(From a review by Simon Eales — Cordite Poetry Review, 18th January 2016)

Treating Bennett as a visionary poet, we can discern an isotope of essentialism in The Vanishing. Her poems are titled for us to be led in this direction. ‘Kinship,’ for example, gives the reader access to the feeling of kinship, setting an archetypical scene of warmth and comfort at the hearth, or around the campfire, while reinforcing instincts for togetherness, sensuality, and our commingling with ‘the elements.’ Each poem is linked to its neighbour in a similar way. The poem following ‘Kinship’, called ‘Smoke’, can be read as a reconstitution of kinship’s overflow (the fire around which we develop kinship produces smoke). This poem produces an imperative that seems to resonate through the collection. It’s a Jacob’s Ladder to the Tower of Babel. Poets not feeling well, as one line suggests, is indicative of ecological sickness. Bennett’s answer is to remain receptive, ‘stay / Sober. Stay serene. / Play / Pat-a-cake / With the screech-owl / in God’s sweet acre’. This imploration to realise what we have and appreciate it occurs repeatedly under different guises. In ‘Rilke’s Desk: A Postscript’, it is ‘Don’t / Scramble / The cornucopia!’. The Vanishing is a humble because fatalistic call to appreciation a la Guillevic, before ‘All’s well!’ disappears.