Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Poetry

From the Flood Plain

Jamie McKendrick

‘No flood as parched as this’

Never did amount to anything

Dorothea Lasky

‘Hi there, dear sister, I’m sad / But here to tell you / That you never did amount to anything’

Two Poems

Ivan Landzhev

‘My chess teacher / used to tell me: / ‘Play your own game.’’

Oak

Jamie McKendrick

‘When my father saw an advert in the Echo / for a big house at a peppercorn rent / he rang.’

Linked

Ruth Ozeki

‘old poems, like polished stones, / tumbled words to break my teeth on.’

Requiem

Jill Osier

‘I watch her help, / gathering the leaves to her like love, / hiding herself.’

Dilation

Ben Lerner

‘My role in the slaughter doesn’t disqualify the beauty I find in all / forms of sheltered flame.’

Dog Days

James Lasdun

‘Blizzard died. I’m remembering / his limitless affection.’

The New Hieroglyphics

Les Murray

‘Rice in bowl with chopsticks / denotes food. Figure 1 lying prone equals other.’

Two Poems

Hoa Nguyen

‘I wrote ‘valley’ when I meant ‘longing’ / Your laugh a river A trout kind of green.’

Post-Elegy

Wayne Miller

‘After the plane went down, / the cars sat for weeks in long-term parking. / Then, one by one, they began to disappear / from among the cars of the living.’

Blueberries

James Lasdun

‘I thought I’d do it while I still could.’

Waterloo East

Lorraine Mariner

‘On one of those mornings / when I felt like resigning / from my life.’