In Buddhist teaching, “the thin places” are the most precarious parts of our existence. Judi Benson’s third collection explores this precariousness with sympathy, but also with vigour, wit and amusement. Her poems range over many subjects – Burying the Ancestors (about her slave-owning forebears) was the runner-up in the Forward Prize for a Single Poem in 2004. Judi Benson is an American who has lived in Britain since 1978. She edited Foolscap magazine for nine years. She also edited What Poets Eat and co-edited an anthology of contemporary poems on bereavement, as well as (with her late husband the poet, Ken Smith) the anthology Klaonica: Poems for Bosnia. She is currently poet-in-residence at a cancer hospital in Scotland.
‘There is a sense of life fully embraced and people, from Kosovo to London, from Europe to the USA, fully regarded. The relish with which the poems are made – the voice always clear in the ear – reveals a warm, confiding humanity which will gain her many new readers.’ – Carol Ann Duffy on Judi Benson’s previous collection Call It Blue.
‘There is a sense of life fully embraced and people, from Kosovo to London, from Europe to the USA, fully regarded. The relish with which the poems are made – the voice always clear in the ear – reveals a warm, confiding humanity which will gain her many new readers.’ – Carol Ann Duffy on Judi Benson’s previous collection Call It Blue.