Term: Weekend Reading
Explore all pages categorised under the heading Weekend Reading below.
All categories can be seen on the main index page.
THE EAST: A Couple of Clactons
On the train to Essex, I realise I know little about Essex. And that little is scrappy and second-hand. Growing up in the 1990s, I...
Building the Great Wall
There are bodies, selves we cast aside to build the Great Wall. Our home crumbled; we shored up our stake. Tiles, dirt, glass, sticks, the...
The Moon
Last night the moon was a bow. I thought if only I could place my arrow in it I could kill all that lurked in...
Knowing my place
The plane coming down, and sheer headiness is in me. I will now be on Canadian soil! The noise is overwhelming… we’re about to land...
When the Cock Crows
“You shouldn’t have done it,” whispered the willowy brunette standing across from me. She was staring at the book she held in her hands, not...
Breakfast for Alligators
From Tipped Hat Press comes a staggering explosion of travel through the Americas, a collection of 32 information-packed essays by traveller, essayist, and blogger, Darrin...
C'est Grande Monde
Madagascar was pulling out of Africa, clumps of calcified ground ferried on water, following the windward trail that produces another year, row upon row of...
Kansas to Colorado
We wake to a mist that clouds the river road, hovers over a field of soft-spun spiders’ nests. Blackbirds beat and skirt the trees, streak...
The Taste of Healing
At the age of 28, in 1992, I was told I had HIV and maybe “a good five years” to live. By the time the...
Indian Head Massage
After I have travelled your scalp for twenty-two and a half minutes dissolving the knots smoothing the cramped furrows of pain you ask me what...
Trekking in the Pamir and Zarafshan Mountains
They say that to be from Tajikistan is to know Tajikistan. But while I thought I knew my country well, it was not until I...
Navajo
She was a child, not much older than I, facing the sheep she was herding across this dirt road. Outdoor work crusted on her shoulders....
Burrata in Chinatown
From my seat at the kitchen table, I watched my mother pick up a bright red pepper from her baking sheet, its skin shrivelled and...
Nyamata Genocide Memorial
Piled on the pews—a hideous laundry stacked and stained (the twenty-two years of blood rust unbreathable), their bodies vanished. But not their clothes—bloodied shirts, graying...
Nude Ascending the Welkin
Candle flame on cold pillar tallow. Wick bent to dip of our wings, Lighting up naught over naught of our lift. Stretched days direct most...
Mystery at Jackass Gulch
He’d been silent, the other man at the bar, gazing into his glass of whiskey before growing animated at the mention of Mark Twain. “I...
Right of Way
I look at the traffic, coming in droves from all sides: mopeds, taxis, pick-up trucks, and bicycles. The mopeds are the most impressive; some solely...
Never Say Never
Over 1,200 years ago, disgruntled Norse Viking sailed northward and started a new society, complete with a parliament, on an island they called Snæland, “land...
The Rumour
Once upon a time, the Princess circulated a rumour. It began on her island at the top of her tower, in her round room, at...
The Painting
All these for my lover: A rocket science; Telescopes; A map of Jupiter; And a lantern — Burning from the lips. I love you and...
The Artist as Diplomat
When the ordinary has become too safe, too stale, we are advised to make it strange, to look again, and magnify until the edges blur,...
Cool Enough
Roll. Pinch. Smash. Roll. All in one swift smooth motion, a chef rolled dough into cylinders, pinched off equally-sized chunks, smashed each with the palm...
Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle
It was in the town of Shkodra, in northern Albania, that I first picked up the name Edith Durham. Strolling the streets in the dry...
Byron and Hobhouse in the Bernese Oberland
Lord Byron and John Cam Hobhouse were university chums. Hobby had been best man at Byron’s unlikely and short-lived wedding to Annabella Milbanke in 1815,...
Jesus, Uno, Kimchi Pizza
It was the start of a three-day Memorial Day weekend. I stood there leaning on the counter, watching my folks’ forest green Lincoln Continental pull...
Festa de São João
They tell me the banked fires on every street corner tonight reveal in smoke and tears the face of the one you are meant to...
Water-Gazers*
On the pier in the harbour of Guinea-Bissau on the coast of West Africa, where cashews are shipped, and cocaine arrives daily, they wait through...
Weekend Reading
Read all articles, essays, poems, and stories published on Panorama on the weekends in between issues.
Taal Lake and the Lagunzad Trail
Dan Lagunzad was a botanist: he was built slim and thrumming, like a low, springy tree that was just a little bit taller than I...
Book Review: An unreliable guide to London
Lord Kitchener, the late Trinidadian calypsonian, arrived in England on the Empire Windrush in 1948, with several songs in his back pocket. Kitchener, a then...
Anastasia maps
Each night my handiwork charts Calypso’s serenade, the arrival of things that can only be made from scratch, a second language learned by the precisionist...
Food for the inner child
My first meaningful encounter with food took place on the French Riviera in the summer of 1991. I don’t remember it, but the story has...
Mapping Firenze
The day I learned to travel was the first time I ever was truly lost. It was 1979 and I was nine years old. Surely,...
Blue Cheese Blues
My brother and I waited until we knew we were alone, and darted into the little pantry. The old fridge hummed and hissed and gurgled...
Other Skins
I love the snake that stifles my breath I have built him bit by bit all these years fleshed him with fear so he moves...
I am a place
Careful observation can bridge the gap between seeing something virtually and witnessing the same thing in person. Although I’m no different to any other inquisitive...