Denise Bennett has an MA in creative writing and teaches adults in this subject. Her poems have been widely published in poetry magazines including: Acumen, Envoi, Equinox, Gabriel, Quaker Monthly, South et al. She describes her work as broadly spiritual and has contributed to several anthologies used for worship.

Her pamphlet collection American Dresses was published by Flarestack. In 2004 she was awarded the inaugural Hamish Canham poetry prize for the best poem published in The Poetry Society (London) newsletter. Most recently she was short listed for the Manchester Cathedral religious poetry competition and won 3rd prize in the Blue Butterfly Christian poetry competition. She is currently working on a full length collection.

The Fall – West Sussex 2007

There was a slow, slow turning this autumn
no high winds to buckle and bend the branches;

it was as if someone had taken a blow torch
to the trees, a flare to scorch the leaves to flame,

a jet of heat making a blaze of amber and copper,
bushes into braziers so hot I could almost feel

the colours warming my hands. ‘As good,’
said my American friend, ‘as it gets in New England’.