The website of writer and poet Daniel Bennett
The other night, coming back from work, we came across an incident at our local tube station. It was a drizzly, wet evening, the end of the kind of winter day that puts a chill inside you. Queues of people were backing up at turnstiles. Armed police patrolled the inside of the station. A mobile … Continue reading Eastworld
'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
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
'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
‘Dogs keep turning up in this story.’ As you may have noticed, I have a little habit for quotations about dogs. It dates to the early drafts of my novel, when I noted down any dog reference for my background archive. As it turns out, Valero Varesi’s most recent novel is a great dog resource, … Continue reading Valero Varesi
'One morning, Manawydan and Pryderi unleashed their dogs and mounted their horses. The dogs ran ahead barking and yelping and sniffing the air. They came to a thicket of tangled brambles and thorns. The dogs picked up a scent and their barks became one song. They ran in amongst the bushes like the many rivulets … Continue reading Rivulets
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
'We define ourselves, the Vegan thought, by our attitude to dogs. Feed the, breed them, eat them, starve them, set them to fight or set them to run, inject them with hormones or radical cancer drugs, send them out to desiccate in the cockpit of a spaceship: we are them.' All The Dogs.
It occupied me for many years, it continues to occupy me, for reasons I don't really understand. At the time, I worked in a restaurant, washing dishes and clearing out scraps of boiled meat and vegetables, the steamy waste of the kitchen. After work, I would cycle back through the late city, and it seems … Continue reading Dream of the Heart
Absence Club 