Ulteriori informazioni
Poet Ben Wilkinson made his name with incisive reviews for the Guardian. Same Difference is his second book, to follow his football-themed debut, Way More Than Luck (2018), winner of a Northern WritersâEUR(TM) Award and praised for its âEURœformally experimental poems that celebrate even lifeâEUR(TM)s sadness in fresh languageâEUR? (Ian Duhig). 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 âEUR" with the world, art, and one another âEUR" 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) , âEUR¿stepping into the shoesâEUR(TM) and finding affinity with that poetâEUR(TM)s astringent tone and ruthless clarity, borrowing his âEUR¿punchy and musicalâEUR(TM) phrasing. These add to the volumeâEUR(TM)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. A tough grittiness here is offset by an essential tenderness as in a musing about a mural of flowers by Diego Rivera: âEUR¿But their weight on my back/is the weight of love itself, bright/yet strangely heavy; the faith we all carry/in our tired old heartsâEUR¿âEUR? (310)
Info autore
Ben Wilkinson lives in Sheffield, Yorkshire. His poems and criticism regularly appear in national publications including The Guardian, New Statesman, The Poetry Review, The Spectator, and the Time Literary Supplement. His debut full collection of poems, Way More Than Luck, was published by Seren in 2018 and won a Northern Writers Award. A critical study, Don Paterson: Writers and their Work, appeared in 2021. With Kim Moore and Paul Deaton he co-edited The Result Is What You See Today (2019), an anthology of poems about running. He lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Bolton.
Riassunto
Same Difference is Ben Wilkinson's formally acute second collection. Carefully crafted yet charged with contemporary language, the poems experiment with poetic voice and the dramatic monologue, keeping the reader on their toes and asking just who is doing the talking. Tough, gritty, and often moving, this is a collection for our times.
