Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Poetry

If You Were a Bluebird

Juliana Spahr

‘So the dolphins talks, talks, over thirty distinguishable sounds.’

Two Poems

Jack Underwood

‘We are nearing the conclusion of this anatomy. / We are strung between the point of ending, and / the point of having started.’

How to Get Over Someone You Love

Adam Fitzgerald

‘Would you like to come with me for some / old-fashioned inconclusive combat?’

From The Abstract Humanities

Sandra Simonds

‘let us / build the openwork fabric of our garden / on the fear in the body’

Sanjay Nagar Blues

Anjum Hasan

‘motorcyclists like to howl / and dogs drop bulging bags of garbage / from their mouths when they see other dogs / they want to mount’

Citizen

Claudia Rankine

‘Certain moments send adrenaline to the heart, dry out the tongue’

Position Paper

John Ashbery

‘This is my outfit. / Government spooks did the rest. Didn’t you know?’

Origin Myth

Mary Ruefle

‘Life continually circled in cold inaccessible serenity around unhappy Earth’

In the Village

Derek Walcott

‘I came up out of the subway and there were / people standing on the steps as if they knew / something I didn’t.’

Two Poems

Sean Borodale

‘To be honest, this is dark stuff; mud, tang / of bitter battery-tasting honey. The woods are in it.’

High Table

Craig Raine

‘The inescapable smoke of her gown’

The Self-Illuminated

Don Paterson

‘One, perhaps his psalter, / the other, a manuscript, or a portable altar.’

The Easel

Sharon Olds

‘When I build a fire, I feel purposeful.’

Two Poems

Tomaž Šalamun

‘Heads of saints fell off and / smashed the glassy cages. My voice smashed them.’