Robbergirls

Written during a residency with The Polar Museum in Cambridge, Robbergirls reimagines The Snow Queen as a Sapphic rite of passage. Offered in seven sections that echo the fairy tale’s form, these hot, tender, and generous poems search for a lost other who is by turns friend, brother, son, lover, but ultimately an aspect of a fragmented self. In her formally playful and linguistically rich third collection, Benyon suggests that the ache for contact can be tempered by nature, even with disordered seasons. In striking poems that refuse to deny environmental breakdown, the poet holds space for the indigenous people of the Arctic as she considers the devastating impacts of climate change on their landscapes and lives.

Kaddy Benyon is the author of Milk Fever, winner of the Crashaw Prize. She was born in Cambridge and grew up in Suffolk. A former television scriptwriter, she currently works for the University of Cambridge mentoring students with disabilities. She is a Granta New Poet and her poems have appeared in various magazines and anthologies.