myth… in a long-lined, novelistic sequence of rare psychological plausibility: yes, you think, yes, that’s exactly how it happened. * Telegraph, 20 Best Poetry Books of 2022 *
Benson’s third collection Ephemeron is split between nature, motherhood and Greek myth. But few poets write on these themes so brilliantly; Benson’s urgent compassion makes us care. * Daily Telegraph *
A new collection of Benson’s wise and vivid work is a real occasion… exciting…fully inhabited and multi-faceted. * Guardian *
There have been a number of impressive reshapings of classical tales in recent years, and it is a bold poet who would risk comparison with Alice Oswald and Anne Carson, but Benson’s ‘Translations from the Pasiphaë’ earns its place alongside their works … In Ephemeron, Fiona Benson’s capacity for capturing bodily sympathy in verse manifests as something like a superpower. * Literary Review *
There is a gorgeous, sunbleached quality to much of this writing, which stuns and scorches. It will be a pleasure to see which cycles of myth Benson takes on next. * Times Literary Supplement *
Ephemeron was one of those books I had to put down and process what I had read – the images were stunningly gripping, visceral and unflinching. * Poetry Society, Books of the Year *

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.

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