In February the poplars are even slimmer
than in summer, frozen through. My family
spread across the earth, beneath the earth,
in different countries, poems, paintings.
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‘Now someone else lives in that apartment, / strange people, the scent of a strange life.’
A poem by Adam Zagajewski.
In February the poplars are even slimmer
than in summer, frozen through. My family
spread across the earth, beneath the earth,
in different countries, poems, paintings.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘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.
Adam Zagajewski (21 June 1945 – 21 March 2021) was a Polish poet, novelist, translator, and essayist. He was awarded the 2004 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award, the 2017 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature and the 2018 Golden Wreath of Poetry at the Struga Poetry Evenings.
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Fiction by Jessi Jezewska Stevens.
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An extract from Family Meal by Bryan Washington.
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Wiam El-Tamami on returning to Cairo.
‘His fear was that we would die in front of him and so he thought of us all the time, which is not what he wanted.’
Fiction by Mazen Maarouf.
‘Words only point to experience, they can’t replace it.’
Vanessa Onwuemezi and Colin Herd discuss UFOs, relation, and the search for an inner sense of home.
’She met my father in Texas and then they moved north, where I was born in Cincinnati.‘
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