Overview

The exciting and complex debut collection from Dzifa Benson,Monsteris a bold and lyrical exploration of the Black female body as a site of oppression and resistance. At its heart is a study of the world of Sarah Baartman, aka the Hottentot Venus, a Khoikhoi woman from South Africa who was displayed in freak shows in 19th-century Europe.Baartman's voice is framed within the social, political and legal structures of the day, offering a unique perspective. Other poems draw clear parallels with Benson's own experience as a Black woman born in London but raised in Ghana who returned to the UK at the age of 18. The collection is a mix of vivid lyricism, sometimes laced with dark humour, using complex poetry, monologue and theatrical devices. The influence of Shakespeare sits comfortably with references to Ewe mythology and history in a collection of wide scope and depth. This is a highly accomplished first collection by a mature voice. As one of a small group of published Black women poets, Benson makes an important contribution to current British poetry with the publication ofMonster.

Full Product Details

Author:   Dzifa Benson
Publisher:   Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Imprint:   Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Edition:   Paperback original
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.10cm , Length: 23.40cm
ISBN:  

9781780377261

ISBN 10:   1780377266
Pages:   136
Publication Date:   24 October 2024
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

I. Monster    13   Lacuna, with Landscape    14   Blues for Sarah    16   Exhibition of a Real Life Wonder (Still Alive!)    17   Som-|aub // Menarche    20   Lost & Found    22   In Which Comedian Charles Matthews, Actor Charles Kemble and Dandy Beau Brummell Question Miss Sara Baartman Before Her Evening Performance    26   From The Morning Chronicle, 12 October 1810 p.3    28   The Attorney General’s Submission to the King’s Bench    30   Miss Sarah Bartmann Recalls Her Lover, a Drummer from Batavia    32   Freak Sonnets for Lusus Naturae at Bartholomew Fair: Natural-Born, Man-Made and Counterfeit    36   Tongue    40   The Prime of Baron Georges Léopold Chrétien Cuvier Witnessed by the Recently Made Ghost of Mademoiselle Sarah Baartman    42   Scala Naturae // A Remix of Voltaire    43   Sestina for Six Scientists in Search of an Ology    45   A Psychological Study of Phenomena // A Remix of Ribot    46   Bottom Power    49   Mademoiselle Sarah Bartmann Performs in Duchess du Barry’s Salon of Wit and Wisdom    50   Bottom Power Redux // Augmented with Bustle (A Poem/Play)    54   How to Restore a Museum Artefact    55   1810–2002    58   Bone Fever Dream    60   Gemsbok Trance Song of the Girl Who Made the Stars Road    61   The Hottentot Venus Hails Botticelli’s on the High Seas    63   !Nau // A Bloodline of Inessential Contact with Water         II. Mɔse ƒe ye nye xɔme    78   Echolalia // A Broken Rule Ghazal    79   Ahanonko // ‘A Nameless Thing is a Vague Thing’    80   Ŋkɔfofodo // Moulding My Drinking Name    82   The Counterplayer Gazes In and Lives to Play the Tale    83   Venaviwo // Xi and Xetsa    85   Myself, When I Am Real    86   Dzonu // Fire Things: A Brief Genealogy of the XX Chromosomes    87   Futhawo // Rowing Song for Asie Me Tsia Dio ‘Young Boys’ Fishermen    89   Complaint to a Flamboyant    90   Viheheɖego // Self Portrait as a Creature of Numbers III. After a Panoptic Ekphrasis    93   Three Colours Black    94   The Red Thread    95   In the Company of Trees    96   Foreign Matter    99   Broken Ghazal for Pink Sheen and Gravity    100   Call Me Balthazar    102   Black Dog Bone Blues    103   The $40,000 Pill    105   Coitus, Refracted    106   London Bone IV. Addendum    111   The Yoctogram Weighs In    112   Here, This Bird    113   Little Wing    114   Truss    115   How to Wear Drama    116   Mountain Myths of the Orchid Lady’s Daughter    117   The Last Exorcist    119   How I Learned to Dance with the Octopus    120   I Told It to the Sea    125   Raft    127   Notes    132   Acknowledgements

Reviews

This is an amazing collection, not only for a debut but for a poet at any stage. It’s versatile and virtuosic, experimental and moving, complex and culturally important. -- Bernardine Evaristo These are the most brilliant and accomplished poems I have read in many years. This is what truly great poetry is about. In Dzifa Benson’s poems something that seemed lost is now found, the familiar becomes strange again and we’re guided through a wilderness that blossoms before our eyes as the poet strikes rock after rock of ancestral grief and crystalline revelations stream forth. -- Lorna Goodison Dzifa Benson’s collection is so many things, a careful unfurling and retelling of the story of Saartjie Baartman; deeply penetrating as it is intelligent as it is compassionate…the pages in this book contain a carefully controlled rage allied to an attention to language, form and music. This debut announces a vital new voice; Dzifa Benson is a brilliantly original poet who refuses to turn away, who resolves to commit to write into the pain and horrors of our buried histories. This is an exceptional debut. -- Mona Arshi

Author Information

Dzifa Benson was born in London to Ghanaian parents and grew up in Ghana, Nigeria and Togo. She is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist whose work intersects science, art, technology, the body and ritual which she explores through poetry, prose, theatre, libretto, performance, curation, visual arts, immersive technologies, essays and criticism. She holds a Masters degree in Text & Performance from RADA and Birkbeck in London, and studied dramaturgy at the the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. She was shortlisted for the inaugural James Berry Poetry Prize in 2021. Her first collection, Monster, is published by Bloodaxe Books in 2024. Her abridgement and adaption of the National Youth Theatre REP Company's 2021 production of Othello, in collaboration with Olivier award-winning director Miranda Cromwell, toured the UK and she is currently in the pre-production, dramaturgical stage of her first full length play Black Mozart // White Chevalier.

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