The website of writer and poet Daniel Bennett
'He left the room and shut the door behind him. No point saying goodbye to a dead man.' Pascal Garnier I recently picked up the novel How's The Pain?, by Pascal Garnier. You know what it's like. You go to a bookshop with a list of things to buy, but none of them feel right. You … Continue reading Pascal Garnier and The Ideal
'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
We drove to the coast. I like the feel of surf upon my chest. My eyes closed, my back against the sand. Sun a red blur through my eyelids, the universe calling. The pulse and froth of water, the beat of the moon. She called it work. I would never call it work. Red sun, … Continue reading Beneath the Telescope
His train was due to leave at 16.35. It was 16.34 on the digital clock. Stephen started to run. Across the concourse, through the barriers, down the stairs, his trainers made a hard slapping sound upon the tiles. He passed adverts on the walls: for Venice, insurance, a play, a warning about salt, the London … Continue reading Two Men
The best way to the restaurant is a long sloping cobbled street through an old part of the town, which has faded to resemble a derelict museum. No, it's the other way past the town quay. No, you reach here along the underpass, grimed by pigeon shit and imaginative graffiti. Actually, you head through a … Continue reading In The Steam Kitchen
Four couples squeezed into the same aisle: obviously they were going to clash. There were enough beds to go around— Beds For Everyone! the advert might have read— but it was Saturday, the store was packed, and at some stage each couple had probably bickered about being there. 'Now if we just take this one...' … Continue reading Flat Pack Furniture
'The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, taking to the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry.' Raoul Vaneigem Over the past few years, during the months of late summer, I walk through the campus of a London university, … Continue reading Work
'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
About eighteen months ago, I went for a drink in the Arts Café in Islington. I was taken there by a woman I had only recently met. You reach the entrance down an unpromising side street off Essex Road, and climb the stairs where photocopied posters for small gigs or poetry readings are tacked to … Continue reading Gardening Through the Apocalypse
Absence Club 