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Same Difference
This ambitious new collection from poet and critic Ben Wilkinson finds its author experimenting with poetic voice and the dramatic monologue. Carefully crafted yet charged with contemporary language, the book brims with everyone from cage fighters to boy racers, cancer patients to whales in captivity.
Several poems unpick the preconceptions and prejudices that can inform so many of our encounters – with the world, art, and one another – while others take a sideways glance at everything from male depression to the history of meat-eating; from the philosophy behind athletic competition to surreal yet familiar emotions.
Notable here are poems that wrestle with the mystery of failed and successful relationships, both providing moments of transcendence and despair. There are well-observed pieces about sport, particularly the rewards of running, from a noted devotee.
While empathetic and often moving, Same Difference is a collection that seeks to undermine the confessional mode, keeping the reader on their toes and asking just who is doing the talking. It is also formally elegant, often using traditional rhyme and metre to weave its arguments.
Several poems unpick the preconceptions and prejudices that can inform so many of our encounters – with the world, art, and one another – while others take a sideways glance at everything from male depression to the history of meat-eating; from the philosophy behind athletic competition to surreal yet familiar emotions.
Notable here are poems that wrestle with the mystery of failed and successful relationships, both providing moments of transcendence and despair. There are well-observed pieces about sport, particularly the rewards of running, from a noted devotee.
While empathetic and often moving, Same Difference is a collection that seeks to undermine the confessional mode, keeping the reader on their toes and asking just who is doing the talking. It is also formally elegant, often using traditional rhyme and metre to weave its arguments.
- GenresPoetry
64 pages, Paperback
First published February 28, 2022
3 people want to read
About the author
Ben Wilkinson
7 books9 followersBen Wilkinson is part of a younger generation of British poets who emerged in the 2000s. His poems tackle themes including identity, social class, mental health and sport, in clearly voiced, accessible poems written out of the landscape of the North. He has lived in Sheffield for most of his life, and the city's rural and post-industrial landscapes often feature in his writing.
His poems and criticism regularly appear in national publications including the Guardian, New Statesman, The Poetry Review, The Spectator, and TLS. His debut collection of poems Way More Than Luck won a Northern Writers Award and was highly commended in the Forward Prizes. His second collection of poems Same Difference is out this year. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Bolton.
His poems and criticism regularly appear in national publications including the Guardian, New Statesman, The Poetry Review, The Spectator, and TLS. His debut collection of poems Way More Than Luck won a Northern Writers Award and was highly commended in the Forward Prizes. His second collection of poems Same Difference is out this year. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Bolton.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 28, 2022
As I read through Ben Wilkinson’s ‘Same Difference’, I recalled two lines that I loved from his previous collection ‘Way More Than Luck; - ‘Leashed tight to the here and now’ and ‘But now is never quite the same as then’. Both these lines embody an ongoing thread that also unifies this new collection - now further developed and explored across a greater scope of the work.
As the poet/ persona moves through one stage of life into their next, there are several pieces that reference an earlier time and place, using this to question their memory of its simplicity, innocence, clarity or maybe just a certainty? The present is often juxtaposed to carry a greater weight of ambiguity, responsibility or disappointment?
Poems like Invocation (‘Here’s to hope that, decades on, I still remember at all’) and Fuzz (‘all of us briefly gorgeous in its seismic wake, till the lights go up’) recall a nostalgia that celebrates these times.
Others poems like ‘Lament’ (‘Here now, it’s hard to believe this place’) and ‘The Middle of the Midlands’ (‘where I stepped out for air and a smoke, to find some tool with his tongue down your throat’) leans into this past with a sadness and yearns for it’s losses.
There are also numerous other poems that attempt to reconcile the present with this past of youthful endeavours and failed relationships. As the persona tries to place a frame around them, to enable them to move into the next phrases of life in ‘The Nightingale’ (‘Life shuffles by way too fast for these doubtful little games.’) and ‘Frame’ (‘I’ve been trying to write this one for years.’)
Wilkinson also plays with language and repetition in poems like ‘Mind The Gap’ (‘Mind your head on the way in. Mind who you tell.’) that demonstrate an elasticity of phrase and words that we sometimes take for granted. In this style, there is also ‘Try living in a house’ (Try this as the story of us) and ‘What The Doorman Says’ (That booze, generally speaking, brings out the worst.) both use this variation upon an idea to create a more layered, conflicted sense of character and place.
I really enjoyed so many poems in this collection. Some others not mentioned so far : Weirdos, What We Were, Rabbit Stew, Grey Disgust, Rich, Joie de Vivre, Patient, The Time Machine and This Year, to name a few.
One final note. Earlier this year, I read John Ashbury‘s ‘Quick Question, written when the poet was in his 80s. It seemed to reflect a time of his life that I’m yet near to approaching but still recognised many of the concerns. In Same Difference, I felt a similar connection to a particular age and time of life which I have moved on from a while ago, but still deeply recognised the same questions. That is a significant part of this collection’s charm and quality.
As the poet/ persona moves through one stage of life into their next, there are several pieces that reference an earlier time and place, using this to question their memory of its simplicity, innocence, clarity or maybe just a certainty? The present is often juxtaposed to carry a greater weight of ambiguity, responsibility or disappointment?
Poems like Invocation (‘Here’s to hope that, decades on, I still remember at all’) and Fuzz (‘all of us briefly gorgeous in its seismic wake, till the lights go up’) recall a nostalgia that celebrates these times.
Others poems like ‘Lament’ (‘Here now, it’s hard to believe this place’) and ‘The Middle of the Midlands’ (‘where I stepped out for air and a smoke, to find some tool with his tongue down your throat’) leans into this past with a sadness and yearns for it’s losses.
There are also numerous other poems that attempt to reconcile the present with this past of youthful endeavours and failed relationships. As the persona tries to place a frame around them, to enable them to move into the next phrases of life in ‘The Nightingale’ (‘Life shuffles by way too fast for these doubtful little games.’) and ‘Frame’ (‘I’ve been trying to write this one for years.’)
Wilkinson also plays with language and repetition in poems like ‘Mind The Gap’ (‘Mind your head on the way in. Mind who you tell.’) that demonstrate an elasticity of phrase and words that we sometimes take for granted. In this style, there is also ‘Try living in a house’ (Try this as the story of us) and ‘What The Doorman Says’ (That booze, generally speaking, brings out the worst.) both use this variation upon an idea to create a more layered, conflicted sense of character and place.
I really enjoyed so many poems in this collection. Some others not mentioned so far : Weirdos, What We Were, Rabbit Stew, Grey Disgust, Rich, Joie de Vivre, Patient, The Time Machine and This Year, to name a few.
One final note. Earlier this year, I read John Ashbury‘s ‘Quick Question, written when the poet was in his 80s. It seemed to reflect a time of his life that I’m yet near to approaching but still recognised many of the concerns. In Same Difference, I felt a similar connection to a particular age and time of life which I have moved on from a while ago, but still deeply recognised the same questions. That is a significant part of this collection’s charm and quality.
Displaying 1 of 1 review