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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...

Proposition: The limits of our social imaginaries mean the limits of our worlds   1 Perhaps new forms of being require new forms of relationship   11 What is being anyway but gesturing towards an indefinite assembly of unknowable qualities & quantities   12 Categories of being are obstructive & injurious both to those who touch the social imaginary & those who don’t   13 Categories of literature are obstructive & injurious both to those who read it & those who write it   14 Concepts like ‘genre’ & ‘style’ are made-up words   15 Concepts like ‘female’ & ‘male’ are made-up words   16 New forms of being require new forms of thought, such as “that the distinctions between the beautiful and ugly, if made at all, [be] made arbitrarily”[1]   17 I have finally been turned on in the sense that “[i]f one of my works were to be turned on it would destroy itself”[2]   18 Perhaps the attempt to acquire reality through anti-illustrational action is the only meaningful endeavour   19 Francis Bacon says of Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait (c1659):   If you analyse it, you will see that there are hardly any sockets to the eyes, that it is almost completely anti-illustrational I think that the mystery of fact is conveyed by an image being made out of non-rational marks[3]   110 Perhaps belief in the necessity of sacrifice is the utmost achievement for all people at all times    111 Gabrielle Civil says:   Art of all kinds is not just the practice of making, it’s the practice of being in the world a certain way It’s a certain susceptibility, and it’s also sacrifice – the offering up of everything with only a few strings attached[4]   112 Perhaps being arrives through a sustained engagement with the act of thinking as embodied practice   113 If being requires a theatre of the social imaginary do we, the audience, bear responsibility for being’s staging   114 If gender is a “variable cultural interpretation of sex” perhaps our facility to intervene in gender’s [being’s] context(s) is likewise mutable & indefinite[5]   115 What is the difference between you & the thing that eats you – is it the fact

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

fiction

February 2012

A Gift from Bill Gates

Wu Ang

TR. Nicky Harman

fiction

February 2012

My name is Mr Thousands and I’ve worked in all sorts of jobs. Most recently, I’ve been spending my...

fiction

November 2016

The Miserablist

Anne Boyer

fiction

November 2016

This vision was strongly nebulous, an indeterminate but bold reaction only because it was so much like one of...

Prize Entry

April 2017

Terre Haute

Lauren Van Schaik

Prize Entry

April 2017

We’ve been quarantined in the school gym for three weeks when we realise just how much we’ve forgotten. Not...

 

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