‘Seagulls murmur overhead, and nip at the banks. You can hear almost nothing.’
The Clyde used to be one of the noisiest rivers. Thirty or forty years ago you could hear the strike of metal against metal, the riveter’s bedlam, down most of the narrow channel from Glasgow, and at several other shipbuilding towns on the estuary. There was a sound of horns on the water, and of e…
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘Human nature is not improved by concealment, especially when it comes to the past.’
A short story by Andrew O’Hagan.
‘A lot of journalism was in danger of becoming ‘celebrity writing’, in the sense that the writer and his conscience could become the story.’
‘The men were quiet. They said nothing for a minute and the sea at my back was calm and almost imaginary, but you could hear the waves coming to wash the chalk cliffs from under us.’
‘Every time I drink a glass of claret it goes straight to my face.’
‘What precisely is the sibling relationship, and how does it shape our lives?’
The editor introduces the autumn issue.
