The website of writer and poet Daniel Bennett
Summer drifts in with chestnut pollen on the streets and the electrics of occasional storms. The nights open themselves, and we sleep with the windows ajar, allowing the breeze to drift through our flat on the first floor. It brings the smell of smoke in on its back, occasional traffic noises, a blackbird's evening call. … Continue reading Summer Reading
It starts in childhood, with the books read to you at night. The words are still fluid, and the dramas become quickly diluted into dreams. I remember: a rabbit running wild along a country path, a ginger cat curling up in a nest of flowers. It continues with the books loaned to you from libraries, … Continue reading Lost Books
I’d like to say that I discovered Robinson for myself, but as usual someone else had to show me the way. I seem to require jumpstarts like this to overcome the indolence, which seems to be my natural state. Alarmingly, as I grow older, I seem more in the grip of this laziness: a paralysis … Continue reading My Copy Of Robinson
'Yet he did not hesitate in his career, but, with a mad energy, retraced his steps at once, to the heart of the mighty London.' Edgar Allan Poe My daughter wants to be a detective. I’ve explained to her that this is a high aim. The other day, two men passed us on our way to school. … Continue reading Walking
'In the evening, I'd pour myself a glass of very strong rum on the rocks, and I'd write hardboiled poems...' Pedro Juan Gutierrez I've spent my writing life on the periphery. It's not only a matter of success, or lack of, although that certainly plays its part. You stand watching the dance floor with your … Continue reading Genre and the Edges
We drove to the coast. I like the feel of surf upon my chest. My eyes closed, my back against the sand. Sun a red blur through my eyelids, the universe calling. The pulse and froth of water, the beat of the moon. She called it work. I would never call it work. Red sun, … Continue reading Beneath the Telescope
His train was due to leave at 16.35. It was 16.34 on the digital clock. Stephen started to run. Across the concourse, through the barriers, down the stairs, his trainers made a hard slapping sound upon the tiles. He passed adverts on the walls: for Venice, insurance, a play, a warning about salt, the London … Continue reading Two Men
The best way to the restaurant is a long sloping cobbled street through an old part of the town, which has faded to resemble a derelict museum. No, it's the other way past the town quay. No, you reach here along the underpass, grimed by pigeon shit and imaginative graffiti. Actually, you head through a … Continue reading In The Steam Kitchen
Four couples squeezed into the same aisle: obviously they were going to clash. There were enough beds to go around— Beds For Everyone! the advert might have read— but it was Saturday, the store was packed, and at some stage each couple had probably bickered about being there. 'Now if we just take this one...' … Continue reading Flat Pack Furniture
'Poetry is the one thing that isn't contaminated, the one thing that isn't part of the game.' Roberto Bolano Years ago, I knew someone with ambitions to be a writer. Like many of us, this friend - let's call him Felix - brimmed with curiosity and youthful ambition, and, as Fitzgerald writes of a novelist character … Continue reading Games
Absence Club 