Wild Women: Women Speak Volumes with Fiona Benson

SOUND Poetry Festival is excited to be teaming up with Women Speak Volumes SW to bring an afternoon of poetry celebrating the experiences and perspectives of older women.

Fiona Benson has spent several weeks running workshops at the Box with a group of these women as part of her role as poet-in-residence for Page of Plymouth - Literature Works' project exploring Ben Johnson's lost play based in Plymouth. For this event, Fiona will be leading alongside two of the workshop's participants, both of whom are members of Women Speak Volumes SW.

Featuring:

Fiona Benson FRSL is the author of four poetry collections: Bright Travellers, Vertigo & Ghost, Ephemeron and, most recently, Midden Witch. All three of her first published collections were shortlisted for the T S Eliot prize, and her books have won the Forward Prize, the Seamus Heaney Prize, the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her script Infamous Offspring written for the Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus / Ultima Vez has been performed across Europe and in the US. She has also edited two books of Ukrainian war poetry in translation – We Were Here by Artur Dron (2024) and Dasein: In Defence of Presence by Yaryna Chornohuz (2025). She lives in mid-Devon with her husband and their two daughters.

Helen Thomas is a poet of Sierra Leonean and Irish heritage. She was born in London, has four children and has lived in Cornwall for 25 years. She loves swimming in the sea, researching black British history, yoga & velvet.

Jackie Taylor lives in Cornwall and writes short fiction, poetry and hybrid work, with interests including rural edgelands, ageing and care, and approaches to writing environmental crises. Her writing has appeared most recently in Mslexia, Cornwall in Short (Inkfish Press) and Spelt. Strange Waters, a collection of interlinked short stories, was published by Arachne Press in 2021. Jackie holds an MLitt in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow and is a member of the 2025/26 Word Space writer development programme for new voices from the South West.

This event is supported by Arts Council England and Plymouth City Council. Doors will open at 13:30 for a 13:45 start.

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Host or Publisher Plymouth Poetry Festival