‘He must have taken thousands of services in that time, but this still feels like the holiest thing he’s ever done.‘
A few months after starting university in Bradford, I came back to Norfolk and went to the football with my dad. I don’t remember who Norwich played, or if we won; only what happened afterwards, as we walked away from the ground.
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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.
Jon McGregor on reworking his first published story from the female perspective, his enduring fascination with Lincolnshire and his new short story collection, This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You.
‘In winter there’s no danger of falling into the sky / Our bodies anchored to the ground by the weight of the light.’
‘I’m on the ground, and he is standing over me. Everything is muffled. I’m aware of the sound of running water somewhere.’
‘Those who stayed on had their reasons. . . and none of those reasons, it is safe to suppose, had anything to do with an overwhelming attachment to England.’
An essay by Amit Chaudhuri.
