Ben Verinder

We Lost the Birds

In this exciting new pamphlet, Ben Verinder takes flight to survey the human landscape.

At times sad and strange, at others darkly funny, these poems are marked by a deft use of language, surprising conceits, an elegant music and a riot of birdlife.

Throughout many of the poems there is a sense of humans and birds uneasily sharing the same space and while this work laments both landscape and loved ones, it opens out into broader panoramas – a Yorkshire maggot farm, the smallest distillery in Scotland, a warehouse full of superannuated waxworks and an international crying competition.

This is precise, inventive, well-executed work.

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Launch Event

Ben Verinder lives in rural Hertfordshire. His poems have been published widely, including in The Rialto, Stand, Lighthouse and Wild Court. His debut pamphlet, Botanicals, was published by Frosted Fire in autumn 2021.

In 2022 Ben won the Bournemouth International Writing Prize and his poems have been shortlisted or commended in a variety of competitions - including the Winchester, Wolverhampton, Bedford and Ver prizes. In 2021 Ben was longlisted in the National Poetry Competition. He is the biographer of the adventurer and writer Mary Burkett.

Ben is also currently studying a Writing Poetry MA with the Poetry School and Newcastle University.

Plumes

You wrote to say
that everything will turn out right
but in the Mojave desert
shimmer heliostats
one hundred and seventy thousand mirrors
the size of garage doors
attracting insects which attract small birds
whose feathers are set alight mid-flight

by the reflected heat. The workers
call them streamers.