‘What am I doing here more than looking – / which I would stop / only to help things through their vanishing’
When I arrived in that new country for the first time
I came by boat,
by canoe in fact and completely alone,
so the pines and conifers stepping down to the river,
some with their roots as pink as pigs’ tails
in the dark current swirling around them regardless,
were my only company.
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.
‘The hunters have all failed, / the three hunters and their forlorn dogs / now arriving home from the mountain / which thunders above their village’
‘He dedicated The Less Deceived to her: it was the only collection of poems he dedicated to anyone.‘
‘He did what people told him to do. He was a machine.’
A short story by Eka Kurniawan, translated by Annie Tucker.
Books of the Year
Contributors and friends of the magazine reflect on what they read in 2023.
‘woman is basically meant / to be a residential complex / all the same / all plastered over / just in different colors’
