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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...

Isaac Goodchrist, Esq reviewed the 48-hour letter   therefore, in the strictly professional opinion of this author, the nation’s military bodies are adequately licensed, according to the language of law and the precedent of 2001’s AUMF (Authorisation for Use of Military Force), to employ all appropriate means — including deadly persuasion — against those foreign entities (or, if necessary, non-entities) as enumerated supra, including by proxy all persons, organisations, or nations abetting those entities/non-entities, age being no object, gender being no object, race being no object, citizenship being no object, faculty of mind being no object   In sum, should lethal force be applied, the powers that be should sleep swimmingly, in terms of, at least, the language of law and the facts of precedent, soporifically perfumed by the atomised skull matter of those foreign foes (of any potential age, colour, shape, or content)   Goodchrist signed the letter   His signature had the aspect of a string of bulbous grapes on the vine The page was fat stock, flecked with colour, with a smell a little bleachy and audible flap Against the dark grained wood of Goodchrist’s kitchen table, its handsome ivory popped Goodchrist recapped his pen, which he’d stolen from a Blockbusters, circa 1992, and he watched the ink sink, stain, barely bleed, and set; then, with plain horror, he looked forward and came to slow terms with the breakfast before him He thought, So food has come to this   Breakfast, Goodchrist was discovering, was stale cereal, served to him — by him — in the bile-green, becrusted dog bowl He found he had already conceded a lump to his mouth He chewed, wondered How he had arrived at supping from this lowly vessel was mystery, as were most of his other domestic movements for the past two feverish days, during which time he’d composed the letter As was lately usual, the composition period had been spent in fugue The stress of his job was wrenching the fingertips of his senses off their ledge with increasing spur In the pit below, mind was cloaca, but for the legalese flushing through   Goodchrist was a war lawyer It was his

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...

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fiction

June 2012

Spinning Days of Night

Susana Medina

fiction

June 2012

Day 1 in the Season before Chaos   These were the days before the glitch. The weather was acutely...

poetry

September 2016

Two Poems

Sun Yung Shin

poetry

September 2016

  Autoclonography   for performance   In 1998, scientists in South Korea claimed to have successfully cloned a human...

Art

November 2013

The Past is a Foreign Country

Natasha Hoare

Art

November 2013

‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’ The immortal first line to L. P. Hartley’s...

 

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