Fiona Bennett

Fiona Bennett was a poet, director and creative facilitator, whose practice encompassed poetry, theatre, audio and applied arts. She was the founder and director of The Poetry Exchange, which celebrates and shares the idea of poems as friends in people’s lives.

Fiona conceived of The Poetry Exchange in 2014, as a way of exploring the profound connections that exist between readers and poems, and the power of poetry in people's lives.

"The idea of poems as friends began when I recognised the powerful conversations I have with poems that have been there for me at key moments in life, and became curious about whether this idea of a poem acting as a companion was true for others.

Friendship is where we meet ourselves in commonality and diversity, where we celebrate shared loves and grapple with difference. Poems, like friends, can create a space for intimacy, mark occasions, events and ideas, and like true friends they can also have a presence beyond the here and now."

- Fiona Bennett, from the introduction to Poems as Friends - The Poetry Exchange 10th Anniversary Anthology

You can hear Fiona introduce and tell the story of The Poetry Exchange in this beautiful video from The Healing Word conference in Canterbury in 2022.

Out of Fiona's initial artistic enquiry, The Poetry Exchange evolved into a unique and wide-reaching community, charity and award-winning podcast, bringing people together from all over the world through a shared love of poetry. The Poetry Exchange is an extroardinary legacy for Fiona, exemplifying so much of her life's work and passions: friendship, connection, voice, conversation.

Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer, co-hosts of The Poetry Exchange, at Latitude Festival

On the Brink of Touch - Fiona Bennett's poetry collection

Fiona's own poetry - described as "a poetry of incandecense" by Glyn Maxwell - has been featured in a wide range of journals in the UK, the USA and on BBC radio, and in 2022 Fiona gained an MA (distinction) in writing poetry from Newcastle University and The Poetry School. In 2024 she completed her debut collection On the Brink of Touch, which is now available from Live Canon. Whilst it is tragic that Fiona did not get to see her completed collection for herself, she did know that it was going to be published, and even advised on aspects of its publication over the course of her illness.

Alongside her own writing, Fiona delighted in curating and directing the material of others, notably the poetry of Adrienne Rich as part of a ballet for Ballet Black, Then or Now, choreographed in 2020 by William Tuckett. For Fiona, poetry was always something that lived, breathed, sang and danced...words with the power to move us, to connect us.

Then Or Now by Ballet Black, choreographed by William Tuckett, poetry direction by Fiona Bennett

Photo credit: Bill Cooper

Fiona’s work as a poet and interdisciplinary artist was supported by her extensive background in theatre and her co-leadership of The Map Consortium – an exceptional arts-based training company. Fiona designed and delivered artful interventions in a wide range of organisations and settings across the world, including: Shakespeare’s Globe, The Royal National Theatre, Setagaya Theatre Tokyo, British Council Mumbai, and the European Dance Network.

All of us that have worked with Fiona and have known her as a friend are forever grateful for the immense love and light she brought us, and how she always encouraged us to be our truest, most exceptional selves.