The first part of this book is brilliant, nightmarish, harrowing, cleverly structured and formally innovative. I found the transition to the second part difficult and I wish I could somehow form a clearer picture of it without the memory of the Zeus poems lowering. Still the most compelling collection I have read this year. ( )

This really, REALLY knocked me for a loop, Fiona Benson's [Vertigo & Ghost], which was both amazing and totally harrowing. The first half is like the dark side of all those great Greek myth retellings—a cycle of poems about Zeus in which he is (as he was), a rapist and predator who eventually meets his own violent fate. The second half is presumably autobiographical, about sadness and the natural world and childbirth and the terrible places the mind goes when you pay attention to what's going on in the world when you have small children in your care. There's a good amount of violence against women and children and even some animals here—none of it gratuitous, it's all appropriate to what she's got to say—and it's hard reading. But also often beautiful, and incredibly rewarding if you can handle it. She's a fantastic poet. "Fly" is one of those things where a poem fits my skin absolutely and precisely at this moment, and I am copying it out at least twice (my copy is a library book). ( )

This is wonderful, dark, intense stuff. It begins with a run of poems about Zeus, as a murderer, rapist, toxic male. Then a looser collection much of which is about having children and all the worry it brings. It's unflinching and some of it very upsetting and emotional.
I'm going to be dipping back in and out of this frequently. ( )

Almost all of the poetry I had read up until now has been contemplative and meditative on landscape, life and other matters that have trouble the poet in question. Vertigo & Ghost is utterly different to anything I have read poetry-wise. Fiona Benson's new collection is divided into two parts, but before that begins with a poem called Ace of Bass. This concerns some girls on a tennis court who can feel the hormones coursing through themselves as they awaken sexually.

Hormones poured into me
Like an incredible chemical cocktail

The first part consists of 30 odd poems about Zeus. These are powerful, visceral prose that portrays him as a serial rapist, where woman are prey and sex is weaponised. The anger in these poems is quite something, but it is a response to the modern world where women are still subject to personal attacks on a daily basis.

The second half of the book is a much more personal reflection on her life, with poems on family, depression and the delights and fears of motherhood. It is a much slower pace unlike the first part that had a great sense of urgency to it,

For we are tracks in the dew
Vanishing at dawn,
We are mist, we are rain,
We are gone

This is not the easiest read for anyone who, like me, hasn't read much poetry, but these things need to be read. I really liked what they had done with the physical layout of the words for some of the poems, it added a certain amount of dynamics to the page that added to the fieriness of the prose. I much preferred the second half of the book to the first, but it is a book I will be keeping and will read again.

My three favourite poems were:

Wood Song
Almond Blossom
Blue Heron ( )