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Synopsis

The Glass Swarm by Peter Bennet

Peter Bennet's new collection unites skilful random rhyme and lightly handled traditional forms with characteristic imaginative power and dark humour. The poems combine an unusually braod range of reference with surprising intimacy, not least in the intricate sequence 'Folly Wood', which takes as a starting point the Twelve Gates of the English alchemist George Ripley.

The Glass Swarm confirms Bennet's growing reputation as one of the most engaging poets writing today.

"Peter Bennet's poetry is profoundly English in an era where that term seems to have suffered a crisis of identity or perhaps even memory loss. He is the opposite of a modish voice, and is therefore all the more to be savoured." — Kate Clanchy and W N Herbert

Peter Bennet lives in Northumberland near the Wild Hills o' Wanney. He was Associate Editor of Stand from 1995 to 1998, and is co-editor of Other Poetry. He received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation in 2005 for Goblin Lawn.

"The Glass Swarm is a collection that strikes a remarkable relationship with history, commanding it with ease. From a sketch of Browning in the Black Country to Hopkins admiring the glaciers of Grindelwald, each scene is peculiar and fascinating, and history becomes at once exciting and malign." -
Helen Mort, Poetry London

"Bennet has a natural talent for the Browningesque dramatic monologue." - Nicholas Mui, Poetry Salzburg Review

Reviews of The Glass Swarm

	20 December 2008
Reviewer: Sarah Crown Publication: The Guardian
Peter Bennet's handling of folklore, his watchful, thicketed landscapes, the stateliness of his language - all fit themselves perfectly to winter...This is fireside poetry. In this TS Eliot prize-shortlisted collection, he considers the moments of interaction between past and present, fairytale and fact, using folklore's staples to cast fresh light on contemporary concerns... Sarah Crown
	02 November 2008
The Sunday Times Review
Reviewer: Sean O'Brien Publication: Sunday Times
Peter Bennet was for many years a well-kept poetic secret, known mostly to his admirers in his adopted northeast. With Goblin Lawn: New and Selected Poems (2005) he began to receive wider attention, and The Glass Swarm should ensure that a new audience will encounter this gifted and original poet, who is currently producing his best work. ..In recent years, he has developed intricately and brilliantly improvised rhyming, both in longer forms and in narrative sonnets. The sonnets typify the gleeful unease of his work. A dead lover returns dripping from the sea: “Your darkening footprints on the wet sand shrink/to dimples and your hotel bed/feels the tide shift and begins to sink/while I am downstairs at the desk already,/insistent, and the worse for drink.” Sean O'Brien

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