Dark red hair. Wee skirt and trainers, bare arms. All those freckles.


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‘Dark red hair. Wee skirt and trainers, bare arms. All those freckles.’
Dark red hair. Wee skirt and trainers, bare arms. All those freckles.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘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.
Born in Oxford in 1971, Rachel Seiffert divides her time between teaching and writing. She is the author of several novels, including Afterwards and The Dark Room, shortlisted for the 2001 Man Booker Prize. She was one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003.
More about the author →‘So, to summarise: witty, bold, and delicate too. Oh yes, and supremely able to turn a story.’
‘A story that starts with a bereavement: already I’m drawn in.’
Rachel Seiffert reads her work and talks to Granta about writing silences, the inescapability of history, the Troubles and learning to love her characters.
‘The bushes grow dense across the top of the drop, but Martin can just see through the leaves: young mother and son, swimming in the pool hollowed out by the waterfall.’
‘The self is the work of art. Criticism puts that self in the service of other art.’
The authors discuss the multiplicity of the self, the idea of necessity, and how to work with what you lack.
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