‘And now that he is body-less, / he speaks through us. / You could say. Although / I myself have not caught / a Pope.’
I can’t say which ghost
not because I am being coy
and not because the ghost
is being coy. In the glut
of ghosts, it is hard to tell
who is speaking. I do recall
a conveyor (the ghosts
call conversations ‘conveyors’
as that is how they travel)
when someone
told me I ought to read
Alexander Pop…
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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.
Jillian Weise is a poet, performance artist and disability rights activist. She shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.
‘I love Ai’s work because it gives me permission and reminds me that poetry invented fiction. I needed that in 1999 and I need it today.’
‘I’m nervous at night when I take off my leg. I wait until the last moment before sleep to un-tech because I am a woman who lives alone’
‘She is not a conventionally “good” mother. But then, put like that, it sounds like a slow death sentence anyhow.’
Lars Horn on modeling for their artist mother.
A compilation of some of the best readings of 2011, including Binyavanga Wainaina reading from his memoir One Day I Will Write About This Place, Robert Coover’s reading of his online story ‘Vampire’ and Granta debut contributor Taiye Selasi's reading of ‘The Sex Lives of African Girls’.
