England Remembered

Denise Bennett

Denise Bennett has an MA in creative writing and has taught this subject for Portsmouth College for twenty eight years. She also runs poetry workshops in community settings.

Her work has been widely published in poetry journals. Her first pamphlet collection American Dresses was published by Flarestack in 2000 and her two full length collections, Planting the Snow Queen (2011) and Parachute Silk (2015) were published by Oversteps Books. She also has a pamphlet collection – Water Chits, published by Indigo Dreams (2017).

In 2004 she was awarded the inaugural Hamish Canham prize by the Poetry Society for her poem Changing Shape and short listed for the prize in 2014 with her poem The Ring. In 2012 she won the Hasting poetry prize with her poem The Foundling Hospital and in 2013 Parachute Silk won the Havant Literary Festival poetry competition. She has co-edited This Island City, an anthology of poems about Portsmouth and also written a sequence of poems about the loss of The Royal George, which foundered at Spithead in 1782 with the loss of nine hundred lives.

Much of her work has been inspired by local history. In 2005 she was involved in poetry workshops in the National Museum of The Royal Navy and produced a series of poems about the H.M.S. M33, the only surviving gunboat from the Gallipoli Campaign now displayed next to HMS Victory. Water Chits, a poem about the lack of water at Gallipoli is one of a set she wrote in response to a letter written by a bandsman/medic in 1916.

Denise regularly reads her work at poetry events for Tongues and Grooves poetry at The Square Tower in Portsmouth and for Front Room events at The Spring Arts Centre in Havant. She also facilitates writing and poetry U3A groups in Havant and teaches the Havelock Writers’ Group in Southsea. In summer 2016 she ran a poetry workshop as part of the Southdowns Poetry Festival.

In 2014 she became involved in the England Remembered Project – a collaboration of poetry and art work to commemorate World War One initiated by the Artist, Jacky Dillon. This was showcased with an exhibition and poetry reading at the Art Space Gallery in Brougham Road, Southsea. Two of her poems, Edith Sylvester and Letter to… written in response to the images of rural England and poetry from the Great War are published in the England Remembered Book.

"Edith Sylvester was inspired by a name inscribed on a bench outside St. Mary’s church, Portchester and a plaque inside the church commemorating the lives of those who had died in World War One. I imagined her sitting on the seat, reflecting on those who had died. Letter to… is written from a soldier to his wife/sweetheart and has a universal message". Denise Bennett

“... the same moon lights the darkness of my trench, and I taste your kiss” Letter to……. Denise Bennett

Planting the Snow Queen cover designed by Tom Bennett and reproduced with kind permission of Overstep Books. The recently published Water Chits is available through Indigo Dreams Publishing Ltd