‘It could almost have been Neolithic, an ancient and mysterious earthworks.’
If you were minded to visit Airds Moss—and I wouldn’t discourage it because anywhere else and it would be in a tourist guide, and it’s interesting, if you’ve a taste for ambivalent places—you could turn off the lorry-laden A70 a few miles west of Powharnal opencast mine, and follow the B-r…
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘I liked the way she travelled: with her iPod in one pocket, her traditional Yup’ik woman’s knife, or ulu, in the other.’
‘It felt surprisingly good to be part of that rough tribe of the mortal.’
‘Restored nature would be a phantom of its former self. The experience would be akin to visiting a wildlife park.’
‘Think of mitosis as trillions of slightly near-sighted, plagiarizing students’
‘a look I’d managed to accessorize / with raw dermatological distress.’
