‘Never by any chance will any wanderer from the world discover him in that illimitable wilderness.’
Some years ago, in a second-hand bookshop in Falmouth, I discovered a book by the Cornish artist and archaeologist J.T. Blight. As a young man in the 1850s and ’60s, he had explored Penwith, the western-most region of Cornwall and had written with unusual fervour about the rare birds and flora he …
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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.
‘The greatest problem with the recent enthusiasm for tree-planting is disease. Large-scale projects mean large-scale movement of tree stock, which in turn has helped spread a number of highly contagious arboreal pathogens.’
‘In Mongolian lore, winter lasts precisely eighty-one days: nine periods of nine days’.
‘We decided then to tell each other exactly how a typical fuck played out in our marriages. We couldn’t believe we’d never done this before.’
Fiction by Miranda July.
‘What does that mean, vegan cheese? asks a lady who’d had no query about amuse-bouche.’
An extract from The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes.
‘It’s true that public sex and cruising can be complicated, but I still believe in the solidarity that a look can forge between people.’
Amelia Abraham and Jack Parlett discuss cruising, nostalgia and the privatisation of public sex.
‘the density in the brain telescoped and collapsed with a scream’
Poetry by Elfriede Czurda, translated by Rosmarie Waldrop.
