The website of writer and poet Daniel Bennett
My poem, 'The Panda', has been published in London Grip's Autumn issue. The sounds of the house begin above him,a family waking. He thinks of Stalin preferring a sofa to a presidential bed, of the ace of pentacles gleaming from the apocrypha of a bookshelf of the bottle of Cahors he drank last night,a black wine, dark as a … Continue reading London Grip Autumn 2020
I was raised in a small hamlet in the Shropshire countryside. Maybe it was the triumph of electronic media, the doomy news stories of impending nuclear war in the eighties, or all those odd invasion fantasies proliferating on television, but the natural world was never enough for me. A friend and I once conceived of an ideal community, … Continue reading Statement on Poetry
My poem 'After The Beach' is now live on Tentacular Magazine. Black rock parts the sand,sleek as porpoise finspoised for the depths or launched from prehistory.We buried ourselves here,accumulated like time or metal work, the sandshuffled out of geography.The ship on the horizon pulls us into its nets.Neither of us drew the map:here be dragons, … Continue reading Tentacular 6
My review of Charles Lauder Jr's The Aesthetics of Breath has been published on The High Window. 'In some ways this manifold debut— taking in, as it does, historical figures, family lives, the problem of evil, and how an element of fantasy and danger is never far from our perception of those we treasure and … Continue reading The Aesthetics of Breath by Charles Lauder Jr
My review of Jenny Mitchell's debut collection, Her Lost Language, has been published by The High Window. 'In the age of social media, we’re accustomed to communicating when, perhaps, we don’t have much to say. Everyone does it; it’s the currency of our time. Probably, this has influenced the way we think of poetry, where … Continue reading Her Lost Language by Jenny Mitchell
My review of Nichola Deane's poetry collection, Cuckoo, is online at London Grip. 'The main thing you notice about Cuckoo, Nichola Deane’s debut collection from V Press, is the names. The work teems with characters, from poets (Auden, Lorca, Ahkmatova, Edward Thomas), to artists (Klee, Cornell, Hockney) to politicians (Thatcher and Pinochet, somewhat gruesomely), to members … Continue reading Cuckoo by Nichola Deane
A nice, perceptive review by Charles Lauder, of my poetry collection West South North, North South East, published in Under The Radar magazine. 'The continual motion of [Acton (The Solstice)] epitomizes the journey of Bennett’s work. Wisely, the exploration doesn’t limit itself to London nor to the walled city of Carcassone that finishes the book’s … Continue reading Under The Radar Review: West South North, North South East
My review of Fran Lock's recent collection, Contains Mild Peril, has been published on London Grip. 'Here come the dogs. Sooner or later in a collection by Fran Lock, you’ll encounter the dogs. They leap out at us from the pages of Contains Mild Peril in such titles as ‘Citizen Pitbull’, ‘And I will consider the yellow … Continue reading Contains Mild Peril by Fran Lock
I've been playing a lot of chess recently, so it's nice to have my chess-themed poem 'Alekhine's Defence' published on The High Window. It's a little paean to the time I spent being taught by the rudiments of chess in a coffee-shop on The Hill in Boulder, Colorado, so many years ago. Alekhine's DefenceWeak coffee … Continue reading Alekhine’s Defence
'The next picture is again a landscapenot a tree in sight, no river norepetition and yet it is the same old cathedral,which we resent, to no discernible effect.Each dream erects an aerial as it cat-likeflashes past.' Peter Riley from 'The Linear Journal'
Absence Club 