Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru
Same Difference
Same Difference
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Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description
Bardd, beirniad a darlithydd o Swydd Efrog yw Ben Wilkinson, a Same Difference yw ei ail gyfrol o farddoniaeth, yn dilyn ei gyfrol boblogaidd gyntaf ar thema pêl-droed, Way More Than Luck . Cyfunir sylwgarwch pigog, ffurfiol gyda golwg eironig ar ddiwylliant a chymdeithas gyfoes gan greu cerddi sy'n cwestiynu ynghyd â cherddi dyfnion sy'n diddanu.
Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description
Ben Wilkinson is a Yorkshire-based poet, critic and lecturer. Same Difference is his second poetry collection, following his popular football-themed début, Way More Than Luck . Acute formal skill combined with a darkly ironic view of contemporary culture and society combine to create keenly questioning, and profoundly entertaining poems.
Manylion y cynnyrch / Product details
- ISBN 13
- 9781781726488
- Gwales Code
- gwales.com.9781781726488
- Gwerthwr / Vendor
- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru
- Long Title
- Same Difference
- Awdur / Author
- Wilkinson, Ben
- Current Price ex VAT
- £9.99
- Current Price inc VAT
- £9.99
- Availability Status (EN)
- Non-Stock Item - Ordered on request
- Availability Status (CY)
- Archebir yn ôl y galw
- Dyddiad cyhoeddi / Publication Date
- 2022-03-28
- Cyhoeddwr / Publisher
- Seren
- Media Type (EN)
- Paperback / softback
- Media Type (CY)
- Clawr meddal
- Pages
- 64 pages
- Size
- 138 × 216 mm
- Language Code
- English
- Categori / Category
- CY: Barddoniaeth (yn Saesneg) | EN: Poetry (in English)
- Is-gategori / Subcategory
- CY: Beirdd Unigol (yn Saesneg) | EN: Individual Poets (in English)
Bywgraffiad yr Awdur / Author Biography
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 , is appearing 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.
Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review
There is a counterintuitive quality to art that often means the more specific and personal something is, the more widely it can be understood and appreciated. This feels like a phenomenon that can be illustrated perfectly by the contents of Ben Wilkinson’s new poetry collection, Same Difference . Wilkinson is the master of detail, and his spotting of visual and emotional specifics throughout his work has such a powerful effect. The words on the page are born directly from their author, but the punch they hold is felt uniquely by the reader. His work is more impactful and emotive because of this commitment to detailing. ‘Invocation’, for example, is such a uniquely personal picture of student life that it can’t be describing anyone’s experience other than Wilkinson’s. Housemates are named, as are roads and nightclubs and even the models of passing cars. However, the effect of this is to paint such a vivid scene that the closing wistful image of it coming to an end gives the perfect powerful picture of memory, place and the passing of time: ‘...all of us, for the last time, gathered in that front room, / our stuff in boxes, sitting, waiting, with the rain hurtling down.’ It gives the reader – this reader, at least – a gut punch of nostalgia and evokes not only the people and places lost to time, but more than that; it becomes a poem about the acute awareness of time itself. Poetry is in Wilkinson’s blood. This is his second collection, following 2018’s Way More Than Luck , and he teaches poetry and is regularly published as both a poet and a critic. It’s only right then that he writes poems about poetry itself. His compulsive need to write is clear in the collection’s opening piece, ‘Poetry’. It reads as an ode to the act of writing. Like an alcoholic who has a reluctant awareness that they’ll be drinking again soon, ‘I pretend I couldn’t give a fuck / but we both know better, don’t we?’ Elsewhere in the collection, Wilkinson almost seems to explain how and why he uses poetry. ‘What We Were’ is a series of snapshots: ‘Here’s the time we got lost coming off the mountain...’ and ‘Here’s us in Spain, eating olives in a power cut.’ Three stanzas of personal memories, but hidden in the middle Wilkinson explains, ‘I think I’ve always been deluded and romantic / but I keep too much to myself, except in poems.’ The words on the page are memories and his own way of remembering, it seems. Yet memory is flawed. ‘Northern Anecdotal’ is Wilkinson remembering and misremembering, or perhaps intentionally layering memories. Its effect is powerful. When he ends with, ‘And not me, but whoever I was. Whoever this is’, it almost invites the reader into his world. Whose stories are these? Are they his as their author, or ours as their reader? It echoes a line from elsewhere in this collection: ‘Who’s speaking this and who’s listening’. This is the crux of what makes this such a powerful and unique collection. More than just memories and stories, this is a collection that explores narrative and ownership and challenges the idea of poetry itself. Same Difference is a brilliant collection that is accessible, personal and utterly contemporary. Wilkinson’s words share something of himself but in a such way that the poetry speaks directly to the reader. With an apparent ease that’s undoubtably anything but easy, it’s a collection that holds far more weight than its size would suggest.
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