May 16, 2023
"is there something in adopting the voice of a god, but giving him very human qualities and frailties? It turned out that adopting a persona that revolved at once about both being powerful and powerless was a great parallel for exploring subjects like climate change."
April 27, 2023
They were stones in a champagne flute,
I was always bound to smash.
But they were there for a while,
hanging on, two faceless punters waiting
for the gag, and then it all slipped out
of me as easily as a giggle. Once is a mistake.
Twice is careless. By the end of it
you could hear a pin drop in my heart.
I was always bound to smash.
But they were there for a while,
hanging on, two faceless punters waiting
for the gag, and then it all slipped out
of me as easily as a giggle. Once is a mistake.
Twice is careless. By the end of it
you could hear a pin drop in my heart.
April 25, 2023
"In the case of obstetric and gynaecological history, it felt important to resist chronological or medical linearity. Working towards a happy ending would have been too easy and would have felt like a formal parroting of the unstoppable trajectory of ‘scientific progress’ that I wanted the book to question. "
March 9, 2023
"The 7 – 11 age group is for me the most joyful of childhood – their imagination is boundless, they are brave and unjudgmental, and the self-consciousness of the teen years has not yet set in."
February 28, 2023
"How long he sat in his car he couldn’t say, but he pulled out of the hospital car park when the noise of an approaching ambulance interrupted his thoughts. He somehow ended up on the Sea Point Promenade again, sitting on the bench they had sat on so many times before. By the time the sun set, painting the Cape Town sky a marvellous orange-yellow-purple, he had made his decision."
February 16, 2023
Fiction: “Hugmanay 1983 – ah’m sat oan the couch in the livin’ room. Telly’s oan an’ it’s jist me an’ ma muther an faither cos ma twa bruthers are oot wi’ their pals. Scotch an’ Wry afore some Hugmanay show comes oan efter. Ah’m hopin’ the 50p slot meter disnae run oot on oor rented TV ...”
February 6, 2023
Shortly after I left my job, a friend said she was surprised, she thought I cared. I told her I left because I cared.
February 1, 2023
Fiction: “She wishes that she had kept a written record of all the epic bloody nonsense that has come out of his mouth over the years because she could have gained some kind of minor social media fame and parleyed a book deal out of it to boot: Shit My Stupid Shag Buddy Says.”
January 20, 2023
Fiction: “One of the guards tried to calm me down. ‘We’re just doing our job, following the rules. The ladies have complained.’ And then he added jokingly, ‘dear engineer, you do know this place is not completely private, it’s ‘privastate’ as we call it…’ and then burst into laughter at their own stupid wordplay, spraying his saliva on my face. Last year, they also harassed me for wearing sandals with no socks.”
January 17, 2023
"What is happening in Iran is heart-breaking, and this poem is testament to that, it is also paying homage to my Father and my Persian heritage, of which I'm so proud."
January 4, 2023
"I’ll state up front: I love Helen Mort’s poetry. Her writing is taut, lyrical, kind, brave, intelligent, beautiful."
December 23, 2022
Fiction: “Hands clasped at me as I pulled you through the room, and I smiled and greeted and smiled again but I never let go of your hand, do you remember that? I kept you close to me.”
December 22, 2022
"If Stubbs set out explore how humans have the capacity to worry about ‘big existential events’ when they also face everyday problems, she has succeeded."
December 12, 2022
Fiction: “I can see your foot, your scuffed cool-kid sneakers, laces undone, next to my seat. You are sitting low in the chair behind me; I can picture you slouching without turning around. ”
December 8, 2022
Harvey inhabits the farm, then the woods, building the world for the audience as she goes.
December 4, 2022
I left Donetsk when it started there. Escaped with my two children. My ex-husband’s on the other side.
December 4, 2022
the small village where I spent the months from June to August as a child is now occupied by Russians
December 1, 2022
Fiction: “He’s rolling up a ten foot length of astro turf into what looks like a giant sized spliff of fake grass.”
November 24, 2022
Fiction: “And as my body lay still, waiting for my heart to be healed, the mist, the lonely shivering feeling of being lost, huddled together, looking for a way out, came to me.”
November 21, 2022
Fiction: “So this afternoon, this fantastically, impossibly unlikely configuration, will not come again.”