The swing was picked up for the boys,
for the here-and-here-to-stay
and only she knew why it was
I dug so solemnly
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The swing was picked up for the boys,
for the here-and-here-to-stay
and only she knew why it was
I dug so solemnly
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
Don Paterson works as a poetry editor and as a jazz guitarist, and lectures in creative writing at the University of St Andrews. In 2003 his poetry collection Landing Light won the Whitbread Poetry Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. He is the author of several other poetry collections, including Rain, Orpheus and 40 Sonnets.
More about the author →‘The beasts of the forest drove me out. / The villagers barred their doors. / The gods turned the page.’
Don Paterson reads his poem, ‘The Self-Illuminated’ in memoriam Peter Porter, from Granta 119: Britain.
‘One, perhaps his psalter, / the other, a manuscript, or a portable altar.’
‘Words only point to experience, they can’t replace it.’
Vanessa Onwuemezi and Colin Herd discuss UFOs, relation, and the search for an inner sense of home.
A round-up of maps, literary, diagrammatic, chaotic and specific. Maps of London, maps of literature, maps of maps.
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