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.
‘Feelings can be very obscure but numbers never lie.’
Kevin Brazil on metrics, obsession and fitness.
‘An intense workout is an ecstasy of punishment packaged as self-improvement.’
Mary Wellesley on exercise, ritual and Barry’s Bootcamp.
‘I was not good at sports because I would not do sports because I did not have the body for sports because I would not do sports.’
Saba Sams on girlhood, embodiment and avoiding sports.
‘Following United rarely brings me any great joy and most often it depresses me. If I could disengage, I would.’
Jonny Thakkar on Manchester United.
‘I deployed my body against an opponent like a blunt and effective instrument.’
John Patrick McHugh on playing Gaelic football.
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.’
‘It would be wrong to say she hasn’t experienced life. Instead, it would be more apt to describe her as someone whom time has slipped by without leaving the slightest trace.’
Fiction by Wang Anyi, translated by Michael Berry.
‘She is well-behaved, as icons go, she toes the party line.’
Short fiction by the author of Our Wives Under the Sea.
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