‘Famines can occur with or without substantial declines in food output.’
How do famines relate to food supply? Some see the connection as almost definitional: famine is, in this view, synonymous with a country being short of food. When Mr Malone, the rich Irish-American in Shaw’s Man and Superman, refers to the Irish famine of the 1840s, he refuses to describe it as on…
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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.
‘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 wrong / to let delicacies, even when suspect, go untried’
A poem by Natalie Shapero.
‘The recipe is a text that can produce spattering because it was spattering before it was language.’
Rebecca May Johnson on recipes, repetition and intimacy.
‘Life is not worth living / without salami.’
A poem by Sandra Cisneros.
‘We are back in Paradise and are now trying to come up with a new game.’
