Strange Heart Beating
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Fatima Bhutto on the Refugee Crisis
Fatima Bhutto
‘In a connected world, how can anyone close their doors?’
First Sentence: Molly Brodak
Molly Brodak
‘A name is a single small token of selfhood issued at birth, upon which all the rest of one’s person must be built.’
The Exorcism of Doctor Escudero
Gabi Martínez
‘His body was like a rock. It wasn’t his. It was like he was possessed.’
Five Things Right Now: Max Porter
Max Porter
Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers, shares five things he’s reading, watching and thinking about.
Portia’s Choice
Lorna Gibb
‘There were rules to the game. I could not lose my virginity and I had to be careful not to let a boy go further than I wanted to.’
Travel Notes About Death
Susana Moreira Marques
‘The first notes I take are about a man who was born, grew up, worked, was married, had a daughter, grew old, and died in the same village.’
If You Were a Bluebird
Juliana Spahr
‘So the dolphins talks, talks, over thirty distinguishable sounds.’
War in Donbas
Julian Evans
Six days on the front lines of Ukraine’s ongoing battle with pro-Russian separatists
The Instant of Passage
Mathias Énard
‘Praying for the unknown dead, for the vague remains of the existences of total strangers, was sadly abstract.’
Evie Wyld | Five Things Right Now
Evie Wyld
Evie Wyld shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about.
Five Things Right Now: Caroline Criado Perez
Caroline Criado Perez
Caroline Criado Perez, journalist, activist and author of Do It Like A Woman, shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about.
Too Hard to Keep
Jason Lazarus & Ariana Reines
‘There are days I can’t even remember the things I want to know.’
Introduction: Possession
Sigrid Rausing
‘Possession takes many forms, and at the heart of it is death and dereliction, invasion and submission.’
After Maidan
Oliver Bullough
‘A woman asked the steward behind the registration desk if our flight to Moscow was domestic or international. “We are still working on that,” the man answered.’
Epithalamium
Greg Jackson
‘Hara had stumbled on a kind of play, as if they were sisters left alone by their parents for the first time to explore the different ways a day could be deconstructed.‘
The Cage of You
Kerry Howley
‘They treated their bodies like some exotic animal they’d found fast asleep, beings they needed to wake to truly know.’
Poem Conveyed
Jillian Weise
‘And now that he is body-less, / he speaks through us. / You could say. Although / I myself have not caught / a Pope.’
This is New
Marc Bojanowski
‘None of this would have happened if I’d just taken a deep breath, suppressed my emotions and said to the young woman, “Leave. Now.”‘
Will They Sing Like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty
Max Pinckers & Sonia Faleiro
‘The idea of romantic love for young people is a constructed one.’
Bandit
Molly Brodak
‘There are fragments of a criminal alongside fragments of a dad, and nothing overlaps, nothing eclipses the other, they’re just there, next to each other. No narrative fits.’
woman is a construct
Angélica Freitas
‘woman is basically meant / to be a residential complex / all the same / all plastered over / just in different colors’
The Emotional Life of Plants
Rae Armantrout
An exciton consists / of the escaped negative / (electron) / and the positive hole / it left behind.
Old-Age Rage
Daisy Jacobs
‘He’s not himself’, Mum says in the kitchen. Well, who is he then? Is he 40 per cent of his young self? Ten? Do I still have to love him as much as ever, this 90 per cent stranger?
Possession
Bella Pollen
‘The brain is a bureaucratic organ with an almost neurotic determination to balance its books. To account to the department of logic for terror, it calls on the office of imagination to conjure up a worthy vision.’
Open Water
Deb Olin Unferth
She had already imagined it all, so much so that when she finally did see him, she felt unable to speak.
About Her and the Memories That Belong to Her
Mieko Kawakami
‘If I were to forget, then it would be the same as it never having existed at all.’
To Rio de Janeiro
Gonçalo M. Tavares
‘In the end, what one understands in Rio de Janeiro is that joy is the only coherence of a living being.’
