‘I liked his humourless intelligence, so redundant and so excessive in an MP.’
I could see him approaching across the crowded concourse at Heathrow. An unmistakable figure, tall and loping, he moved between the late holidaymakers and the unserious flocks of unicoloured stewardesses like the only man in the terminal with somewhere to go and something to do on this October Sunda…
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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.
‘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.
‘They carried the life-size wooden figure lying in the glass case out of the main doors of the church and into the churchyard.’
