“Gerard Benson, poet, actor, gives resonance to the meaning of ‘the poet’s voice’. He knows, physically, with breath and vocal cord, the music in language, the song in syntax, the tender litany in names, places, remembered characters. Yet there’s nothing stagey or grand here. His poetry makes the ordinary extraordinary by using the good words for things, ‘sculls and skiffs’, for a boathouse, ‘a shack over the water’, a ‘shell in the slop-slopping darkness’. I hear his voice in every cadence.”
Gillian Clarke
“Gerard Benson’s poetry transfigures the ordinary and leaves an aftertaste of mystery in the mind.”
Michael Glover, The Independent
Gerard Benson was born in London and lives in Bradford, where he is the city’s poet laureate. His children’s books have won the Signal Award and been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. A Good Time is his fourth collection for grownups, along with a number of anthologies, including the Poems on the Underground series, of which he is a founding editor. He was the first ever poet-in-residence at the Wordsworth Trust, and is a popular reader and tutor. Gerard is married to the poet and illustrator Catherine Benson.
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