‘After all, it was only politics, and I was too young to understand.’
On the night Gough Whitlam was elected prime minister of Australia in December 1972, my parents held a party at our home in Sydney. It was summer and my mother wore a long Indian kaftan; my father wore a seersucker shirt and casual slacks. My brothers and I were meant to be in bed and watched from u…
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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.
‘I think people who ape the sentiments of others often go on to believe the thing they said. It becomes their opinion.’
Juliet Jacques and Iphgenia Baal discuss early digital cultures, precarity and social architecture.
‘How do we perform our politics, our outrage and our grievances when we are among a group?’
Anthony Anaxagorou talks about his collection Heritage Aesthetics.
‘I was in Sarandë as part of a journey across the entire length of the old Iron Curtain, from Norway to Azerbaijan.’
Timothy Phillips on the legacy of the Iron Curtain in Albania.
‘I went to Enid’s funeral and there was a mole on the coffin and it seemed / aware of us but unconcerned.’
Two poems by Fee Griffin.
Sarah Hall writes about the Cumbrian fell pony for Granta 142: Animalia.
