In the beginning there was nothing in the universe. The sky and the earth were glued together and the whole world was a hot and bubbling pool. For 20,000 years nothing changed, until one day a cosmic egg appeared. Inside this egg yin and yang slowly found their balance, and a half-man half-dragon wa…
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‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
Xiaolu Guo on The Archers, the Life in the UK Test and swearing allegiance to the Queen.
‘I grew up in the semi-tropical south, dotted by wet paddy fields, but I always wanted to go to the north.’
‘In those spring nights, I sat by barbecue stalls in the streets of Beijing, reading this novel under dim streetlights while eating lamb skewers.’
‘I had lost my native country, now I was going to lose a continent.’
Xiaolu Guo speaks to Ellah Alfrey about growing up in rural China, becoming an East Ender and writing in English.
