‘Empires fall like milk teeth.’
Stephanie Sy-Quia on her collection Amnion.
Last year Stephanie Sy-Quia spoke to online editor Josie Mitchell about modern cathedrals, telling her grandmothers’ stories and the impulse to categorise.
Stephanie Sy-Quia’s debut poetry collection Amnion was selected as a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her writing has appeared in the FT Weekend, the TLS, the Economist, the Spectator and TANK magazine, and has twice been shortlisted for the FT Bodley Head Essay Prize.
Read an excerpt from Amnion here.
Image © Alex Sy-Quia
‘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.
‘How far can one deviate from the accepted pieties before one is kicked out?’
Brandon Taylor on naturalism and the future of fiction.
‘The tragedies inflicted on the people of East Africa as a result of European rivalries are belittled and forgotten.’
Abdulrazak Gurnah on German East Africa.
‘When and where does the crisis of war begin and end?’
Y-Dang Troeung on the longevity of war.
‘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.
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