Megan Kaminski

“It’s been about twenty years since I’ve called Virginia Beach home, and, while I didn’t think of myself as a poet when I was growing up there, the landscape of the place and the shadows of its histories are certainly imprinted deep in my memory and body. [In Black Pastoral], Benson brings silenced histories and the thickness of place into dazzling form, complicating the romantic tradition of the pastoral into something more vital, vibrant, and multivalent.“