‘Strangely, anti-British remarks made me feel patriotic, though I only felt patriotic when I was away from England.’
The man had heard that I was interested in talking about his country, Pakistan, and that this was my first visit. He kindly kept trying to take me aside to talk. But I was already being talked at.
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‘I want the poem to destroy time. / What are the ceremonies of forgetting?’
An elegy by Nick Laird for his father, Alastair Laird, who died in 2021 of Covid-19. Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem.
‘In the place where I grew up there were horses, thighs moving like nudity under their fur’
From Amnion by Stephanie Sy-Quia, published by Granta Books and shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection.
‘My brother and I hurried through sloppy postures of praise, quiet as the light pooling around us.’
A poem by Kaveh Akbar, from his shortlisted collection Pilgrim Bell, first published in Granta 156: Interiors.
‘I wanted to and then / Remembered why I want to never’
Poetry by Shane McCrae, shortlisted for Cain Named the Animal.
‘Would / the apple be concerned / if I said it was not an apple’
Poems by Padraig Regan, from Some Integrity, shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection.
‘My response to the music had reminded me that concealed inside myself was a more excitable and open self raring to get out.’
‘The warmest companion with the coldest vision of where Humanity might head.’
‘If you think the living are difficult to deal with, the dead can be worse‘.
‘I’d have dumped her if it wouldn’t have caused more problems than it solved.’
‘While I'm ironing, he cleans the gun. I saw he needed another rag and I gave it to him.‘
