The website of writer and poet Daniel Bennett
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
'I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's.' William Blake I've always avoided writers' biographies, beyond the potted versions at the front of the work. It was an early decision, and one I've more or less stuck to over the years. When you start out at writing, it's tempting to go looking … Continue reading Influences
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
In 2001, I travelled to Brussels, for a long weekend. One night, travelling back to my hotel on the Metro, on the way to Simonis, a man took the seat opposite me. He was mixed race, and balding, dressed in jeans and trainers, a T-shirt with an illegible decal underneath his cotton jacket
Absence Club 