The website of writer and poet Daniel Bennett
The river is high these early hours, a fine mist reminding us of the Ghost. Someone coughs inside a distant cell, someone chants matins, somewherea renegade brother brews beer.Reports of plague illuminate our books,while the sandstone walls weep like open wounds. Young friars play football amongst bean canesand wild garlic, daydream of sunon white fences, earthly mores. Read more on Allegro … Continue reading The Monks
'Pollen-skinned pond's edge by the dock where we stood and tried to describe it-- as yellow as the memory of yellow, a memory of light without context. We gave up and just looked. And walked further.' from 'Brookeside', Joseph Massey
Lost from sight where planting and cleared scrubGive on the ride, a plantation to the rightOpposite, unmanaged coppice bolting skywardsBut her bell heard, its tinkling travelled ahead' Free Running Bitch, Andrew Crozier
They come in off the streetwith the clammy heat of city storms.Nearly men, chancers, clones,mostly vile. Clothes smeared with cocktail cherries, a smellof pickle brine and cordite.One thumbnail painted blue,ponytails, though they’re mostly bald. The glimmer of a fake horizonworks at their back, day for night,hotdog flesh, a painted skybut the stars are only pricks … Continue reading Midnight Movies
The paintings of R.B. Kitaj will always been twinned in my mind with the poetry of Lee Harwood, for the rather basic reason that the cover of the Paladin edition of Harwood's Crossing the Frozen River included a detail from Kitaj's 'A Study For The World's Body'. I brought that Lee Harwood book with me … Continue reading R.B. Kitaj
Drive to the junkyard,to check out the weather beating into ironwork,the torsion of steel. Or swing by the dealerof aggregate and masonry, blue quartz and white limeare drifting pyramids on the concrete forecourt,where a seashell is astray from the channel bed.A house is all that remains. Pass the wall by the railway,where nettles sway in … Continue reading Lowly
A short film of a long poem, from my collection West South North, North South East https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOd_7UzoRfE Buy the book here.
Penny Falls Burnt sugar, breezy heat. White pollen and the carsick feeling of newly minted shame. It was gambling’s first twitch, in a summer amusement park,as I kept pace with a friend who cast away guilt moneywith easy prodigality. The arcade pumped like an … Continue reading Blue Nib
The perfect city predated the city. It lay in a hectare of damp fields, formed out of pylons and the reach of old oaks along the hedgerows. I wandered from door to door, persuading neighbours of the value of a life without cars. Future roads superimposed over old roads, the routes, the hideouts. An act … Continue reading Memories of the Perfect City
Vapour A road trip. That old saloon: deep bluefinned in a quaint English way,more sea bass than marlin. No destination.We were testing freedom, heading out across the fen landscape, where aircraftbuzzed tree crowns and farm buildingsand tore away, stitching trailsacross our temporary portion of sky. Read more online at Ink, Sweat and Tears
Absence Club 