The website of writer and poet Daniel Bennett
'The writer's task is to invent reality.' J.G. Ballard. On a recent trip to Heathrow, I travelled along the Westway. It's been a few years since I headed out on that road, not since a friend of mine passed his driving test and we made a specific trip out west with Low by David Bowie … Continue reading Terminal Realism: Kathy Acker and William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard and Zadie Smith
Which of them will triumph? I would see our trumpeter on visits to the town. A scruffy but amiable figure, standing outside the old museum. He had worked in the same office job for as long as most could remember. But a dispute broke out. These are difficult times. He lost his job. Anyone could tell you a similar story. … Continue reading Trumpet Wars of the Old Town
'Yes, sometimes I think that all my writing is nothing more than the compensatory work of a frustrated painter.' J. G. Ballard In retrospect, I should have known I was in trouble when someone asked me to list the influences of my novel All The Dogs. I named William Blake, Flannery O'Connor, Michael Reeves, and Graham … Continue reading Writing and Painting
'I stopped my bicycle under a street lamp near Riddervolds Square and spread out the map to see where I was going.' Over the last years, loyal to the time in my life when I eschewed travel for reading, when the word edged out the world, I've taken to choosing a novel or book of … Continue reading Trapped In Oslo – The Blue Room by Hanne Ørstavik
'Words sing what mind brings' Jack Kerouac If you want to develop as a human being, never mind a writer, it's probably a good idea to kick any idealisation of the Beats. I've lost count of the number of people who have passed through my life with the appetite for a Beat biography without putting … Continue reading Multi-Media Beats
Kurt Vonnegut, maybe. I bought the Dell edition novels when I lived in America. Like Vonnegut, I had been a smoker, and I would find a beguiling correlative between those small light paperback editions and a packet of cigarettes. I devoured those books in a single sitting. And maybe Philip K Dick too. I read his books with … Continue reading The Compulsive Joy of the Series
'Cigarette smoke hanging on in the living room. The ship's lights out on the water, dimming. The stars burning holes in the sky. Becoming ash, yes.' - 'Tomorrow' Every poet is a critic, at least if you believe Harold Bloom. In The Anxiety of Influence, he imagined the great poets of the twentieth century wrestling … Continue reading In a Marine Light: the poetry of Raymond Carver
I've never really got to grips with short stories. It wasn't like I didn't try. My first literary hero was Edgar Allen Poe, and I spent my mid-teens writing tales which delighted in darkness and imagination. I had a favourite English teacher— a neat and dapper man who smoked Marlboro Reds and drove a 2CV— … Continue reading Short fictions
But do I, really, envy him? At night he must rush home to change into black-tie for the evening’s reception. Work has been busy, but he barely has time to kiss his wife on the cheek. Television is the baleful light that illuminates his children’s faces. Later, there is the meeting of the governing body. … Continue reading Dog Dream of the Boss
We met on the beach. The tall black buildings, the upturned boats. A summer on a contract, re-laying the walkway underneath the cliff tops. Hungry days. Life guards shouting jokes from the pavilion, tourists complaining. No one really applying themselves, except you. At work early, reading Mircea Eliade by the war memorial, the names of … Continue reading Boom Years
Absence Club 