Patrick deWitt | Interview
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Two Poems
James Conor Patterson
‘i think again, love, that t believe in this / would be t chapen the accident of our own gift’
Two poems from James Conor Patterson’s collection, bandit country.
The Second He
Nathaniel Rosenthalis
‘I like to play the footage back: / I was withstanding (I was grieving / the disappearing he was doing).’
A poem by Nathaniel Rosenthalis.
Barbershop
Giada Scodellaro
‘Next door to the diner was the barbershop with its wood paneling and its poster of men.’
An excerpt from Giada Scodellaro’s debut short story collection.
The Patchwork Dolls
Ysabelle Cheung
‘The last few years, everybody wanted the same eyes: domed like lemons, with precise, symmetrical lashes.’
A story by Ysabelle Cheung.
How To Milk
Emily Ogden
‘The milking technology for cows is in many ways superior to the one for humans.’
An essay from Emily Ogden’s On Not Knowing.
An Excerpt from Distance Sickness
Jenny Xie
‘To relive is the snarl of description, worked over repeatedly in the mind’
A poem by Jenny Xie.
Black and Female
Tsitsi Dangarembga
‘By the time I was in my teens, I had taken up an existence framed by a double negative: not male, not white.’
An excerpt from Tsitsi Dangarembga’s essay collection, Black and Female.
Words in the Head and Words in the Sentence
Herta Müller
‘During an interrogation speech glows hot in the mouth, and what is spoken freezes.’
Herta Müller on language. Translated from the German by Philip Boehm.
Introduction
Sigrid Rausing
‘Our theme of conflict is internal as well as external.’
The editor introduces the issue.
Letters from Ukraine
Lindsey Hilsum
‘As every soldier and every journalist who has ever covered a war knows – sleeping and eating are the most important things.’
Lindsey Hilsum writes home from Ukraine.
I Am the Word for God and Boy
Aidan Cottrell-Boyce
‘We are sitting in a cafe, on planet Earth, on the night before our wedding day.’
Fiction by Aidan Cottrell-Boyce.
The Recipe
Rebecca May Johnson
‘The recipe is a text that can produce spattering because it was spattering before it was language.’
Rebecca May Johnson on recipes, repetition and intimacy.
Skromnost
Janet Malcolm
‘The Czech word skromnost means “modesty”, but it also carries a mild sense of forelock-tugging humbleness, of knowing one’s place.’
An excerpt from Janet Malcolm’s final book.
The Moving Target of Being
Suzanne Scanlon
‘When I was in the hospital, the belief in “recovered memories” was at its peak.’
Suzanne Scanlon on the shifting parameters of illness.
A Place that Belongs to Us
Daniel Trilling
‘The notes belong to you, said the guards, but the paper you wrote them on is ours.’
Fragmentary non-fiction by Daniel Trilling.
Baghdadland
Aline Deschamps & Rattawut Lapcharoensap
‘The photographs do not feel like a documentary record of kids in theme parks so much as a startling lyric glimpse of some inner vision that they all might be having of one.’
Rattawut Lapcharoensap introduces the photography of Aline Deschamps.
Fatty
Dizz Tate
‘There sat the joy of the shopping centre, what I thought of as its secret heart. A white rabbit.’
A short story by Dizz Tate.
But the Heart in a Sense Is Far from Me Floating Out There
Peter Gizzi
‘It’s right to extract bone from the afterlife’
A poem by Peter Gizzi.
Fateha
Sana Valiulina
‘While Fateha is fleeing westward with her children, another woman is trying to save herself from the city on the shore of the Sea of Azov.’
Memoir by Sana Valiulina, translated by Polly Gannon.
Signs of an Approaching War
Volodymyr Rafeyenko
‘We were ourselves migrating birds; in a sense, refugees, displaced persons, without a home or a home town.’
Volodymyr Rafeyenko on the war on Ukraine, translated by Sasha Dugdale.
Having Recently Escaped from the Maws of a Deathly Life, I Am Ready to Begin the Year Anew
Sandra Cisneros
‘Life is not worth living / without salami.’
A poem by Sandra Cisneros.
Fault Lines
Jane Delury
‘My mother is only seventy, but she has the bones of a ninety-year-old, the marrow like lace.’
A story by Jane Delury.
A Wolf in the Forest Wants
Sarah Moss
‘I biked to the hospital anyway, because it didn’t occur to me to think of an alternative form of transport.’
Sarah Moss on her admission to hospital.
Édouard’s Sixteen
Kevin Lambert
‘Laurence’s busy pre-mourning himself and his lover; he knows their thing’s got an end date, it’s not far off now.’
A story by Kevin Lambert, translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman.
Another Patagonia
Louis Rogers
‘From the sloth skin onwards, In Patagonia is built around scraps and surfaces.’
Louis Rogers on travelling in Bruce Chatwin’s footsteps.
Epicrisis
Kirill Kobrin
Kirill Kobrin on living through war and the conflict in Ukraine. Translated from the Russian by Veronika Zitta.
It’s Been Evening all day Long
Daniel Khalastchi
‘Just as blank I sink the bank beneath / my grief of never having money.’
A poem by Daniel Khalastchi.
Haunting Myself
Seán Hewitt
‘Lying is something I had become good at with practice.’
An excerpt from All Down Darkness Wide.
