Airplane Baby Banana Blanket

Where shrieks of bedlam
are the norm, calm
pricks the ears.

The latest collection from Benjamin Dodds interprets the bizarre true story of Lucy, a chimpanzee raised as the ‘daughter’ of Oklahoma psychotherapist Dr Maurice Temerlin during the 1960s and 70s. With deep empathy and an eye for subtle, telling moments, Dodds offers a complex reimagination of Lucy’s fraught hybrid life through unflinching poems that fascinate and unsettle in equal measure.

‘Airplane Baby Banana Blanket is as strange as it is compelling. Its subject matter is deeply haunting and goes straight to the heart. Dodds has distilled tenderness, trauma, cruelty and hope into a piercing tale which raises essential questions about human responsibility. His vernacular immediacy and musical freshness charge every page, his narrative and lyrical strategies are exemplary. Long after I finished it, this book’s contrapuntal tensions made it unforgettable.’
Judith Beveridge