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David Isaacs
David Isaacs has recently completed a PhD about the ethics of rewriting at UCL. He is coming to the end of a first novel and is at the early stages of a new project about the present tense.


Articles Available Online


Interview with Namwali Serpell

Interview

December 2020

David Isaacs

Interview

December 2020

Namwali Serpell is a rarity: an academic and novelist whose criticism is as vital as her fiction. Since we first spoke, in September 2020,...

Book Review

June 2018

Christine Schutt’s ‘Pure Hollywood’

David Isaacs

Book Review

June 2018

There is a certain kind of American novelist of the late twentieth century whose fiction fetishises plant names. The...

The cat’s paws brush through the letterbox, looking for some jellied meat or an opening in the family Cat pushes a letter through the door The letter marked JH Ottessa, dead brother of mine My brother’s bedsheets still warm-sweaty My brother’s paw prints dented into the doormat Rain water falls heavy from the gutter makes me look up, makes me remember what day it is what time it is I call my little girl’s name Annette A        eh Annette A        eh voice through the wall, and the echo of her name, Annette, from the other side Her face screwed up fingers in ears not to have to hear, Annette, all the damn half-hour of the morning of all the days to be playing up the day of the funeral day late for church day   But a child can grieve, let the child be grieving, let the child        be   Eight years old were you brother? And I a bit older I see you running down the street, a sun-blazed strip lined with flowers begging for water, petals blown-out hearts It was a day with corn, heavily spiced and salted Smoke and charcoal Nice Heat beating a path into our bones, our brows wet You had a rug tied round your neck with garden twine, lying out in the sun charge up charge up, before flying off, past the street light, past the telephone wire, past the aeroplane Almost choked yourself to death I stretched out a hand to you, hooked onto a gate latch – the lynch mob’s latest victim, to save you from a strangling You hit my hand away And again Something in your eyes said this isn’t a game But I pulled you up pulled up out of the fire, that time, my hand melting into yours   The church is cold Warmed with bodies, they sitting on they heels        huh        sitting in the dirt        huh        rocking on they legs, mouth open moans we perform the wailing of the milk, divide up the ashes, and return to our        leaking gutters   You were fifteen you were fine, then acting strange

Contributor

August 2014

David Isaacs

Contributor

August 2014

David Isaacs has recently completed a PhD about the ethics of rewriting at UCL. He is coming to the end...

Prize Entry

April 2017

Pylons

David Isaacs

Prize Entry

April 2017

Once upon a time, Dad would begin, I think, focusing on the road, there was a man called Watt....

Seasickness

Prize Entry

April 2016

David Isaacs

Prize Entry

April 2016

‘How would you begin?’   She puts a finger to her lips, a little wrinkled still from the water, and hesitates. She says, ‘Maybe:...
How things are falling.

Prize Entry

April 2015

David Isaacs

Prize Entry

April 2015

i.   Oyster cards were first issued to members of the British public in July 2003; by June 2015 they will have been replaced...
by Accident

fiction

April 2014

David Isaacs

fiction

April 2014

[To be read aloud]   I want to begin – and I hope I don’t come across as autistic or anything like that (and...

READ NEXT

Interview

February 2011

Interview with Manfredi Beninati

Lowenna Waters

Interview

February 2011

Time, memory, the landscape of the mind, manifestation and metamorphosis, resurgence and collapse and the crisp crust of Sicilian...

fiction

October 2015

The Bird Thing

Julianne Pachico

fiction

October 2015

You are worried about the bird thing but that’s the last thing you want to think about right now,...

feature

Issue No. 19

Editorial

The Editors

feature

Issue No. 19

‘A crisis becomes a crisis when the white male body is affected,’ writes the philosopher Rosi Braidotti, interviewed in...

 

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