At thirty, I fled from my life
in a hailstorm and firestorm, into what
I termed ‘the big rest’,
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At thirty, I fled from my life
in a hailstorm and firestorm, into what
I termed ‘the big rest’,
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.
Paula Bohince’s third collection is Swallows and Waves (Sarabande, 2016). Her poems have appeared in Granta, as well as the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Poetry, the TLS, the Irish Times, and elsewhere. She has received awards from the Poetry Society of America and the UK National Poetry Competition. She has been the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholar, the Dartmouth Poet in Residence at The Frost Place, and a fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts.
More about the author →‘It seemed that recording her sickness was cold and vulgar, that if ever I should be a participant and not an observer, this was the time.’
‘I love Shakespeare’s slow insistence, which mirrors the action within the poem: there is nothing but grief to reach.’ Paula Bohince on Shakespeare’s sonnet 50.
‘I like the friction of fixed physical atmospheres with different lives passing through.’
‘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.
‘To write this memoir, I’ve had to open old wounds and go back to them again and again.’
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