The website of writer and poet Daniel Bennett
Very pleased (not to mention grateful) for the following review of my little science fiction book, Requiem For An Astronaut. 'I liked everything about this [book]. Bart is a perfect narrator with a calm, observant, slightly jaded point of view that doesn’t lapse into cheap cynicism. His style is relaxed and his musings reveal much … Continue reading SF Crowsnest Review
I'm really pleased to have a poem in the anthology The Cry of the Poor, edited by Fran Lock and published by Culture Matters. 'The Weather In Priory Park' is one of my lockdown poems, about an encounter with a man in my local park. 'Something about a dogsecures you to a place. How else could … Continue reading Cry of the Poor
'From inside all you can hear is the wind outside as it buffets the wire fences. The books line the shelves, programmes are loaded on the computers, the plates in the kitchen are clean and neatly stacked, the meat in the walk-in refrigerators remains intact, the boards games are in the display cabinets, the counters … Continue reading Hypothetical Games
My review of I Never Think Dark Will Come originally appeared in issue 63 of The Journal.Things abound in the first book by Susan Jordan, which takes as its focus the corporeal and tangible. 'Let us praise little things, the use we make of them,' Jordan declares in 'Laudemus' (the Latin for 'let us praise) … Continue reading I Never Think Dark Will Come by Susan Jordan
My review of Operations of Water originally appeared in issue 63 of The Journal. There's a famous story about the novelist Saul Bellow when, stuck in a rut with an unfinished novel, an American in Paris, he walked beside the Seine and became inspired by the freedom of the water. This relationship between the written … Continue reading Operations of Water by Ian Seed
My review of Substantial Ghosts originally appeared in issue 61 of The Journal.The reader is offered an odd encounter towards the end of Doreen Hinchliffe's Substantial Ghost, her second collection after Dark Italics in 2017. In the poem, 'Twin', Hinchcliffe describes the narrator visiting an apparent twin's bedroom, after fifty years. ('Inseparable, we move and one, each/ Of … Continue reading Substantial Ghosts by Doreen Hinchcliffe
My review of Home Turf originally appeared in issue 61 of The Journal. Home Turf by Ann Matthews is, as poetry books go, a pleasing thing: a good cover, well designed, with a nice weight, shape and heft. And the thingness of the book is important, because Matthews's work is offering us a conceptual sense of … Continue reading Home Turf by Ann Matthews
I'm very pleased that my first science fiction novella, Requiem For An Astronaut, has been published by New Con Press. Requiem is set in the environs of East City, the location for my recent SF stories, and features a scientist, Bart, and his search for the lost astronaut Joan Kaminsky. An excerpt follows below. 'I … Continue reading Requiem For An Astronaut
2021 has been a busy year for me, even if it feels I've never really left the same square mile in East London. For one thing, I took on some more work towards the end of last year, which has taken up more time than I anticipated. Another, and far happier reason, is that my … Continue reading 2021
I have five (not so easy) pieces in the most recent edition of Morphrog online magazine, including a prose poem, 'Birches'. Here's an excerpt: 'I found myself in a small copse of young birches: a damp smell of humus and fresh rain, the sky closed and white, the onset of spring heralded in distant, waxy … Continue reading Morphrog 23
