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Rebecca Liu
Rebecca Liu is a commissioning editor at Guardian Saturday and a staff writer at Another Gaze.

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There are only girls on the internet

Book Review

August 2022

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

August 2022

I remember the first time I saw it, like a freshly alert hare alarmed by movement in the distant grasslands. It was 2013. Model...

Book Review

September 2020

Pankaj Mishra’s ‘Bland Fanatics’

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

September 2020

The Anglo-American commentariat is full of lofty egos. Pankaj Mishra has developed a reputation as their great deflater. ‘Watch...

Если у вас в мегаполисе ещё помнят обо мне, ссыльном, Знай, кто спросит: я умер, едва приговор огласили Мёртвый живу, хожу, тело донашиваю, Оно послушное – ссыхается на костях Я здесь чужак, варвар, языка не носитель, Неба коптитель, волосы стали белые, Мёртвыми губами учу гетскую грамоту, Мёртвыми ногами топчу твёрдую воду Что тебе рассказать, чтоб не скучала? Скачут Кони по гладкой реке, и стрелы летают, Рыбы торчат изо льда с открытыми ртами, Некому их вынимать Некому меня понимать Вино замёрзло, стоит само без кувшина, Кусок вина отломлю и сосу, как сиську Яблок не достать Ты бы меня не узнала Местные замотаны в шкуры, на тогу косятся, Только лица и видно, да и те в бороде Даже звёзды здесь не как у людей   If anyone in your global city still holds me, exile, in memory, Know that I died as soon as they read out the sentence I live dead, walk around dead, wear out the remains of my body, My agreeable body, flesh cracking on dry bones Here I am an alien, barbarian, non-native speaker, Idler with time on his hands but white in his hair, I don’t get their speech, I forget the words that I study, Just consonant clusters, no vowels for poetry What can I talk about so as not to bore you? Horses Slip on hard rivers, arrows hit targets, philosophy is stupid Fish stick out of the ice with mouths agape, Too much air for them, too little ear for me Wine frozen overnight, it stands by itself, the vessel in shards, I chop a piece off and suck on it like an infant The apples at the market are tawny and wrinkly like shrunken heads The locals, fir-tall, fur-clad, point at my toga, make shivering Gestures No human faces – just beards and hair over fur Even the stars look down on me     AFTERWORD   In 8 CE, the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso was exiled on the direct orders of Augustus to Tomis, a distant imperial outpost on the Black Sea in what is now Romania He died there a decade later, never receiving permission to come home despite his constant entreaties The exact cause of Ovid’s punishment is unknown; the poems he composed in Tomis appeared in two collections under the titles of Tristia, or ‘Laments’, and Epistulae ex

Contributor

August 2019

Rebecca Liu

Contributor

August 2019

Rebecca Liu is a commissioning editor at Guardian Saturday and a staff writer at Another Gaze.

Jia Tolentino’s ‘Trick Mirror’

Book Review

August 2019

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

August 2019

Talk about the fates of young professional women today and you will often alight on two themes: the anxieties that come with living in...

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poetry

April 2014

Lives of the Saints

Luke Neima

poetry

April 2014

‘I’m tending to this dead tree,’ he tells me. Last time he was rolling the hard rocks down into...

poetry

September 2012

Moscow - Petrozavodsk

Maxim Osipov

Anne Marie Jackson

poetry

September 2012

  Mark well, O Job, hold thy peace, and I will speak. Job 33:31     To deliver man...

Art

Issue No. 12

After After

Johanna Drucker

Art

Issue No. 12

So many things are ‘over’ now that all the post- and neo- prefixes are themselves suffering from fatigue. Even...

 

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