The website of writer and poet Daniel Bennett
It is 2009, and the summer is a hot one at its best. Most days, he travels to London for work, heading out from the small town where he lives with his wife and daughter. The journey is long, but he has learned to make use of the time, reading, working on a novel, sedating … Continue reading Summer Reading: Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto Bolano
It starts in childhood, with the books read to you at night. The words are still fluid, and the dramas become quickly diluted into dreams. I remember: a rabbit running wild along a country path, a ginger cat curling up in a nest of flowers. It continues with the books loaned to you from libraries, … Continue reading Lost Books
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
'I stopped my bicycle under a street lamp near Riddervolds Square and spread out the map to see where I was going.' Over the last years, loyal to the time in my life when I eschewed travel for reading, when the word edged out the world, I've taken to choosing a novel or book of … Continue reading Trapped In Oslo – The Blue Room by Hanne Ørstavik
'Words sing what mind brings' Jack Kerouac If you want to develop as a human being, never mind a writer, it's probably a good idea to kick any idealisation of the Beats. I've lost count of the number of people who have passed through my life with the appetite for a Beat biography without putting … Continue reading Multi-Media Beats
I've never really got to grips with short stories. It wasn't like I didn't try. My first literary hero was Edgar Allen Poe, and I spent my mid-teens writing tales which delighted in darkness and imagination. I had a favourite English teacher— a neat and dapper man who smoked Marlboro Reds and drove a 2CV— … Continue reading Short fictions
But do I, really, envy him? At night he must rush home to change into black-tie for the evening’s reception. Work has been busy, but he barely has time to kiss his wife on the cheek. Television is the baleful light that illuminates his children’s faces. Later, there is the meeting of the governing body. … Continue reading Dog Dream of the Boss
Absence Club 