‘Anniversaries can have an importance—a power over us—that we do not control.’
Rwanda has very specific seasons, and ever since the genocide of 1994, Rwandans will tell you they are overcome each April by an almost physical experience of memory of that time. It’s rainy season. The skies are rumbling and clogged with huge, stacked clouds, purple below, charcoal-smudged, subli…
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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.
‘My grandmother lived in America for forty years before her death, yet she never stopped referring to herself as a refugee.’
‘He takes the knife, cuts the barb from the body, sends it back to the depths of the river.’
An extract from Not a River by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott.
‘The past is no longer behind me but in front.’
An extract from About Ed by Robert Glück.
‘How do we imagine the past of those we love?’
Arthur Asseraf on family and fractured memories.
‘Is there in fact a jostling for dominance between the art forms, some barely suppressed competitiveness?’
Adam Mars-Jones on music and ceremony.
‘Things he dreamt began to show up in the bushes, the plastic figurine from a parachute firework, the small dull rusted circular saw blade he thought of as a throwing star, and he pocketed those things.’
