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Vertigo & Ghost
Vertigo & Ghost
Aug 14, 2025 7:37 PM

Author:Fiona Benson

Vertigo & Ghost

**WINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION 2019**

**WINNER OF THE ROEHAMPTON PRIZE FOR BEST POETRY COLLECTION 2019**

Violence hangs over this book like an electric storm. Beginning with a poem about the teenage dawning of sexuality, Vertigo & Ghost pitches quickly into a long sequence of graphic, stunning pieces about Zeus as a serial rapist, for whom woman are prey and sex is weaponised. These are frank, brilliant, devastating poems of vulnerability and rage, and as Zeus is confronted with aggressions both personal and historical, his house comes crumbling down. A disturbing contemporary world is exposed, in which violent acts against women continue to be perpetrated on a daily – hourly – basis.

The book shifts, in its second half, to an intimate and lyrical document of depression and family life. It sounds out the complex and ambivalent terrain of early motherhood – its anxieties and claustrophobias as well as its gifts of tenderness and love – reclaiming the sanctuary of domestic private life, and the right to raise children in peace and safety.

Vertigo & Ghost is an important, necessary book, hugely impressive in its range and risk, and dramatic in its currency: a collection that speaks out with clarity, grace and bravery against the abuse of power.

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE**

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 T. S. ELIOT PRIZE**

‘Misogynistic violence, ancient myth and modern rage confront each other in moving and dynamic verse’ Financial Times

Reviews

Vertigo & Ghost explodes into furious life with a series of poems and fragments about the Greek god Zeus... jagged, staccato poems that shoot down the pages like lightning bolts... an addictive, thrilling, sickening experience.

—— John Self , Guardian

Vertigo & Ghost knocked the breath from me. Such furious, fierce, ecstatic poems, at once brutal and heartachingly tender; I lay awake at night unable to stop thinking about them. Mothers and children, girls and women, their vulnerabilities and sorrows, fears amidst grave danger, their beautiful animal selves. Against a frightening darkness, these "sore jewels" radiate wild white-heat.

—— Liz Berry

This extraordinarily moving collection is a bold confrontation of violence against women. Vertigo & Ghost is one of the darkest, bravest and most unsettling collections I have read in a while.

—— Kate Kellaway , Observer

An exceptional achievement.

—— Paul Bailey , Literary Review

[A] tour-de-force... [Vertigo & Ghost] has generated a lot of (justified) buzz... poems of lasting power.

—— Tristram Fane Saunders , Telegraph *Poetry Book of the Month*

Though this is only her second collection, it’s already clear that Fiona Benson is an exceptional and exceptionally gifted poet. She has a fine ear and a sure hand. Her poems engage with what in our inner lives is most crucial and most at risk. There are poems in this book that scour the skin and must be read.

—— David Harsent

Promise me you'll read these aloud... [Vertigo & Ghost is] brilliantly chilling... Flick to a random page, take a deep breath, and dive in.

—— Tristram Fane Saunders , Daily Telegraph, **Books of the Year**

Misogynistic violence, ancient myth and modern rage confront each other in moving and dynamic verse.

—— Maria Crawford , Financial Times, *Books of the Year*

Benson is one of the finest English poets writing today.

—— Week

[Benson] is bravely and unfashionably, a high Romantic.

—— Tristram Fane Saunders , Daily Telegraph

[Wroe] captures here the essential spirit of the saint – himself a poet after all, whose work has never died – making this a delight to read. A book not to be missed.

—— Peter Costello , Irish Catholic

This is a book full of complex engagements with the word and the flesh, and the counterpointed rhythms of the sacred and the secular. Wroe’s book is a praise song, vindicating the worlds beyond our rationalist compass.

—— David Wheatley , Guardian

The spiritual is vivid through quality and vitality in this poetry. Wroe’s writing method is incarnational, translating the apparently mundane into rich parables.

—— Martyn Halsall , Church Times

An elegant hardback with ambitions beyond the poetry shelves… Ann Wroe’s unusual and impressive book is less a Life of Francis than a series of…epiphanies and personal revelations inspired by his imagined company.

—— John Greening , Times Literary Supplement

This joyous and thoughtful tribute leaves you wanting more.

—— Sophie Ratcliffe , TLS

By Jove! It's a ripping old yarn... Dashed agreeably close to the master.

—— Daily Mail

A hugely enjoyable caper

—— The Week

There are laughs and admirable ingenuity in Schott’s confection

—— Irish Times

A book that is so close in spirit and style to the PG Wodehouse originals it’s like the real thing

—— The Sport

Top-notch fun.

—— S magazine

Succeeds triumphantly, both as light entertainment and as a tribute to the master

—— Country & Town House

In his first foray into PG Wodehouse homage/imitation/pastiche (whichever it may be) Schott appeared to hit the Wodehouse target dead on.

—— RTE

Jonathan Coe's Middle England is brilliantly insightful on the times we are living in

—— Mishal Husain, Books of the Year , Big Issue

Let me add to the chorus of praise for Jonathan Coe's new book Middle England. Easily my favourite of his since What a Carve Up! Which did for Thatcherism what Middle England does for Brexit

—— John Crace

An astute, enlightened and enlightening journey into the heart of our current national identity crisis. Both moving and funny. As we'd expect from Coe

—— Ben Elton

From post-industrial Birmingham to the London riots and the current political gridlock, it takes in family, literature and love in a comedy for our times

—— Guardian

Coe can make you smile, sigh, laugh; he has abundant sympathy for his characters

—— Scotsman

This book is sublimely good. State of the (Brexit) nation novel to end them all, but also funny, tender, generous, so human and intelligent about age and love as well as politics

—— India Knight

Probably the best English novelist of his generation

—— Nick Hornby

No modern novelist is better at charting the precariousness of middle-class life

—— Observer

An angry and exuberant book

—— Sunday Times on 'Number 11'

Jonathan Coe has established himself as one of the most entertaining chroniclers of our times

—— Tatler

You can't stop reading....I was haunted for days

—— Independent on 'Number 11'
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