‘If they’re willing to do this for their country then I should be willing to make the same sacrifices.’
It’s close to midnight when I cross the Mississippi River at Saint Louis. The soaring stainless-steel Gateway Arch gleams in the skyline light.
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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.
‘When I was growing up in his house, religion was his crutch, a justification for his behaviour.’
Kevin Childs on growing up queer in a Catholic household.
‘Rosella and her co-creators curate an archive of pain, of endurance, of love and belonging, of alienation and disconnection.’
Nicole R. Fleetwood introduces the photography of Raphaela Rosella.
‘In a small town, one thinks that Time is not even passing.’
An excerpt from Holleran’s novel The Kingdom of Sand.
‘Trouble was awake – we didn’t need anyone to tell us.’
New fiction by Adachioma Ezeano.
‘Refusal is the last recourse of the powerless.’
Marina Benjamin on her years of not eating, and not growing.
‘The death of a father is, in most cases, an inevitable passage of life.’
