In the early 1970s, we went on a family outing to a safari park, where the star attraction was a killer whale. That day my youngest sister, who was even more enthusiastic about whales than I was, bought a small colour brochure entitled, somewhat apologetically, Dolphins can be fascinating at Windsor…
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘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.
‘He did what people told him to do. He was a machine.’
A short story by Eka Kurniawan, translated by Annie Tucker.
‘The stone is cold; touching a leaf is like touching skin.’
A botanist’s assistant longs for her lover in this extract from The Weeds.
‘People may not want realism but it’s still our job to try and supply it in compelling and truthful ways.’
Tom Bullough and Ben Rawlence on writing into the climate crisis.
‘I will go elsewhere / and remember, recall where / I came from’
A poem by John Kinsella.
‘I see a gull in a car park and they can see the place where it metabolised water into feathers, food into energy, oxygen into blood.’ Stephen Rutt on what isotopes can tell us about birds.
