The swing was picked up for the boys,
for the here-and-here-to-stay
and only she knew why it was
I dug so solemnly
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The swing was picked up for the boys,
for the here-and-here-to-stay
and only she knew why it was
I dug so solemnly
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘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.
Don Paterson works as a poetry editor and as a jazz guitarist, and lectures in creative writing at the University of St Andrews. In 2003 his poetry collection Landing Light won the Whitbread Poetry Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. He is the author of several other poetry collections, including Rain, Orpheus and 40 Sonnets.
More about the author →‘The beasts of the forest drove me out. / The villagers barred their doors. / The gods turned the page.’
Don Paterson reads his poem, ‘The Self-Illuminated’ in memoriam Peter Porter, from Granta 119: Britain.
‘One, perhaps his psalter, / the other, a manuscript, or a portable altar.’
‘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.
‘The blend of volatile domestic politics and geostrategic oil interests is at best opaque and at worst thoroughly corrosive of all involved.’
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