Peter Bennet's Nayler & Folly Wood Guardian poem feature & reviews
'To read Nayler & Folly Wood is to know “the hanging dark that cloaks the hillside at your fingers’ ends”. This arresting retrospective gathers mischievous poems in tune with the metres and matters found on beer-stained slip-songs and in lofty lyrical ballads alike.' - Jo Clement, PBS Selector, Poetry Book Society Bulletin, Spring 2023
Peter Bennet's new retrospective Nayler & Folly Wood: New & Selected Poems was published by Bloodaxe in February 2023. It was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation for Spring 2023. It follows his first Bloodaxe retrospective, Border (2013), and his 2018 collection Mischief.
This new selection reflects Bennet’s full range for the first time, and begins with poems from the early 1980s. It draws on seven collections published since then. New work introduced here centres on another major and powerfully imagined sequence, a colloquy which bridges three centuries to evoke the voice of the Quaker James Nayler, who was abominably punished for ‘horrid blasphemy’. The book concludes with a substantial group of recent poems.
Nayler & Folly Wood: New & Selected Poems is distributed in the USA by Consortium Book Sales.
ONLINE REVIEW COVERAGE
The High Window, online 11 April 2024
A detailed review of Peter Bennet’s 2023 retrospective Nayler & Folly Wood: New & Selected Poems has gone online in the April 2024 issue of The High Window.
'It’s hard to do justice to the complexity and variety of this long [title] sequence which demands and repays several readings [...] There’s considerable erudition in this collection [...] It is likely to repay reading and re-reading.' – Kathleen Bell, The High Window
https://thehighwindowpress.com/2024/04/11/the-high-window-reviews-24/#Peter%20Bennet
ONLINE POEM OF THE WEEK FEATURES IN THE GUARDIAN & THE YORKSHIRE TIMES
Yorkshire Times, Poem of the Week, online 14 October 2023
Peter Bennet’s poem ‘Auberge’ from his retrospective Nayler & Folly Wood: New & Selected Poems was featured by Steve Whitaker in his Poem of the Week column in the online regional newspaper the Yorkshire Times of 14 October. The poem was reproduced in full, accompanied by Steve’s commentary.
‘Peter Bennet’s strange, unsettling poem observes few rules relating to conventional definitions of time and space, moving, as it does, between suggestion and inference.’ – Steve Whitaker, Yorkshire Times (Poem of the Week)
https://www.yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Poem-Of-The-Week--Auberge-By-Peter-Bennet
The Guardian, Poem of the Week, online 10 April 2023
Peter Bennet’s poem ‘The Place I Am’ from his retrospective Nayler & Folly Wood: New & Selected Poems was discussed by Carol Rumens in her online Poem of the Week column in The Guardian on 10 April.
‘Bennet was a painter before he became a poet, and has written a number of poems that are set in tangibly realised landscapes. This one, too, gives the impression of a real place - nowhere more compellingly than in its last two lines with their brilliant juxtaposition of images: the “homing plane” that “blinks across the ankles of Orion”… We’re close to music and history, as well as painting, but with no sense that language itself is less than the primary fascination.’ – Carol Rumens, Poem of the Week, The Guardian, on ‘The Place I Am’ from Nayler & Folly Wood
Read the feature in full on The Guardian website here.
US ONLINE REVIEW COVERAGE
The Ocean State Review, online 5 August 2023
An excellent in-depth review of Peter Bennet’s retrospective Nayler & Folly Wood: New & Selected Poems went online in The Ocean State Review on 5 August.
‘Peter Bennet’s poetry evokes a sense of place and history—in this case, Northumberland , where the poet has lived for most of his life—with such ingenious power that it transcends the specific and provides tools to help us think about the concepts of time and space generally ... Bennet, whose body of work is superbly curated in Bloodaxe’s Nayler & Folly Wood retrospective, deserves a wide audience in the Americas. His fierce attention to the local opens out into the universal.’ - Daniel A. Rabuzzi, The Ocean State Review
Read in full on the OSR website here.
ONLINE REVIEW COVERAGE
New Writing North, New and recent poetry from the north, online 10 March 2023
Reviews of the late Anne Stevenson’s Collected Poems and Peter Bennet’s retrospective Nayler & Folly Wood: New & Selected Poems went online on 10 March.
‘Bloodaxe published landmark editions by two remarkable northern poets in February. Nayler & Folly Wood by Peter Bennet includes work from different stages of the poet’s career, including his masterful Flambard collections, offering a wide-ranging selection of precise, mystical and often astonishing poems.’ – Will Mackie, New Writing North (New & recent poetry from the North)
Read the full review via New Writing North's website here.
IN-PERSON LAUNCH READING IN DURHAM
Peter Bennet launched Nayler & Folly Wood at St Chad’s College in Durham on 1 March 2023 – a joint event which also paid tribute to Anne Stevenson. Peter’s reading is now on Vimeo below.
Peter Bennet reading from Nayler & Folly Wood at St Chad's College, Durham.
[11 April 2023]
