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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...

INSERT: Little Pistorius in a Sleevelet of Mirrors A ballet performed by the corps du ballet of S——– to the music of Satie’s Embryons desséchés in the middle of the opera, Pistorius Rex, & in the very womb of the theatre which cannot be located on earth NO-OUVERTURE: But an interlude, a Quaalude, under Europa, an etude, a vein where the scholar can ride a pen assassination, an arbour assignation in which a nymph snaps her neck and goes cyanic like a cygnet, her pupils unspooled, and a poet hangs his lyre amid the branches lyre-stage death of the author wearing a gold noise-cancelling machine for a crown and golden jump rope for a noose getting high, lying down like a jock on the highway with his hands in the curls of another jock because they saw it in a movie: how to love and bury their hands in each other: androphiles on the dividing line remember when the jocks all extinguished themselves in an Illiad of trust, magic, desire and idiocy? – Our opera’s got too much of these already! – so bring on the ballet already! TABLEAUX MORTES: Ahem The wealthy men of S——– would like to see their mistresses’ dinner-plate tutus and powdered thighs, teasing calves, ankles so easily cocked between thumb and finger Leave the slippers on, sister Tiny spoons for caviar and cocaine But the bone spoon is the best spoon Occiptal dishlet, better than Spode or a krater of the moon Place to sip Spores and spicules Dear eyebone! China white! Knockout punch! Fontanel! Ahem As patrons of the Opera, these men demand more ballets per Opera They are refugee princes, pencil manufacturers, salt-peter synthecisers, clockwork organisers, and beaver-pelt hats purveyors And also the purveyors of ringtones, Glocks, and daytrading software They sit in stalls and boxes with chains hanging down their chests because they are also mayors & brewers from New Glarus

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

November 2012

Life outside the Manet Paradise Resort : On the paintings of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Orlando Reade

feature

November 2012

*   A person is represented, sitting in what appears to be the banal and conventional pose of a...

poetry

April 2014

Lives of the Saints

Luke Neima

poetry

April 2014

‘I’m tending to this dead tree,’ he tells me. Last time he was rolling the hard rocks down into...

poetry

December 2016

Three Poems

Adelaide Docx

poetry

December 2016

ADVICE FROM BENJO CORTEZ GALLERY OWNER, CHELSEA THE RED CAT, NEW YORK, 2AM    When I feel something It...

 

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