Many of the poems in this collection are hospital-based – from the author’s two years as Writer in Residence at the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, working in oncology and palliative care. But just as many are about the Scottish countryside she called home, staggered speechless by sky and light, so unlike London, where she now lives. So too, some poems reflect grief for the loss of her beloved husband, the poet Ken Smith, in 2003.
“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 Call It Blue
Judi Benson was born in California, and now lives in London’s East End, where she volunteers at the East Ham Nature Reserve. She co-edited the Bloodaxe anthology The Long Pale Corridor: Contemporary Poems of Bereavement. Her previous collections include In the Pockets of Strangers, Call It Blue and The Thin Places, all published by Rockingham Press.