Mailing List


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...

To kiss you should not involve such fear of imprecision I shouldn’t mind about the gallery attendant He is not staring That’s not what his torch and lanyard is for   I have seen at least four people holding hands already and I’m only just out of the revolving doors They weren’t unpeeling to the root To kiss you should not feel like anything other than embellishment They, people, loads of people, have staged kiss-ins at Sainsbury’s and in Southbank cafés precisely in solidarity with my freedom to kiss you They kissed en masse on Valentine’s Day with a hashtag and everything When that historian shot himself in Notre Dame two years ago, when Larousse dictionary mooted changing the definition of marriage, he was not thinking of me tarrying in this gallery gift shop, flicking postcards and studiously not-looking at you Larousse dictionary’s colophon is a woman blowing at a dandelion clock Have I used colophon correctly? Where are you   Dandelion comes from the French dent-de-lion, lion’s teeth   I am not biding my time   A lion would not baulk at kissing you, toothily   The French for dandelion is pissenlit This translates, broadly, as wet the bed I will wait   I could kiss you lightly, the side of your face, as if putting out a fire The gallery attendant is not looking at us I have spotted another couple kissing, a boy and a girl, like it was nothing, like they didn’t have to think about lions   When you puff at a dandelion clock, puff at its puff, it looks like you’re blowing a kiss   To kiss you would be plotlessness, and nothing like falling   The gallery attendant is not sizing up our haircuts In fact he’s looking the other way   The move was mine to make,   all gallery-hushed and happy as I reached for you   and   RIGHT   LET’S                                                                                

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

Art

March 2013

Beyond the Mainstream and into the Digital

Vid Simoniti

Art

March 2013

Claire Bishop. Everywhere I go, some curator or artist wants to be rid of this turbulent critic.   In 2006...

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...

Interview

Issue No. 5

Interview with Ivan Vladislavić

Jan Steyn

Interview

Issue No. 5

Ivan Vladislavić is one of a handful of writers working in South Africa after apartheid whose work will still...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required