Monster

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 has read and performed her work in many contexts such as Tate Britain, the Dissenters Chapel of Kensal Green Cemetery, BBC Contains Strong Language, the Royal Festival Hall, King’s Place, and in Italy, South Africa, France and Norway.Her poetry has been most recently anthologised in Staying Human (Bloodaxe), More Fiya! (Canongate) and Part of a Story That Started Before Me (Penguin), and has been recognised with fellowships from Jerwood Compton Poetry and Hedgebrook. She was shortlisted for the inaugural James Berry Poetry Prize in 2021. She publishes essays and criticism covering poetry, theatre, music, fiction and nonfiction in The Financial Times, The Telegraph, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, Wasafiri, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry London and The Poetry Review. Her first collection, Monster, is published by Bloodaxe Books in 2024.Dzifa has had poetry, curatorial and editorial residences at Whitstable Biennale, Pallant House Gallery, Estuary Festival, the Courtauld Institute of Art, Orleans House Gallery, Wakehurst (Kew Gardens), the Royal Geographical Society and Granta. She has also guest lectured at Chelsea College of Art & Design, University of East London, University of West London, Brunel University, and studied dramaturgy at the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. She is a poetry editor with Curtis Brown Creative.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. Dzifa has toured South Africa and the UK with the British Council, is a Ledbury Poetry Critic and holds a Masters degree in Text & Performance from RADA and Birkbeck.

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.

• I. Monster13   Lacuna, with Landscape14   Blues for Sarah16   Exhibition of a Real Life Wonder (Still Alive!)17   Som-|aub // Menarche20   Lost & Found22   In Which Comedian Charles Matthews, Actor Charles Kemble and Dandy Beau Brummell Question Miss Sara Baartman Before Her Evening Performance26   From The Morning Chronicle, 12 October 1810 p.328   The Attorney General’s Submission to the King’s Bench30   Miss Sarah Bartmann Recalls Her Lover, a Drummer from Batavia32   Freak Sonnets for Lusus Naturae at Bartholomew Fair: Natural-Born, Man-Made and Counterfeit36   Tongue40   The Prime of Baron Georges Léopold Chrétien Cuvier Witnessed by the Recently Made Ghost of Mademoiselle Sarah Baartman42   Scala Naturae // A Remix of Voltaire43   Sestina for Six Scientists in Search of an Ology45   A Psychological Study of Phenomena // A Remix of Ribot46   Bottom Power49   Mademoiselle Sarah Bartmann Performs in Duchess du Barry’s Salon of Wit and Wisdom50   Bottom Power Redux // Augmented with Bustle (A Poem/Play)54   How to Restore a Museum Artefact55   1810–200258   Bone Fever Dream60   Gemsbok Trance Song of the Girl Who Made the Stars Road61   The Hottentot Venus Hails Botticelli’s on the High Seas63   !Nau // A Bloodline of Inessential Contact with Water       II. Mɔse ƒe ye nye xɔme78   Echolalia // A Broken Rule Ghazal79   Ahanonko // ‘A Nameless Thing is a Vague Thing’80   Ŋkɔfofodo // Moulding My Drinking Name82   The Counterplayer Gazes In and Lives to Play the Tale83   Venaviwo // Xi and Xetsa85   Myself, When I Am Real86   Dzonu // Fire Things: A Brief Genealogy of the XX Chromosomes87   Futhawo // Rowing Song for Asie Me Tsia Dio ‘Young Boys’ Fishermen89   Complaint to a Flamboyant90   Viheheɖego // Self Portrait as a Creature of Numbers III. After a Panoptic Ekphrasis93   Three Colours Black94   The Red Thread95   In the Company of Trees96   Foreign Matter99   Broken Ghazal for Pink Sheen and Gravity100   Call Me Balthazar102   Black Dog Bone Blues103   The $40,000 Pill105   Coitus, Refracted106   London Bone IV. Addendum 111   The Yoctogram Weighs In112   Here, This Bird113   Little Wing114   Truss115   How to Wear Drama116   Mountain Myths of the Orchid Lady’s Daughter117   The Last Exorcist119   How I Learned to Dance with the Octopus120   I Told It to the Sea125   Raft 127   Notes132   Acknowledgements