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Claire-Louise Bennett
Claire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire and studied literature and drama at the University of Roehampton, before settling in Galway. Her short fiction and essays have been published in The Stinging Fly, The Penny Dreadful, The Moth, Colony, The Irish Times, The White Review and gorse. She was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize in 2013 and has received bursaries from the Arts Council and Galway City Council. Her debut novel, Pondwas published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2015 and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2016. Her second novel, Checkout 19, is published by Jonathan Cape in August 2021.

Articles Available Online


The Russian Man

Fiction

Issue No. 27

Claire-Louise Bennett

Fiction

Issue No. 27

Many years ago a large Russian man with the longest tendrils of the softest white hair came to live in the fastest growing town...

poetry

Issue No. 13

Morning, Noon & Night

Claire-Louise Bennett

poetry

Issue No. 13

Sometimes a banana with coffee is nice. It ought not to be too ripe – in fact there should...

DEDICATION   Flamingo, urchin, bestiaric beast: Paroling city matters, you re-form From pigeon’s dirty feather to a quill   A parlour game: we reach the dovetailing Between those singing spasmic pities that We summon, and the dank urbanity   You wreak It comes to punish this reserve Love: whether zoo, circus, menagerie, All matters of a name more so than form,   Let us rush towards autowilderness, Strifed with wet, chaostic humours 1 Erotic prescience : I sense us : one   We’ve taken flyte, so let us rest in shelter, Into the original of the world, Nothing can stop our loved country from mattering   ONE   *   There is a woman turning a woman turning itself on   Sick hydra starting up    I dream of sea becoming seaworthy to sea   The sea drownsy    in its offensive capability   Drownsy Baby        thirsting in its sleep        Hush now   Totemic fetish or mnemonic logo    :    her offensive cheep    :    untid’ly starting up for the tide    :                cheap   *   You cannot scry in your own silver when its ripples split the vision   They cannot peer into a depth they’ve mined        and filled Selfsang in their own gags        Dull drams overfilled —spilling unward   Eat your eyesight, bastard            Ring yourself unfit   *   Q: Where has this water gone? Why disappear?   A: Add an arch to the middle of valour There’s your answer       In the mean time, build a city        Then build a countryside for balance   Now, not sea at all                They become   ardor’s coldened shoulder            Ardor eccentric Radiating inward   Throttling at different purposes and speeds   *   TWO   An altared state urned in a loss of verse Severed then served with coming of the morning My love has earned this insurrective swerve That seeks to crash the calming of his mourning   *   You rest inequality   If I was embedded in a painscape, it’d be different   Q: Where do you rest? A: Camped out in the bedazzled house of his runtish fantasy   His House Believes   As it is now, there is an asterisk to every kiss     Let me rest in that nest of those pink, electric branches   There, there is safety   *   THREE   To have a handle on something is to have the capacity to turn it on or off   *   What I    cuse him of I    cuse myself   *   When they are together, their shape is endless and content   The sea drinking the sea                    The sea is drinking the sea   *   The vulvic octopus dies with her young Meanwhile, I:    waste    with my    youth   The staggering dear does not accept my hand, fawning

Contributor

August 2014

Claire-Louise Bennett

Contributor

August 2014

Claire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire and studied literature and drama at the University of Roehampton, before settling in...

The Lady of the House

fiction

Issue No. 8

Claire-Louise Bennett

fiction

Issue No. 8

Wow it’s so still. Isn’t it eerie. Oh yes. So calm. Everything’s still. That’s right. Look at the rowers – look at how fast...

READ NEXT

feature

June 2015

Uneasy Lies the Head

William Watkin

feature

June 2015

Last October I was standing in my kitchen, waiting for espresso to trickle from the spout of our imposing...

fiction

Issue No. 18

Don't Give Up the Fight

Osama Alomar

TR. C. J. Collins

fiction

Issue No. 18

  DON’T GIVE UP THE FIGHT   While cavorting in a field, the wild horse felt overjoyed to see...

Art

August 2017

Becoming Alice Neel

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art

August 2017

From the first time I saw Alice Neel’s portraits, I wanted to see the world as she did. Neel...

 

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