Two Poems
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Notes on Craft
Amina Cain
‘I would rather work in front of, or behind, a story. I want to leave a chain of images that remain in the reader’s mind.’
Roses
Legacy Russell
‘What if we are not ‘well-behaved’? What then?’
Legacy Russell on her father and the FBI.
Alphonse
Marie-Hélène Lafon
‘He was long and white; his hands especially were long and white, and he sewed; he looked after the linen; he worked as a woman would; he lived in the house; he didn’t speak, he was rarely spoken to.’
Translated from the French by Stephanie Smee.
Who We’re Reading When We’re Reading Murakami
David Karashima
‘Luke believes that the early stories might not have been published if the author and translator were uncompromising.’
The Appointment
Katharina Volckmer
‘I know that I can trust you, and that death is silent. It’s never the loud things that kill us, the things that make us vomit and scream and cry. Those things are just looking for attention.’
That Time of Year
Marie NDiaye
‘The fact was that outside of summertime they knew nothing about the place at all.’
Translated from the French by Jordan Stump.
People From My Neighbourhood: Behind the Scenes
Clare Skeats
Clare Skeats on the cover design for Hiromi Kawakami’s latest book of stories, translated by Ted Goossen.
People From My Neighbourhood
Hiromi Kawakami
‘First prize went to the dog school principal, who of course had submitted a cartoon dog.’ Translated from the Japanese by Ted Goossen.
Surviving Autocracy
Masha Gessen
We knew Trump’s range: government by gesture; obfuscation and lying; self-praise; stoking fear and issuing threats.
La Ville Morte
Benjamín Labatut
‘When the day came, even the nuns lay down inside the walls of their cloister.’
Gospel
Carys Davies
‘I would explain to you then, if I could, the theory that in the case of hairline shape, there are two possible variants or alleles: straight, or widow’s peak.’
In the Beginning
Diane Cook
‘They flavored their early stews with bacon. None of that stuff lasted long, though. That first day felt like a vacation in a wondrous new place. That feeling didn’t last long either.’
Amma
Sindya Bhanoo
‘She appeals to the fisherman, the rickshaw driver, the bricklayer. Her devotees are of all types’
The Price of Vagueness in a Pandemic
Eleanor Morgan
‘With each day bringing more confusion as this mysterious virus holds us in its grip, cognitive dissonance is everywhere.’
The Mistake
Peter Cameron
‘Yes, I was sick, she said. You’re very observant. She raised her hand and wiped the back of her leather glove across her lips.’
Introduction
Sigrid Rausing
‘But soon everything that had felt so tragic and dramatic to begin with – thousands of people ill and dying, the great pause, the intense dreams, the solidarity clapping – came to feel normal.’
A/S/L
Emma Cline
‘It was the afternoons that did it, three o’clock like a kind of death knell, the house seeming too still, too many hours of sunlight left in the day. How had Thora even started going to the chat rooms?’
At the Peckhamplex
Will Harris
‘the snow reflecting off / your torch was the / colour of your thoughts’
1 April 2020
Michael Hofmann
‘Living on money from the government, excused our duties and our liabilities, reducing our wants to eating and sleeping and what in the eighteenth century may have passed for exercise, the alderman’s stroll.’
The Perfect Companion
Joanna Kavenna
‘She was so understanding, so interesting, such an intellectual. She was also a wristwatch, but this hardly mattered.’
Arbos
Teju Cole
‘I made many pictures of such trees, and each time, some analogy to art would impress itself on me, the more so because of the universally locked museum doors.’
Still Life
Leanne Shapton
‘Because that’s what I’m doing a lot of; looking around the interiors I occupy, the corners of my occupied apartment.’
Power and Privilege
Ken Babstock
‘We do it all day every day until we can’t see. / We do it with a belt between our teeth.’
Open Bookkeeping
Jenny Erpenbeck
‘I write an obituary that appears in the newspaper that she always used to read while drinking her afternoon tea. I receive €170.03 for the obituary.’
Translated from the German by Kurt Beals.
Poem Written from Inside a Leather Pig Mask
Sam Sax
‘child who dreams of growing into / a swan only to wake in terror at a mouth / filled with feathers.’
Golden Vulture
Jason Ockert
‘Last summer, the boy still believed in miracles. That’s why he disobeyed his father and crossed the bridge. He wondered, back then, if his mother might be over there.’
Tête-à-Tête
Diana Matar
‘The features and expressions were uncannily contemporary. Some seemed to be mirror images of the people I had seen at the protest in Piazza del Gesù.’
The Temptation of St Anthony
Mark Haddon
‘He had not eaten today nor had he drunk. He would wait until the craving had passed, then allow himself to do both when it became a choice, not a lost battle in his long war against the base needs of the body.’
Yerevan, Armenia
Viken Berberian
‘Ever since the pandemic, our neighborhood is mostly deserted, except for the pigeons and statues.’
Le Flottement
Janine di Giovanni
‘Their lives were halted in time, a predicament they accepted with grace, sometimes even with humor. They appeared to be floating.’
The Fearful Summer
Adam Nicolson
‘I saw the bodies. They were blotched under the skin where the blood had clotted & pooled. I have never seen the dead so dead.’
Clementine, Carmelita, Dog
David Means
‘Here I should stress that dog memory is not at all like human memory, and that human memory, from a dog’s point of view, would seem strange, clunky, unnatural and deceptive.’
Labirinto
Wiktoria Wojciechowska & Lisa Halliday
‘But only a city without people is immune. Only a city in which nothing circulates, nothing changes hands, nothing flourishes.’
Lisa Halliday introduces the photography of Wiktoria Wojciechowska.
