‘Feeling almost skittish all day. Exhausted now yet feverish also, like a child at the end of a party.’
First day of the new life. Very strange. Feeling almost skittish all day. Exhausted now yet feverish also, like a child at the end of a party. Like a child, yes: as if I had suffered a grotesque form of rebirth. Yet this morning I realized for the first time that I am an old man. I was crossing Gowe…
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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.
'I suggest he put aside all his writing rituals and that he give away all his money – that way he might find his talent will be rebooted.'
‘The place we come from, the place we call home, is the home of our suffering.’
Jamaica Kincaid talks about finding her way to writing.
Momtaza Mehri and Warsan Shire talk about nineties London, parentification and diasporic inheritances.
Sandra Newman on why Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard is the best book of 1952.
