Poetry Corner: Bored Wolves' Stefan Lorenzutti on Peat and Other Soils as it goes into it's second print

The return of Peat and Other Soils for its second print run marks increasingly common celebration in contemporary poetry: a small, hand-stitched chapbook that refuses to stay buried. Brandon Bennett's debut, first released in a limited run by Death of Worker's Whilst Building Skyscrapers Press, has refused to sink into the proverbial sludge and is back with the quiet insistence of the peatlands it evokes - dark, dense, and crawling with life. This comes shortly after the release of his second chapbook, Love is a Cat, that is being launched later this month.

"dreamlike passages through a fog"

Among the most striking critical engagements with the text has come from Stefan Lorenzutti, of Bored Wolves fame (a publisher you should endeavour to make yourself familiar with if not already). His reflections highlight Bennett's gift for movement. In particular, Stefan was keen to note the way in which the poems "pivot from one site to another, exterior or interior, harsh to soft moment and back."

Lorenzutti describes the transitions as "dreamlike passages throguh fog," noting ho the poems maintain a delicate yet essential friction: "the tiniest bit of snag on some molecules during the crossover." Bennett's attention to texture mirrors the book's thematic terrain - the drag of memory, the grit of inheritance, the softening of the self.

Moreover, Lorenzutti notes the captivating temporal ambiguity, observing "numerous points where it's impossible to tell what decade of life is being inhabited." This aligns with Tom Branfoot's earlier assessment of the collection as a world "in which time is forever stuck," reinforcing the sense that Bennett writes from a suspended, bog-like temporality.

Peat and Other Soils transforms small gestures into mythic tenderness

His praise of Bennett's softening nouns such as "organic shampoo" and "strawberry milkshake" underscores how domestic gentleness becomes a counterweight to the book's darker excavations. He notes how these become emblamatic of the poet's ability to turn small gestures into mythic tenderness.

"The Norse knew a thing or two about compounds and so does Bennett"

Poet Tom Branfoot situates Peat and Other Soils within a lineage of northern lyricism, noting "an air of Seamus Heaner and Gregory Corso throughout." He praises Bennett's compound words - sungushing, fatherleaning, strippedbackgums, thisbarelyfish - as "spaceless phrasemaking," a linguistic innovation that gives the poems a distinctive pulse. This praise is echoed by Lorenzutti who said the "Norse knew a thing or two about compounds and so does Bennett."

In many ways, this chapbook is patrilineal excavation - soused in personal archeology and cultural inheritance.

The seond print is limited to 40 copies, so make sure you get hold of one before they run out (again).

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Book Launch

Brandon Bennett will be launching Love is a Cat and celebrating the release of the second printing of Peat and Other Soils at Corbieres, Manchester, on the 28th June. He will be reading alongside Joey Frances and Joe Conway.

He is also hosting a live poetry night in Macclesfield on July 3rd and will be present at the Wilmslow Writers' Festival.