Near the very top of The Peak on the island of Hong Kong is one of the prettiest pathways that remain in the Empire. Lugard Road is about two miles long, and whenever I get back—after ten years there, now two years away—I like to try to stroll along it, particularly at dawn. I go not so much for…
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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.
‘How do you persuade a thousand dogs to walk into a fire? How do you persuade them, as it were, to commit suttee?’
‘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.
‘While he didn't mind (not much anyway) being responsible for the death of one cat, his cat, he did not feel good shouldering the death of four cats.’
