I Commissioned Some Wooden Luggage: and other poems

By Nicholas Benson

While backpacking in Europe as a teenager in the 1980s, Nick Benson stumbled on a window display in a Venetian gallery that caught his eye: it featured a beautifully carved duffle-bag sculpted from wood, complete with drawers. For the itinerant Benson, this objet d'art was a source of fasci- nation: "you could keep your travel bag by your bed and be ready to go, but it could also be a useful piece of furniture...I would have commissioned some wooden luggage, if not for the price tag... instead it became a metaphor and took on a life of its own. I didn't realize it then, but it's the embodiment of wanting opposing things at once. It seems to sum up this permanent sense of duality-rootedness and restlessness" (Interview with Benson, January 19, 2024).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1946328448
• ISBN13: 9781946328441
• Release Date: October 2024
• Publisher: Agincourt Press
• Length: 78 Pages
• Weight: 0.19 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.1" x 6.1"