The website of writer and poet Daniel Bennett
'From inside all you can hear is the wind outside as it buffets the wire fences. The books line the shelves, programmes are loaded on the computers, the plates in the kitchen are clean and neatly stacked, the meat in the walk-in refrigerators remains intact, the boards games are in the display cabinets, the counters … Continue reading Hypothetical Games
I liked to ride the Docklands railway in those days, sitting at the very front of the electric trains, when they were being driven by an operator at the back. As we zipped around the waterfront of the Thames, following rails set on an overpass of raised concrete, I thought of myself as living in … Continue reading I Liked To Take The Trains
In the old days, I'd have found better ways of using the time. I longed to take myself off to a remote place-- an Artic radio station, a mountain lookout, or -- in grander dreams-- the epic loneliness of a spacecraft. The gentle persistent of daily routines. The making of coffee, the delicacy of chocolate. … Continue reading The Great Release
I visited an old acquaintance, a performance poet who had left the city some years before, and moved to the wilds of the north. Our friendship had always been tentative and slightly awkward, in that I had little respect for his work, and he, I knew, felt the same about mine. Still, after many years … Continue reading Automated Houses
At one time or another, the cottage appeared to have been the residence for a landscape painter: Mitchell uncovered scraps of oil-soaked material, brushes, and dried-out paints, and on a set of shelves at the back of the room, he found a pile of canvases. One of the pictures showed a coastal scene, a wide … Continue reading Canvases
I sat out my war in a series of back end stations, always behind the frontline, couched down away from missiles and drones. The days were long and filled with abortive chess moves, and the radios rarely worked. We raided local supplies for wine and cheeses, although these were poor products, lacking in bucolic artistry, … Continue reading My War
We drove out to the old routes, the old roads, the paths across woodland and beyond the railway line, the fields where silage had been sealed in rolls of black plastic, a squat redbrick church, an old manor house converted to a retreat for affluent addicts. I remembered how we would often rove (that word, … Continue reading Crossroads
After Frankie died, his shack in the woods became a sort of shrine. People travelled from all over the country to visit this place in the mountains to the south of our country, where he’d seen out the last of his days. Students and children camped outside on the grass, sleeping under light blankets, eating … Continue reading Frankie
One day, my neighbours were gone. I returned to home to find their flat empty. My wife saw them leave. She called to tell me that a van had parked up outside, that our neighbours had spent the whole evening moving box after box downstairs. I asked if she had seen any clue to the kind … Continue reading Boxes and Boxes
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
