‘For Fataumata, and others like her, dying tragically is dying naturally.’
I’m thinking of a girl: the youngest daughter of the great-great-grandmother of my great-grandmother.
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‘I want the poem to destroy time. / What are the ceremonies of forgetting?’
An elegy by Nick Laird for his father, Alastair Laird, who died in 2021 of Covid-19. Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem.
‘In the place where I grew up there were horses, thighs moving like nudity under their fur’
From Amnion by Stephanie Sy-Quia, published by Granta Books and shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection.
‘My brother and I hurried through sloppy postures of praise, quiet as the light pooling around us.’
A poem by Kaveh Akbar, from his shortlisted collection Pilgrim Bell, first published in Granta 156: Interiors.
‘I wanted to and then / Remembered why I want to never’
Poetry by Shane McCrae, shortlisted for Cain Named the Animal.
‘Would / the apple be concerned / if I said it was not an apple’
Poems by Padraig Regan, from Some Integrity, shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection.
‘He stood, rubbing his arms. How long had he slept? Not knowing the time was one of the torments of Pentonville.’
‘A democracy, I said, is driven by the electoral process, and in elections there are victories and defeats.’
‘I lost my left ear from a bite. . .Through the thin slit that remains I can hear the sounds of the world.’
‘Europeans want a fictitious Latin America on to which they can project their own desires. They want a Latin America which satisfies a longing for political engagement that is not possible in their own countries.’
‘They spoke naturally - without any sense of guilt - and were intrigued and surprised that people had come from so far away, and that there was so much excitement, because of one little incident.’
‘Morales’s troubles began in the spring of 1984, when he was indicted for conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine. It was this awkward development that made him particularly receptive to the proposal he received from a delegation of Contras and a CIA man that turned up at his Opa-locka office soon after the bad news.’
