'You are weaving through your life when a plane falls from the sky. You could not have prepared for this moment, but you approach it as you would any other: you walk slowly through it, trying hard to listen to what the world wants to tell you.' 'Crash', Amanda Davis Of course, Amanda Davis wrote … Continue reading What The World Wants To Tell You
Author: Daniel Bennett
I'm a writer and poet. My first novel, All the Dogs, appeared in 2008, and was described by Niall Griffiths as 'a stirring debut, a compellingly written tract on the importance of finding a place on the earth.' My fiction has appeared in London Noir, Crimewave, Black Static and 3AM. I live in London, where, amongst other things, I teach Creative Writing for the Open University. https://absenceclub.com
Things We Lost In The Fire
'In the darkness, in among the barely visible vegetation, the fireflies shone. I hate when people call them lightning bugs; firefly is a beautiful word. Once, I caught a bunch of them in an empty mayonnaise jar, and I realised how ugly they really are, like cockroaches with wings. But they've been blessed with the … Continue reading Things We Lost In The Fire
The Frostman
Last night I dreamed of the Frostman again. I sat at a bank of desks in an open-plan office, talking to someone seated next to me. We had been making a joke, when the Frostman appeared: a pale, disheveled man, white stubble washing along his cheek like mica dust. He wore a long white cat, … Continue reading The Frostman
Cloth
As we boarded the train, I noticed the white of a dog collar under the man's scarf. Yet moments earlier, I had watched as he stood at the centre of the doors, impeding the passengers who needed to alight from the train. We sat down at the same bank of seats, and during our short … Continue reading Cloth
R.B. Kitaj
The paintings of R.B. Kitaj will always been twinned in my mind with the poetry of Lee Harwood, for the rather basic reason that the cover of the Paladin edition of Harwood's Crossing the Frozen River included a detail from Kitaj's 'A Study For The World's Body'. I brought that Lee Harwood book with me … Continue reading R.B. Kitaj
Lemon Meringue Pie
I've spent the summer looking over old work, returning to a past self and his observations, reclaiming the writing from his caprices. In those years, I wrote in a white hot state, as though a clock were ticking, and I had to beat it. It was hardly sustainable; it was hardly writing, really, more of … Continue reading Lemon Meringue Pie
Lowly
Drive to the junkyard,to check out the weather beating into ironwork,the torsion of steel. Or swing by the dealerof aggregate and masonry, blue quartz and white limeare drifting pyramids on the concrete forecourt,where a seashell is astray from the channel bed.A house is all that remains. Pass the wall by the railway,where nettles sway in … Continue reading Lowly
Landscape With Man and High-Vis Jacket and Alpaca
A short film of a long poem, from my collection West South North, North South East https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOd_7UzoRfE Buy the book here.
Bones
‘We all walk over bones in this city, it’s just a question of making holes deep enough to reach the buried dead. I have to dig, with a shovel, with my hands, like a dog. Dogs always find bones; they always know where they’re hidden, where they’ve been abandoned, forgotten.’ ‘No Flesh Over Our Bones,’ … Continue reading Bones
The Hawk
'I have to guess where I am in relation to the hawk.' The Peregrine, J.A. Baker
