London Review Bookshop Podcast

Throughout her career and across her many books Jacqueline Rose has been teasing out the political implications of violence, and in particular the way it concerns and interacts with the social constructions of gender. In her latest passionate, polemical work On Violence and On Violence Against Women (Faber) she confronts the issue head on, taking in trans rights, the sexual harassment of migrant women, the trial of Oscar Pistorius and the writings of Hisham Matar and Han Kang. Rose is in conversation with Jude Kelly, Founder and Director of The WOW Foundation. Buy the book here: https://londonreviewbookbox.co.uk/products/on-violence-and-on-violence-against-women-by-jacqueline-rose Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Helen Mort and Dan Richards were at the shop to talk about poetry and mountaineering. Mort read from her latest collection from Chatto and Windus, No Map Could Show Them (a Poetry Book Society recommendation), which recounts in Mort’s inimitable style the exploits of pathbreaking female mountaineers. Afterwards she was in conversation with Dan Richards, whose book Climbing Days (Faber) explores the writing and climbing exploits of his great-great aunt and uncle, Dorothy Pilley and I.A. Richards. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Carrie Brownstein was at the shop to discuss her book, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, with Lavinia Greenlaw. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again (Verso)—spanning science and popular culture; pornography and literature; debates on #MeToo, consent and feminism—Katherine Angel challenges our assumptions about women’s desire. Why, she asks, should they be expected to know their desires? And how do we take sexual violence seriously, when not knowing what we want is key to both eroticism and personhood? Angel is in conversation with Olivia Laing, author of Funny Weather (Picador). Buy the books here: https://londonreviewbookbox.co.uk/collections/katherine-angel-and-olivia-laing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris Power’s first novel A Lonely Man (Faber) is a powerful, menacing exploration of the nature of truth, fabrication and identity. ‘If you're a fan of existential crises’ writes Jon McGregor, ‘family dramas, Putin-era paranoias, and Bolaño-style multiplicities, and want to see them woven into one taut novel, you're in the right place.’ Chris Power was in conversation about A Lonely Man with the critic Alex Clark. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Beginning in San Francisco in 1981, the era of punk and nascent gay pride, Rebecca Solnit’s latest book Recollections of My Non-Existence (Granta) is a powerful memoir of growing both as a woman and an artist, drawing on the powers of literature, activism and solidarity in the face of an apparently unbreachable patriarchy. The struggle to find a voice and to find a way to make that voice heard are brilliantly captured and dissected by one of feminism’s, and indeed the world’s, foremost thinkers. Rebecca Solnit was in conversation about her life and work with historian Mary Beard, whose most recent book is Women & Power: A Manifesto. Both of our speakers are regular contributors to the pages of the LRB. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Already well-known for her novels – Telex from Cuba, The Flamethrowers, The Mars Room – Rachel Kushner has over the past two decades been writing essays, reviews and reportage as insightful and surprising as her fiction. In The Hard Crowd (Jonathan Cape) she has selected 19 pieces, covering diverse topics: art, literature, music, politics with essays on Marguerite Duras, Jeff Koons, wildcat strikes, a visit to a Palestinian refugee Camp and the music scene of her hometown San Francisco. She talks about her work with art critic and frequent contributor to the LRB Professor Hal Foster. Buy the books here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joshua Cohen, one of Granta magazines ‘Best Young American Writers’ for 2017, was at the shop to read from and talk about his latest novel Moving Kings, published by Fitzcarraldo. Described by James Wood in the New Yorker as ‘A Jewish Sopranos… burly with particularities and vibrant with voice… utterly engrossing, full of passionate sympathy’, Moving Kings interweaves the housing crisis in contemporary New York with the history of conflict in the Middle East. Joshua Cohen was in conversation with Jon Day, lecturer in English at King's College, London and LRB contributor. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From this 2018 event: In Municipal Dreams (Verso), John Boughton charts the often surprising story of council housing in Britain, from the slum clearances of the Victorian age through to the Grenfell Tower disaster. It’s a history packed with incident – with utopians, visionaries and charlatans, with visionary planners and corrupt officials – and Boughton combines it with an architectural tour of some of the best remaining examples, as well as some of the more ordinary places that millions of people have come to call home. He's in conversation about his book with Owen Hatherley, architectural historian and author of, most recently, The Ministry of Nostalgia. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Holly Pester's debut collection, Comic Timing (Granta), is disorienting, radical and extremely funny; Pester has a background in sound art and performance, having worked with the Womens' Library, the BBC and the Wellcome Collection, and is an unmissable reader of her own work. She read from Comic Timing and was in conversation with Vahni Capildeo, whose most recent collection is Skin Can Hold (Carcanet, 2019), and Rachael Allen, poetry editor at Granta and author of Kingdomland (Faber, 2019). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Having an engineer as a father and an art school education, Paul Spooner became, predictably, a school-teacher, then a lorry driver. A chance meeting with mechanical model-maker Peter Markey in Cornwall led him to discover his true métier – the almost extinct profession of automatist, or maker of automata. Since then he has been relentlessly making mechanical playthings, mostly of wood, some of them not, mostly small, some of them not, all of them intricately engineered, eccentrically beautiful and endlessly fascinating. He is in conversation about his work with Rosemary Hill, architectural historian and contributing editor at the London Review of Books. She first encountered Paul Spooner's work at Cabaret Mechanical Theatre in Covent Garden in the 1980s and has admired it ever since. Her books include God's Architect, a biography of A W N Pugin, and Stonehenge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Patricia Lockwood was in conversation about her new book, No One Is Talking About This (and a lot else besides) with fellow LRB contributing editor, John Lanchester. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brigid Brophy (1929-95) was a fearlessly original novelist, essayist, critic and political campaigner, championing gay marriage, pacifism, vegetarianism and prison reform. Her many acclaimed novels include Hackenfeller’s Ape, The King of a Rainy Country, Flesh, The Finishing Touch, In Transit, and The Snow Ball – which Faber reissued at the end of last year – as well as critical studies of Mozart, Aubrey Beardsley and Ronald Firbank, among other subjects. She also wrote about Mozart for the LRB, and contributed 19 other unforgettable pieces in the paper’s first years, on subjects ranging from Michelangelo to Germaine Greer, animal cruelty to structuralism. Eley Williams, who wrote the foreword for the new edition of The Snow Ball, is in conversation with Terry Castle and Bidisha about Brophy the essayist and novelist, Brophy then and now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lauren Oyler was talking abou her first novel, Fake Accounts, with the writer Olivia Sudjic, who has described it as 'Savage and shrewd, destined to go viral. If the world does end soon I'll be glad that I read it'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

André Aciman talked to Brian Dillon about his latest book, Homo Irrealis (Faber and Faber), a collection of essays on subjects as diverse as Freud, W.G.Sebald, the films of Eric Rohmer and the cityscapes of Alexandria and St Petersburg. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In The Lark Ascending (Faber) Richard King, author of Original Rockers and How Soon is Now?, explores how Britain's history and identity have been shaped by the mysterious relationship between music and nature. From the far west of Wales to the Thames Estuary and the Suffolk shoreline, taking in Brian Eno, Kate Bush, Boards of Canada, Dylan Thomas, Gavin Bryars, Greenham Common and the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass, The Lark Ascending listens to the land and the music that emerged from it, to chart a new and surprising course through a familiar landscape. King was in conversation with Luke Turner, editor of the influential online music publication The Quietus and author of the memoir Out of the Woods. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Following on from his bestselling and hugely entertaining Germania and Danubia, Simon Winder continues his idiosyncratic journey through Europe’s past with Lotharingia (Picador). Now almost forgotten, Lotharingia arose from the ashes of the Carolingian Empire and stretched from the North Sea coasts of what is now the Netherlands all the way to the Alps, encompassing myriad languages and nationalities. Despite its disappearance and ensuing obscurity Lotharingia, Winder shows, has exercised a surprising and powerful influence on the history of the continent of Europe, from the Early Middle Ages to the present day. Winder was in conversation about Europe’s lost country with psychoanalyst and essayist Adam Phillips. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In his book Conversations About Sculpture (Yale) art historian Hal Foster recapitulates the discussions he has had, over a period of two decades, with the legendary minimalist sculptor Richard Serra. Professor Foster, a regular contributor to the London Review of Books, was in discussion about his book, and about Serra's extraordinary work, with Tate Modern curator Mark Godfrey. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From this 2017 event: Bertolt Brecht, poet, playwright, theatre director and refugee, was a passionate critic of fascism and war. During World War Two, already many years into his exile from Nazi Germany, Brecht started creating what he called ‘photo-epigrams’ to create a singular visual and lyrical attack on war under modern capitalism. As his family fled from the Nazis, 'changing countries more often than our shoes,' Brecht took photographs from newspapers and popular magazines and added short lapidary verses to each in a unique attempt to understand the truth of war using mass media. These photo-epigrams are collected in War Primer, a remarkable work first published in 1955 and made newly available in a new edition by Verso. Chair Gareth Evans is joined by Deutsche Borse Prize-winning photographer Oliver Chanarin, Brecht scholar and translator Tom Kuhn and scholar and critic Esther Leslie in a panel discussion about this outstanding literary memorial to World War Two and one of the most spontaneous, revealing and moving of Brecht’s works that is strikingly relevant to the current confluence of war and neo-fascism today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dana Spiotta was reading from her novel Innocents and Others, and talking about her work with with journalist and critic Alex Clark. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From this 2017 event, Canadian poet and novelist Anne MIchaels, author of the multi-award winning fiction Fugitive Pieces, 'the most important book I have read for forty years' (John Berger), presents two new titles. Infinite Gradation (House Sparrow Press), her first volume of non-fiction, is an astonishing meditation on the moral, emotional and philosophical implications of language and the creative act. All We Saw (Bloomsbury), Anne's latest collection of poetry, continues her mesmerising and lyrical exploration of love, loss and the mystery at the heart of being. She was in conversation with writer and broadcaster Bidisha. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rich with arguments that speak directly to our moment - a time when more humans live in urban spaces than ever before - Building and Dwelling (Allen Lane) draws on Richard Sennett's deep learning and intimate engagement with city life to form a bold and original vision for the future of cities. Sennett was in conversation with Anna Minton, author of Big Capital (Penguin). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this event from 2018, Brian Dillon, UK editor of Cabinet magazine and author of several books of essays, fiction, history and art criticism, talked about his first book, In the Dark Room, published by Penguin in 2005 and now available again in a handsome new edition from Fitzcarraldo, with Sophie Ratcliffe, Associate Professor in English, University of Oxford and author of On Sympathy (Oxford, 2008). Exploring the intersections of grief and memory, in his own personal history and beyond, Dillon evokes, in prose of great beauty and lucidity, the pain both of loss, and that of remembering the lost. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lynsey Hanley's Estates, first published by Granta in 2008, has become over the past decade one of the key texts to analyse Britain's urban landscape in the post-War period. To mark a new edition of her seminal work, Hanley, a regular contributor to the Guardian and the New Statesman, was in conversation with fellow journalist Dawn Foster, who has written widely on housing and social issues. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this event from June 2017, Brian Dillon talks to Max Porter about his latest book, Essayism (Fitzcarraldo Editions). Dillon has been fascinated by the essay form throughout his reading and writing life, and Essayism is at once a paean to this venerable and still vibrant genre, and a dazzling contemporary example of it. Porter is the author of the prize-winning Grief is the Thing with Feathers (Faber). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russian twentieth-century poetry is one of the pinnacles of European literature and we still know little about it. This event includes readings from Yesenin, Mayakovsky, Maria Petrovykh, Varlam Shalamov (still better known for his prose) and the emigre poet Georgy Ivanov, one of the very greatest of all Russian lyric poets. Stephen Capus, Robert Chandler, Boris Dralyuk and James Womack read some of their translations included in the new Penguin Book of Russian Poetry. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the nights close in, what could be better than to gather around the (virtual) hearth and consider multi-award winning poet Robin Robertson's shadow-wracked new collection, Grimoire (Picador). A grimoire is a manual for invoking spirits, and in Robertson's intense Celtic take, it tells stories of ordinary people caught up, suddenly, in the extraordinary: tales of violence, madness and retribution, of second sight, witches, ghosts, selkies, changelings and doubles, all bound within a larger mythology. This is a book of curses and visions, gifts both desired and unwelcome, full of the same charged beauty as the Scottish landscape – a beauty that can switch, with a mere change in the weather, to hostility and terror. Joining Robertson in conjuring the spirit of place, people and purpose are Alasdair Roberts, the extraordinary singer-songwriter and keeper of the tradition, and the T.S. Eliot prize-winning poet Jen Hadfield, whose most recent collection is Byssus. With host, Gareth Evans.. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Daisy Lafarge’s Life Without Air (Granta), following on the tails of her pamphlets understudies for air and capriccio, is one of the mostly hotly-awaited debut collections of 2020. She read from the collection, and was in conversation about it with Rachael Allen, author of Kingdomland (Faber) and Lafarge’s editor at Granta. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

London, the Capital of world capitalism, a centre of global finance and a place of immense wealth and privilege, has an often unacknowledged red underbelly, stretching from Herbert Morrison in the 1930s to Sadiq Khan in the 2020s. In Red Metropolis (Repeater), Tribune culture editor and historian Owen Hatherley looks back at that tradition, and argues that a socialist, democratic, pluralist city could become a beacon of hope for the whole country and beyond. Hatherley is in conversation with Novara Media’s senior editor Ash Sarkar. Buy the book from us here: londonreviewbookbox.co.uk/collections/owen-hatherley Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Zimbabwean novelist, playwright and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga presented her latest novel, the Booker-shortlisted This Mournable Body (Faber). The third in a trilogy which began with Nervous Conditions and continued with The Book of Not, This Mournable Body tells the ongoing story of Tambudzai and her struggles with patriarchy and the legacy of colonialism as she tries to make her way, on her own terms, in 1990s Harare. Dangarembga has for many years been as involved in politics as in literature and film (for her all three are intimately connected), and has served as education secretary for the Movement for Democratic Change. She is currently awaiting trial in connection with her role in peaceful anti-corruption protests in Zimbabwe, charges which have led many prominent writers around the world to leap to her defence. Dangarembga was in conversation with Sara Collins, author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton, a gothic romance set in Georgian London which combines elements of Bildungsroman, crime fiction and slave narrative with a healthy dose of righteous anger. This event was held in partnership with Faber Members. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In our event from 16 July 2019, Geoff Dyer talks to Frances Wilson about D.H. Lawrence. Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage, published in 1997, is a brilliant account of attempting to write, and most often failing, a book about his great hero D.H. Lawrence. Now, more than two decades later, he has edited a selection of Lawrence's essays for Penguin. Subjects covered in this freewheeling volume include art, morality, obscenity, songbirds, Italy, Thomas Hardy, the death of a porcupine in the Rocky Mountains and, presciently, the narcissism of photographing ourselves. Historian and biographer Frances Wilson's most recent book is Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas de Quincey. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On publication of Andrew Motion's new book of poetry, Essex Clay, he joined Alan Hollinghurst in conversation at St George's Bloomsbury. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Writer and critic Brian Dillon’s latest book Suppose a Sentence (Fitzcarraldo) is a series of essays, each of them taking as its pretext a single sentence drawn from literature. What emerges is a dazzling experiment in criticism, a personal and at times polemical investigation of style, meaning and sense. Dillon was in conversation about his work with Olivia Laing, author of Funny Weather and Crudo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Novelist, memoirist, essayist and contributing editor to the LRB John Lanchester sets out to chill you to the virtual bone with his first ever collection of short fiction Reality and Other Stories (Faber). As if modern life weren’t unsettling enough, Lanchester makes it even more so with tales of haunted mobile phones, selfie sticks with demonic powers and other stories of technology gone horribly, horribly wrong in this retread of M.R. James for the Zoom generation. As we prepare for what might be the strangest Hallowe’en in living memory, John Lanchester discussed the uncanny with the LRB’s head of special projects Sam Kinchin-Smith. Buy the book from us here: https://londonreviewbookbox.co.uk/products/reality-and-other-stories-by-john-lanchester Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The European Union Prize for Literature aims to put the spotlight on the creativity and diverse wealth of Europe’s contemporary literature and to promote the circulation of literature beyond national and linguistic borders. To discuss the prize, the state of European literature and Britain's place in the post-Brexit international literary community, we welcomed two past winners: Sunjeev Sahota, who won in 2017 for his Man Booker shortlisted novel The Year of Runaways; and 2014 winner Evie Wyld, author of All the Birds, Singing. The discussion was chaired by critic and former EUPL jury member Catherine Taylor. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In celebration of the life, work and legacy of William Trevor, one of the giants of modern Irish fiction, authors Salley Vickers, Kevin Barry, Hermione Lee and BBC Radio 4 Books Editor Di Speirs read from and talked about their favourites of his novels and short fiction, to mark the publication of Last Stories (Viking). Trevor, who died in 2016, won the Whitbread prize three times, was five times shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and in 2014 was made Saoi by Aosdána, Ireland’s most prestigious artistic award. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We were joined by Toby Litt, Helen Charman, Lisa Kelly and Mary Jean Chan, four of the poets featured in Carcanet’s New Poetries VII. From the first anthology, published in 1994, through to this seventh volume, the series showcases the work of some of the most engaging and inventive new poets writing in English from around the world. The New Poetries anthologies have never sought to identify a school, much less a generation: the poets included employ a wide range of styles, forms and approaches, and new need not be taken to imply young. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Three-times Booker-nominated author and LRB editor-at-large Andrew O’Hagan’s latest novel centres on the powerful friendship between James and Tully, fuelled by teenage rebellion and the unforgettable soundtrack of late 80s British music. Stretching over three decades, Mayflies is a captivating study of adolescence becoming adulthood, with all the shades of light and darkness that has made O’Hagan one of the most respected writers of his generation. O’Hagan was in conversation with Edmund Gordon, biographer of Angela Carter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Igbo and Tamil writer and artist Akwaeke Emezi's mesmerising first novel Freshwater was published to universal acclaim in 2018, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Their second book was Pet, a novel for young adults that raised difficult and pertinent questions about cultures of denial, and was described as ‘beautiful and genre-expanding’ in the New York Times. To mark the publication of their second novel for adults The Death of Vivek Oji, a heart-wrenching tale of one family’s discords and misunderstandings, the London Review Bookshop hosted a live online conversation between Akwaeke Emezi and their editor at Faber, Louisa Joyner. The interview between Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Dionne Brand referred to in their conversation can be found here: https://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2018/06/temporary-spaces-of-joy-and-freedom/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Novelist and essayist Kirsty Gunn’s latest novel Caroline’s Bikini is a powerful retelling of one of the oldest stories in western literature – that of unrequited love. In a series of conversations in West London bars, Gunn unravels the passion of financier Evan Gordonstone for the glamorous Caroline Beresford, an unravelling that brings Gordonstone to the brink of destruction. Kirsty Gunn is the author of six works of fiction and several essay collections, and currently teaches creative writing at the University of Dundee. She read from her latest book, and talked about it with Max Porter, author of Lanny. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Leading political thinker Chantal Mouffe proposes a new way to define left populism today: it is more than an ideology or a political regime. It is a way of doing politics that can take various forms but emerges when one aims at building a new subject of collective action — the people. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Across five collections, Maureen N. McLane's poetry has won admirers for its distinctive mix of the humourous and the cerebral, a voice the London Review of Books described as ‘Somewhere between teenage fangirl and Wordsworth professor.’ The best of those five collections is now gathered in her first selected, What I'm Looking For (Penguin). McLane was at the shop to read from and discuss her work with poet and critic Sarah Howe, whose collection Loop of Jade won the 2015 T.S. Eliot prize. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

‘This past is a dimension of the present, without which the present is mutilated.’ In Lord of all the Dead, Javier Cercas plunges back into his family history, revisiting Ibahernando, his parents' village in southern Spain, to discover the truth about his ancestor Manuel Mena, who died fighting on the Francoist side at the Battle of the Ebro. Who are we to judge the dead? How can we reconcile national and family history, the political and the domestic? Cercas was in conversation with Gaby Wood, journalist and literary director of the Booker Prize Foundation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Five Dials 57, ‘To Leave and to Be Left Behind’, explores the imaginative space of the journey – where it can take us and how it can change us. Guest-edited by Sophie Mackintosh, it brings together a range of playful, intimate and risk-taking voices from across contemporary fiction and poetry. To celebrate the launch of this special issue, Sophie was joined in conversation by three of the magazine’s contributors – Rachael Allen, Bridget Minamore and Yara Rodrigues Fowler. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In conversation with Dave McKean, Richard McGuire talks about his graphic novel, Here, a book-length expansion of his groundbreaking 1989 sequence of the same name, Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To celebrate the publication of Why Didn't You Just Do What You Were Told?, a new selection of Jenny Diski's LRB essays, chosen and introduced by Mary-Kay Wilmers, Deborah Friedell talked to Chloe Diski about Jenny's life and work. You can order Why Didn't You Just Do What You Were Told? from us here: https://lrb.me/order Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two of Ann Quin’s admirers, novelist and essayist Deborah Levy and writer and critic Juliet Jacques, will be joined in conversation about her life and work by Jennifer Hodgson, editor of The Unmapped Country. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are more beautiful things than Beyoncé (Corsair) won Morgan Parker a wide UK readership; Magical Negro takes and expands on the achievement of that first collection, dealing as it does with objectification, loneliness, stereotyping and the stubbornness of ancestral trauma. Danez Smith has called Parker ‘one of this generation’s best minds, able to hold herself and her world, which includes all of us, up to impossible lights’. Parker read from Magical Negro, and was in conversation with Georgina Lawton, journalist and essayist, who writes for the Guardian and gal-dem magazine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Writing on Lorna Goodison’s poetry, Derek Walcott asks ‘What is the rare quality that has gone out of poetry that these marvellous poems restore? Joy.’ Goodison has served as the Poet Laureate of Jamaica and published twelve volumes of poetry; her Collected Poems came out from Carcanet in 2017. In 2019, she won the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. Linton Kwesi Johnson is one of the only three poets to be published as a Penguin Modern Classic while still alive; his collections include Inglan is a Bitch, Tings an’ Times, and Mi Revalueshanary Fren. Johnson and Goodison were in conversation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There is a sort of chase for coherence in the current commercial market for fiction ... a sort of terror of there being any kind of mystery in a book, or even a character being confused. Deborah Levy, described by Lauren Elkin in the TLS as ' one of the most exciting voices in contemporary British fiction' was at the Bookshop to talk about her latest novel Hot Milk (Hamish Hamilton), which explores the strange and monstrous nature of motherhood. “A bright broth of myth, psychology, Freudian symbolism and contemporary anxiety.” – Guardian Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.