The Mythic and the Familiar: Fiona Benson and Pascale Petit

Start your Sunday with what promises to be a haunting double bill with two poets at the top of their game. Pascale Petit and Fiona Benson – who between them have been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize seven times – will read from and discuss their darkly beautiful latest collections.
In Midden Witch, Fiona enters the world of familiars, fables and hedge-magic, and lets the women accused of witchcraft speak back to us. These poems present a litany of artists, dreamers and outcasts, speaking to human fear in the face of the unknown. Pascale’s Beast, meanwhile, is populated by mythic and familial beasts, roaming wildernesses near and far. Despite questioning the possibility of survival, Pascale’s poems insist that making art itself is an act of hope.