Gerard Benson

Gerard John Benson (9 April 1931 – 28 April 2014) was an English Quaker poet, teacher, and author. His mother separated from his father Arthur Benson, and he was raised by a family of Christian fundamentalists for the first ten years of his life, thinking they were his parents. Then his mother Eileen married the Romanian-born émigré composer Francis Chagrin and he went to live with them. He was named poet laureate of the City of Bradford and was a founding editor, with Judith Chernaik and Cicely Herbert, of Poems on the Underground.

Benson died on 28 April 2014, aged 83. Shortly before his death, the 83-year-old had recently returned from the BBC in London where he had made recordings of his poetry for the Poetry Archive.

Publications London Poems On The Underground (1996); To Catch an Elephant (2002); Omba Bolomba (2005); Best Poems on the Underground (2009); A Good Time (2013);