Stench, Bennett’s debut poetry collection, was published by Arlen House in 2024.

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Warning! This poetry is so potent, you’ll smell it coming!

Praise For Stench 

Not for the faint-hearted, Trish Bennett’s poetry packs a punch. Her poems burst from the page with rhythmical energy, assaulting us with wit, a refreshing realism and a wicked imagination. This voice, this tone, with its deceptively easy humour and low-key social commentary, runs all the way through the poems as she recalls family occasions and key moments – often with unlaboured and deeply felt love, in some cases with abject sorrow, in others with outright hilarity or outrage. In addition, her evocations of place, home and nature are beautifully captured with much originality. A long time coming, this first collection is worth the wait. It has given the poet time to hone the tools of her trade, to fully develop her use of irony, her comedic timing, her intelligent framing of the political, religious and cultural mores she has encountered. This is a collection that will not disappoint on every reading! 

‒ Ruth Carr 

Trish Bennett beautifully captures the heart, soul and humour of the border counties. Even through the years of turmoil, her love for its natural beauty and people shine through that turmoil like a beacon. 

‒ Marie Jones 

Stench is an ebullient celebration of the human, the domestic and the natural world, an invitation to breathe in the myriad and diverse flavours of the poet’s richly lived life, close to the border, a liminal space never far from her consciousness. Her poems combine an astute attention to structure and form, with an often hilarious and daring sense of inventiveness, are chockful of vivid images and turns of phrase, often magical in their originality and conception. Her language is precise, yet flowing, direct, yet ironic, emotional, yet unsentimental, and her deployment of regional border slang, idiom, myth and personal anecdote pay rich dividends. Her subjects range from childhood memory to the travails and joys of motherhood and marriage, from the beauty of the local landscape to the amorous exploits of bees and cockatiels. Trish Bennett’s is a powerful and entertainingly optimistic voice, a humour-charged, irrepressible instrument that urges the reader to ‘crank it up to MAX,’ in the face of adversity. A wonderful, gloves-off, no-nonsense debut collection. It will do you the world of good to read it. 

‒ Frank Farrelly 

A meaty collection from a butcher’s daughter who knows her border homeland well. Some poems make me cry. Others make me laugh loud, long, and hard. Parrots, dogs, cats, childer, bombs and bees all feature in their turn. A welcome space on my bookshelves for this beautiful collection. 

‒ Réaltán Ní Leannáin 

Trish Bennett’s Stench announces a vibrant new voice in Irish poetry ‒ one that is unafraid and bolshy; loud and clever. Bennett uses the vernacular of place to evoke the border country of her childhood and the lakelands where she now lives. The strength of that voice should not allow us to miss a vulnerability in these poems too, where the heart is lying bare on a flag stone, the bomb exploding on the page, and all of life is singing in the lines. This is a lyric taking poetry to a new place, taking on the romanticism of Yeats and saying ‘Me Arse’ much as Brendan Kennelly did. It is a loving account of a fierce woman who is living every day to its full, grabbing life by the horns and riding it! 

‒ Maureen Boyle 

In Stench, Trish Bennett gives us a potent admixture of bombs and bonhomie. She brings a warm forensic eye for cultural detail and is skilled at making charming things that are naturally sinister. Poignant and tender, these are poems of a troubled heart-place, delivered with a welcome, wicked eye-glint. Glorious stuff! 

‒ Nuala O’Connor