One of the women I’ve been researching for my new poetry collection, Chosen Sisters, is Mary Benson (1841-1918), also known as ‘Minnie’ or ‘Ben’. She was the wife of Edward White Benson, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1883 until his death in 1896. Throughout her life Mary experienced a series of ‘schwärmerein’, or ‘enthusiasms’ for women, which she numbered in her diary, and recognised as her ‘My God, what a woman’ moments. Following the sudden death of her husband, she set up household with Lucy Tait, the daughter of a previous Archbishop of Canterbury, and the two women shared a bed for the rest of Mary’s life.

I knew that Edward’s sudden death – fittingly, for an Archbishop – had happened while he was in church, on his knees, saying the Confession, during a visit to William and Catherine Gladstone in Hawarden.

The connection to the place where I’m spending all of May as Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library made me particularly interested in Mary’s story, and then it was a strange coincidence to find that the room I’ve been given here overlooks St Deiniol’s Church. The sounds of the church clock, and of owls hunting in the graveyard have become a welcome part of the rhythm of my daily life.

I’m working on a poem about Mary Benson, which I’m hoping to read for the first time on Tuesday 12th May at my evening talk, here at Gladstone’s Library. Tickets can be purchased from the Events section of the website here.