‘Are these great journeys examples of learned or inherited behaviour?’
Two years ago I took the train to Blackpool to congratulate my brother on his engagement. We ended up spending the night in a hotel called the De Vere, a modern place on the outskirts of town, with full conference facilities. The Derby County football team had just arrived for a training weekend. Th…
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‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
‘We talked a lot about voice – the idea that everyone has a voice, their own voice, and this is something to be valued and celebrated.’
‘in the Huangma Mountains, everything rots readily’
A poem by Zheng Xiaoqiong, translated by Eleanor Goodman.
‘I turn to O’Connor’s music when I get tired of lying to myself. Her songs are allegorical free-falls. Spiritual chiaroscuros, even.’
Momtaza Mehri on Sinéad O’Connor.
‘Only from a distance does the observer understand the object that remained an enigma from close up.’
Fiction by Deniz Utlu, translated by Jackie Smith.
‘Are you talking as Laleh now, or as the Islamic Republic of Iran? I don’t say anything.’
Fiction by Shida Bazyar, translated by Ruth Martin.
‘My face, not the glass, was blurry. I had no idea what I really looked like besides lumpy, fuzzy, profuse.’
