The website of writer and poet Daniel Bennett
I'm really pleased to have a poem in the anthology The Cry of the Poor, edited by Fran Lock and published by Culture Matters. 'The Weather In Priory Park' is one of my lockdown poems, about an encounter with a man in my local park. 'Something about a dogsecures you to a place. How else could … Continue reading Cry of the Poor
My review of I Never Think Dark Will Come originally appeared in issue 63 of The Journal.Things abound in the first book by Susan Jordan, which takes as its focus the corporeal and tangible. 'Let us praise little things, the use we make of them,' Jordan declares in 'Laudemus' (the Latin for 'let us praise) … Continue reading I Never Think Dark Will Come by Susan Jordan
My review of Operations of Water originally appeared in issue 63 of The Journal. There's a famous story about the novelist Saul Bellow when, stuck in a rut with an unfinished novel, an American in Paris, he walked beside the Seine and became inspired by the freedom of the water. This relationship between the written … Continue reading Operations of Water by Ian Seed
My review of Substantial Ghosts originally appeared in issue 61 of The Journal.The reader is offered an odd encounter towards the end of Doreen Hinchliffe's Substantial Ghost, her second collection after Dark Italics in 2017. In the poem, 'Twin', Hinchcliffe describes the narrator visiting an apparent twin's bedroom, after fifty years. ('Inseparable, we move and one, each/ Of … Continue reading Substantial Ghosts by Doreen Hinchcliffe
My review of Home Turf originally appeared in issue 61 of The Journal. Home Turf by Ann Matthews is, as poetry books go, a pleasing thing: a good cover, well designed, with a nice weight, shape and heft. And the thingness of the book is important, because Matthews's work is offering us a conceptual sense of … Continue reading Home Turf by Ann Matthews
I have five (not so easy) pieces in the most recent edition of Morphrog online magazine, including a prose poem, 'Birches'. Here's an excerpt: 'I found myself in a small copse of young birches: a damp smell of humus and fresh rain, the sky closed and white, the onset of spring heralded in distant, waxy … Continue reading Morphrog 23
Spring on The Balcony is a film-poem made last year, during the height of lockdown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMUvpCi6I-8
Here's the video of my reading of my poem 'Clickbait', which was commended in the National Poetry Competition 2020. https://vimeo.com/528198452
Very pleased to have my poem 'Clickbait' commended in the National Poetry Competition. You can see a video of me reading it here. Clickbait In the forecourt carparkof the out-of-town hypermarketthe driver of the four-by-fourwith a pair of latex bull testiclesswinging from the tail-barmay as well accept my ireas an inevitable gift. It is Sundaywhich … Continue reading National Poetry Competition 2020
My poem 'The Limit' features in Eyeflash 6. For some reason, I've been credited as D.T. Bennett, which represents a new nom-de-plume... The Limit The secrets you sealinside a house when you work on it. The mirror inthat bedroom, hides six holes drilled in pairswhere I couldn’t gauge the width. After I finished I looked into the face in the … Continue reading Eyeflash Poetry
