Same Difference

'In all, it's a book that takes us into many hearts and minds, and as a result, it's a pleasure to jog, pace, and perambulate through it.' Mab Jones, Buzz Magazine. 'Same Difference is pitch-perfect. The poems and sonnets are remarkable for their emotional truth and craft; the versions of Verlaine are exquisite echo-chambers of the originals; and the dramatic monologues are utterly compelling.' - David Morley 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. 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.

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, 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.