Issue 119

Jamie McKendrick

Lorraine Mariner

‘The psychiatrist’s wife / has a dress the colour / of that bottle of claret / you shouldn’t have drunk / last night.’

John Kinsella

‘What locked-away / state of unawareness, other life form, / brings desire to combust / out of rock exposed to flame’

Issue 120

Ben Lerner

‘My role in the slaughter doesn’t disqualify the beauty I find in all / forms of sheltered flame.’

Issue 120

Angela Carter

‘I believed I had defined the problem. / With which the picked skull had presented me.’

Issue 120

Kay Ryan

‘Reminding us / again that live things / can be flat.’

Issue 120

James Lasdun

‘I thought I’d do it while I still could.’

Don Paterson

Don Paterson reads his poem, ‘The Self-Illuminated’ in memoriam Peter Porter, from Granta 119: Britain.

Niall Campbell

‘And so, last night, so cold, I listened to / the floorboards warp in the unwelcome heat.’

Jynne Martin

‘It is the hour for farewells. It is the hour.’

Lorraine Mariner

‘On one of those mornings / when I felt like resigning / from my life.’

Paula Bohince

‘What sparrows come, / come briefly, briefly displacing / the nothingness.’

James Lasdun

‘Blizzard died. I’m remembering / his limitless affection.’