The website of writer and poet Daniel Bennett
We bought fresh orange juice on the street and moved away from the main square, deeper into the barrio. The building lay behind a high iron fence, the gate dismantled to leave the way clear. A hard sun. Ash-coloured walls sliced with red aerosol daubs, that hurried, runic script which is the same in any … Continue reading At The Palazzo
Brooklyn Here we dreamed through the waking hours,forced alert by jet lag and monstrous snow.A valentine in sub-zero. Wind burnor gin blossoms on the C train.A freeze chased us through Washington Squareinto the aisles of the Strand. Brooklyn Bridge stalked the river like a monster.Have you ever woken from sleepinto an old movie? Here I … Continue reading The Kindling
My first full collection of poetry, mixing themes of place and memory, family and loss. ‘In West South North, North South East, Daniel Bennett envisages landscapes of decay; urban Britain as a ruined, post-apocalyptic wasteland, haunted by its past, at odds with its present, fearful of its future; countryside and coast bound loosely together by mud … Continue reading West South North, North South East
'All these weirdos, and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.' It takes me a long time to get around to this kind of thing at the moment. Sometimes … Continue reading Denis Johnson
It's taken me a while to get to writing about Tom Raworth's death, partly because life doesn't always allow room for the losses which affect us, partly because such things always take me a little time to get right. I met Tom Raworth in the mid-nineties. He will always feature on the short list of writers … Continue reading Tom Raworth
'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
'Trieste, new city That preserves a boyish adolescence.' Umberto Saba In July last year, around the time of my birthday, I visited Trieste with my daughter and my partner. It was the first real holiday we had taken together: a strange experience for us all, I think. Two halves of my life had been joined. … Continue reading Trieste: Saba, Morris, and Harwood
'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
'How hard to grasp a former presence' John Hoffman To write poetry is, for the most part, to make a continued and dedicated investment in the fact of your irrelevance. While many would recognize a few tricks of the form (probably more than would be able to name techniques for painting, for example) it remains … Continue reading Vanishing Poets
'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
Absence Club 