The website of writer and poet Daniel Bennett
‘Lewis and Benjamin gambolled ahead, put up grouse, played finger-football with rabbit droppings, peered over the precipice onto the backs of kestrels and ravens and, every now and then, crept off into the bracken, and hid. They liked to pretend they were lost in a forest, like the Twins in Grimms’ fairy-tale, and that each … Continue reading In The Green Shade
Even those of us who lived through those days, we who learned the texture of history as it pushed against our cheeks, can barely understand the magnitude of what took place. The narrative is too grand, all-encompassing, planetary. Really it is the story of all of us. The children on the street corner, picking through … Continue reading The Events
I remembered an odd feeling that once haunted me, whenever I took a photograph in the street. Now, we take photos all of the time: photos of ourselves; photos of each other; photos of sunrises and billboards; photos of cocktails of blackberry and gin; photos of plates of sweetbreads, or pork cheek or pineapple; photos … Continue reading Photos
‘We were tired. It made us more tired to look at each other when we saw we weren’t getting away with anything at all. We didn’t have any secrets. We hadn’t seen each other for a while and it was clear we hadn’t changed for the better. We were between jobs, or stuck in jobs … Continue reading Tired
'A man in white djellaba crossing a high rise balcony. A view from a compound window in Tucson. Wagtails dying by the motorway. 'My name is Mieko Tan. Welcome to my crazy world!!!' The last spire of Venice slipping beneath the waves. Not long into his stay in the retreat, Morgan realised where he'd first … Continue reading Dream of the High Mountain
The walls are freshly painted, bone white gleaming under halogen. They are always being painted, as stains are likely to seep out of nowhere, sometimes overnight, sometimes taking months before they become visible. The building stands on a traffic island to the south of the city, a circular structure which an architect designed to resemble … Continue reading Sick Building
'The dogs kept to the shadows, whimpered softly, then were strangely still. Peter was moved to whisper the line from Psalms that had so moved him, hours before. Deliver my soul from the sword,My darling from the power of the dog. He wondered if that Prayer Book were often used, if he might not snip … Continue reading The Power Of The Dog
'Batu said it was likely that Charley, both her person and her Chevy, were infested with dog ghosts. These ghosts were different from the zombies. Nonhuman ghosts, he said, were the most difficult of all ghosts to dislodge, and dogs were worst of all. There is nothing as persistent, as loyal, as clingy, as a … Continue reading Dog Ghosts
'A train came. It swept by, lighting the sky, burning like Moses' bush. Figures stood out, wrapt in reverie. I saw them, the Kenneallys, merging into a far-off city, but before they went too far I could see other things. It was as though the compartments of the train grew, one by one, cubicle by … Continue reading Marigold Fire
'His usual mood was one of indefinite basic sadness. He had the dejected helplessness of an orphan -- an inability to fill the emptiness of life between the sensational events of meals. This was reflected in the aimlessness of his movements, in his irrational fits of melancholia, his sad whimpering and his inability to settle … Continue reading Nimrod
Absence Club 