Literatures

my mother said that that her mother’s said that her mother and grandmother also said that yes, you have to do the great-grandmother said yes because who first said that yes was the husband, the brother the priest, the wooer or any other...

How did they kill my grandmother? This is how they killed my grandmother: In the morning a tank Rolled up to the city bank. One hundred and fifty Jews of the town. Weightless from a whole year's starvation. Pale, with the pangs...

Today I woke up such an angry angry bitch I didn't know where to put so much anger Then I stopped for a moment took a deep breath and realized that the anger came up from my uterus I went for a walk...

There is too much male white power at loose in the world There is too much male white power at loose in the world The smell of Pretoria The breath of the Pentagon The eye of the Kremlin How...

On summer evenings air thickens – and settles, dust dropping onto shelves of books silently – settles. These evenings lift from the pages of books, or out of dreams. Write your name in the dust that blooms on...

Fiona Sampson has been published in thirty-seven languages and has just received two major European prizes: the Naim Frasheri Laureateship 2019 and the European Lyric Atlas Prize 2020. She has also received the Zlaten...

Married as we were to your brown untourist beaches, unconcerned with the many shores you touched, as children, we thought that you, Atlantic, belonged to us, your below-sea-level offspring. See us playing cricket, turn-down bucket making wicket – ball a spin-off...

There is something out in the dark that wants to correct us. Each time I think “this,” it answers “that.” Answers hard, in the heart-grammar’s strictness. If I then say “that,” it too is taken away. Between certainty...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre    The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere    The ceremony of innocence is...

An hour is not a house, a life is not a house, you do not go through them as if they were doors to another. Yet an hour can have shape and proportion, four walls, a ceiling. An hour can...