Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ep. 39. Kieran Yates, All the Houses I've Ever Lived In: Finding Home in a System that Fails Us
98 Plays3 days ago
In today's episode I talk to Kieran Yates about her nonfiction book All the Houses I've Ever Lived In (2023).
Kieran Yates is a London based journalist and author who has written everywhere from The Guardian and The Independent to Dazed and Vice. Her debut book, all the houses ive ever lived in is a meditation on home and the politics of the housing crisis.
Book recs:
- Eula Biss, Having and Being Had
- Sam Johnson-Schlee, Living Rooms
- Kyle Chayka, The Longing for Less: What's Missing from Minimalism
- Toni Morrison, 'The Site of Memory'
- Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
- Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance
Follow the show on Instagram and subscribe to the Substack for transcripts and more links. Please leave feedback here.
Follow Kieran on Instagram @Kierany8s or find her at kieranyates.co.uk
Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Books Up Close'
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close. I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the Close Reading Show for readers, writers, and anyone interested in how texts get made.
Kieran Yates on Her Debut Book
00:00:10
Speaker
In today's show, I talk to the Kieran Yates. If anyone knows me, you know that we're BFFs, but let's just pretend I'm being really objective here.
00:00:19
Speaker
Kieran Yates is a London-based journalist and author who has written everywhere from The Guardian and The Independent to Dazed and Vice. Her debut book, All the Houses I've Ever Lived In, is a meditation on home and the politics of the housing crisis. And that is the book we're talking about today. Listeners, if you've got it, turn to page 11. If you don't have it what are you doing with your life?
00:00:39
Speaker
Go buy it.
Choosing Narrative Non-Fiction
00:00:40
Speaker
Kieran, thank you so much for doing this with me. oh it's a pleasure so good to talk to you i've been begging you to this forever and now we're making it happen and this book came out a while ago ah wonder how you feel about like reflecting on it now what your relationship is to it at this point well i think that it was probably the right decision to do a narrative non-fiction piece of text so it felt like you know, the politics wasn't so dominant. It's, it's like kind of bubbling under. And because of that, it doesn't feel so outdated, you know, and so like, I read it like last year, and I thought, yeah, actually, that sounds up. I agree with my points. And yeah, it doesn't feel like it was over another time.
00:01:32
Speaker
Whereas some other things I've written definitely do. Like from the first line I'm like, oh, the intellect just scrubbed that. ah yeah Yeah, writing to the current moment is hard, right? and When we live in you know the cursed timeline where you know everything catches up with us within a week these days. You're like, okay, well, nothing can be you said anymore, right?
00:01:55
Speaker
And I think the nature of memoir writing, like kind of stays you from that a little bit because you're like looking back, but crucially have enough time to reflect, to meditate and think. And so you don't have to do those like hot takes in the way that whom you often have to do as a journalist. And so you're like, oh, this is what a feel about those things that have transpired.
00:02:21
Speaker
Right, we'll talk more about your writing in practice later because that is one of the things, you know, it's a very different kind of writing from what you've done before.
Close Reading and Journalism
00:02:28
Speaker
Before we go there, how do you feel about close reading? I mean, we did a literature degree together. we did. But I wonder how you feel about it now as a practice or an approach? Well, I think it is ah figurative and literal for me, you know, it's as a journalist, so much of my practice is about, you know, fastidious fact checking, you know, and like, there's always the example used of the New Yorker fact checkers that are like word by word. But I mean, even so, like I often have done line by line by editors and they're like, how does this make you feel? how does this make you think? What does it make you think about? So like part of like reading closely is literal, you know, like making sure those facts make sense, making sure the quotes are accurate, making sure you know exactly what you think when you say something and you hear something. And like when you're on the internet being like, oh actually, what does that make me think about? And then also so figurative, you know, you are allowed this kind of a luxury that we exist in this liminal space of the brighter world where we're able to like think in abstracts a lot of the time. So, you know, you're kind of closely reading, but you're taking a step back from that and really meditating deeply sometimes on like a sentence and coming back and being like, oh yeah, I'm
00:04:05
Speaker
they kind of how feel about Yeah.
Blending Personal and Political Contexts
00:04:07
Speaker
And in this book, like, I know you call it memoir, but like you are juggling many or you're spinning many plates at once or juggling many things at once.
00:04:16
Speaker
And that's one of why picked this section, because I feel like you do this thing throughout the book where you're like, here's me. here's my context, but also here's like a broader cultural context. And also here's like the historical sweep, but also here's the politics. And I'm like, I don't know, rereading it.
00:04:33
Speaker
I'm kind of amazed how you can do that in like one sentence to the next. Right. And I kind of will, we'll talk through some of that here, but yeah, interesting that I kind of, you're doing, does the sentence make sense? Is it accurate? Are my facts right? Is everything in place, but also is it evoking the feeling I want? Are the words the right ones here? Like how much is too much?
00:04:54
Speaker
you know, how much embellishment am I doing, which is a relevant word for what we're go to about to hear. But also like, you know, as you know, on our literature degree, like so much of it was like reading those texts and those novels. And then the other half of it was like understanding the history and society and politics of the time.
00:05:16
Speaker
And that really resonated with me. And, you know, that kind of formed the basis of the writing that I would go on to do which is like that delicate balance between those two modes of thinking. And, you know, I also think that even though some of the texts were like pre 1900, it kind of brought that into the present because i was like, oh yeah, political conflict, I get that. Oh yeah, societal conflict and push and pull. Yeah, I get that. And I think I needed that kind of grounding because you know, it's a working class writer, as you know, like ah we maybe didn't grow up with the literary canon in our houses. And so, so much of that was alien to me, but society I got.
00:06:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's interesting. Yeah, i would agree it was very historical actually, when you say it. And so much was like, yeah context, I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about. Like, you know, it was just like straight in with like, well, obviously, you know about like the English Civil War. I was like, kinda? I'm like, do I need to do that to read this book? Like, oh yeah, maybe I do. And then it's like well, also the sweep of colonialism. I'm like, cool, cool. cool Googling, like, when is this period, right? So yeah, I think that that definitely shows in your work all the time, right? You're interested in how things emerge in space and time, right? Whether you're writing about grime or as in grime music, as well as like grime in this book in a very different context.
00:06:42
Speaker
And that, yeah, that contextualization is really interesting for me here.
Cultural Significance in Writing
00:06:47
Speaker
So why don't we hear this passage now, which is from the Beresford Road chapter.
00:06:52
Speaker
People, if you haven't read the book, each chapter is a different place that you have lived in your life. And each of those homes or houses is kind of like a little portal into like a bigger conversation. And this chapter is Beresford Road and it's a kind of portal to like the household object in a way, right? And here we're going to hear a bit of that.
00:07:13
Speaker
There are specific objects in every home that transport us. In mine is a copy of my nanaji's tissue box, a memento of historical decadence. These days, the tissue boxes you see in most South Asian homes are cheaper, mass-produced plastic coffees of the original versions that were made of precious metal.
00:07:34
Speaker
These boxes are adorned with fake velour, usually in black, red or navy, and covered in embossed yellow-orange plastic to mimic Indian 22-karat gold, fashioned into patterns of intricate vines or leaves or flowers, and shipped across oceans so that we might not experience some lux in our lives.
00:07:54
Speaker
As a child, I would eye my nanadu's tissue box with intrigue and awe, this lump of real gold excavated and carved especially for us from God knows where.
00:08:06
Speaker
Once, I acquired a gold pen and got to work seeing what else I could gild, applying a DIY Midas touch to various unassuming objects to make them special.
00:08:17
Speaker
Screws, chairs, door frames. For all their ability to fool a child, the sound of these boxes is what gives them away. If you tap one with an acrylic nail, like I often do now, there is no resonant ting, but a hollow, clattering sound.
00:08:33
Speaker
Our soundscapes are formed early and are uniquely attached to the our interior environment, and my young eye was tricked, so for a while I thought all gold sounded like that.
00:08:45
Speaker
The story of how these tissue boxes journey to Britain is hard to pin down. Their ownership is contested across the global south, but it seems the most likely that they are remnant of the Mughal dynasty, which ruled India from 1526 to Mughal emperors often embellish metal boxes originally used for holding perfumes or metal boxes used for storing tobacco leaves with rich textiles and gem set jewellery, transforming court into luxury bed stances.
00:09:19
Speaker
Thank you so much.
Importance of Voice in Writing
00:09:20
Speaker
I love hearing you read it. Primarily because, and yes, I know you and love you, but like I associate your writing very much with voice, right? Like you're not you're not a journalist that shies away from like the you-ness of the voice, right? In a way that sometimes we go to journalism for some objectivity, right? But like you always place yourself very firmly in the work. And I think this passage is a really good example of where you are a playing with voice, right? Of like, I'm being a bit objective here or a bit like zoomed out. And then I go straight in. i like, even the, like I often do now bit, right? That little parenthetical where you like bring us immediately into like the texture of what you might be doing or even the, you
00:10:05
Speaker
from god knows where right which is very like voicey but then the opening is like there are specific objects in every home that transport us right like very like neutral sentence in mine comma it's a copy like straight away we've moved from this like generalized like thesis statement about objects to here's my experience and i'm really interested in that kind of you know you could easily write this book in a more zoomed out way right there are specific objects in every home for example people in this culture do this kind of thing whatever, but you go straight in mine, that grounding move. And I wonder, I wonder what you think about that and how you would think about it as you were writing. And, you know, also needs to contain the multitudes that you do as a person. So even though you kind of might know things academically or journalistically, you're still a person in the world. You're still a working class person. You're still a brown woman. You are still operating in these circles. You still have a Chris in your life. And so I think that, you know,
00:11:16
Speaker
quite often it is difficult maybe to incorporate both those things for a lot of writers and i mean it's been difficult for me as well but I've had the years of practice so now it feels like is part of my duty to represent that and represent that kind of difference and you know, being in the publishing world has really made me feel different because I'm like, oh, of course, like i look and sound and feel before we even talk about academic qualification, so different to a lot of the people are reading my work.
00:11:58
Speaker
And I think that that's kind of important to exist on the page as you do in life.
00:12:09
Speaker
Yeah, i but I think that even that like self-training to like know to do that in the second sentence, right? To go like, I'm going to do the broad sentence, but I have to immediately move it. And like, that's unconscious, I guess. But like, interesting that you do it. And in mine, it's a copy of my Nanaji's tissue box and like important...
00:12:26
Speaker
specificity but then a memento of historical decadence which is such like a fun little phrase right like but historical decadence is like a great phrase as though it's it's decadent now but it's also decadent with history right it's not just like decadence from the past but decadence of the past I guess which is like kind of what you're describing yeah you know this object in particular but a lot of objects that are like intimately connected to us are so imbued with something, whether that's history sentimentalism or memory or something to do with us. And i think that
00:13:06
Speaker
you know, they're too often overlooked maybe, but definitely like not really studied and thought about. And, you know, I think that that was really important to me in this book to be like, these things are important.
00:13:22
Speaker
So are you. And we can resist all those feelings, all those factors, real or imagined that makes us feel not so.
Luxury and Immigrant Identity
00:13:33
Speaker
And it like the us, like you use that pronoun us, right? Like that transport us, not that transport me or like, I don't know, the the use of the we and the us in this book is quite important as a, this isn't just like your experience or something that could people are like, well, that's just like Kieran's version of the world. But you're kind of like, no, no, you all have, we all have this.
00:13:52
Speaker
And I also think that nonfiction has a reputation for being dry, you know, and especially like housing, you know, housing by design is so dense, you know, I've been like, you know, researching and been interested in housing policy for a decade and I still don't completely understand everything that i read because it's like dense, but it's like constantly updated and constantly dense. So I feel like there's more of a responsibility when you write on this topic to make it feel alive in any way you can because otherwise people often just turn off and so you know that is why it's important for me to have that kind of fictive quality when you read it and you're like oh okay I'm
00:14:42
Speaker
in either on the personal element of storytelling or on, you know, your voice. Yeah, like, you know, you've gone from, like, the broad, there are specific objects, to in mine it's a copy. And then these days, the tissue boxes you most see in most South Asian houses, right, so we've zoomed out again, right, our cheaper mass-produced plastic copies of the original version. So, like, we've gone, like, out, in, back out, this kind of, like, concertina-ing of... yeah perspective and like scale i suppose and that idea of plastic copies of the original versions and throughout this whole chapter you're talking about the like copies as being as meaningful as the originals right they're like actually the copy like contains as much of that past as as the originals do and i i think it's just an interesting reading that you don't go down the whole like
00:15:31
Speaker
everything's a simulation right like this is not a post-modern kind of reading right this is yeah actually in everyone's culture and world you might have like the plasticky version of the thing but it's still the thing right it's not like emptied of meaning but actually it's like fuller of meaning somehow I think the there's a lot that's talked about about that rupturing of identity that immigration gives us yeah and a lot of immigrants to have that experience of an identity that is like you know dual also so fragmented and one way that they've created I guess to remedy this is like this cultural production of facsimiles, you know, and there are facsimiles everywhere ah to remind you, not only of home, but to like give you a sense of grounding and having a stake in the society that you occupy.
00:16:31
Speaker
Now, that's not something that I like feel as a desperate kid, but also like I really feel like I'm at home many places as a booker test.
00:16:43
Speaker
So I'm fascinated by those stories from my grandparents who like talk about the way in which they struggle to have a stake in a place that i feel so uncomfortable.
00:16:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And that mimicking, right, is like the word you used, is like, and you know, fashioned into intricate patterns and shipped across oceans so that we might all experience some lux in our lives, which is like lovely, right?
00:17:10
Speaker
The sibilance of shipped across oceans, like quite soft and then like the lux in our lives, which is like a funny, like wry phrase, right? And it's very you. But But also that is the desire, right? Of like people who are moving across oceans to be like, how do I find home, meaning, luxury, softness, pleasure, right? The toxicity of like the migration debate is like, well, should people live in this new place? and it's like, well, like as though it's just bare minimum survival. And here we're talking about like, how do people thrive and bring cultures with them and create new cultures and share and do you know what mean? And like remember and live.
00:17:50
Speaker
and how do you resist a narrative that tells you that luxury is demonized all the time? yeah And the pursuit of luxury is demonized. Yeah. Where luxury is excess, right? Like luxury means waste. Luxury means do you deserve it? Can you afford it?
00:18:06
Speaker
You know? Oh, people on, you know, benefits like buying nice phones or, you know, whatever, like that kind of dialogue. Whereas here we're talking about like the fake villain, the mimicking of 22 karat gold.
00:18:19
Speaker
like as though beauty is only the reserve of like the rich yeah we know that like taste is is rife with classism yeah and you know especially when we talk about interior design so it's very rare that we would see the homes that you and I grew up in in like the pages of Elle Decoration or like Architectural Digest. And part of that is, you know, because of the makeup of, you know, those newsrooms or those editorial processes. But also the idea that, you know, the things that you love are seen as tacky or like copies and not good copies at that, you know, just like landfill. And, you know, this book is partly a love letter to that, but it's also saying that, know, You know, those things which you dismiss are so important. We know that. Yeah, we we know that. And that, yeah, and then you like transition in that second paragraph there, right? Like as a child, I would eye my nanogies tissue box with intrigue and awe. Again, like grounding us in the very specific...
00:19:26
Speaker
perspective of you, but you're like taking us to that past as well, right? This lump of real gold excavating in conference, especially from God knows where. That's both like your voice, but also like the adults around you, right? Like from God knows where, yeah like that's your mom, that's your grandparents, right? The the voice that you've absorbed as the child.
00:19:46
Speaker
Once I acquired a gold pen and got to work seeing what else I could gild, applying a DIY Midas touch to various unassuming objects to make them special. Like again, that's like you then and you now, right? This kind of back and forth. I love DIY Midas touch.
00:20:00
Speaker
it's yeah I don't know. It's just like, again, giving texture to how we make meaning in our lives. And the questions that arise when things just land in your vicinity without estim explanation. Yeah. you know And you know that's that's part of the work of my life and this book of like trying to answer those questions, trying to like find threads of like a journey that a person, an object has been on.
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, like you're following the objects as they move, but also like the people that are attached to those objects, right? Like it's it's not like no object is disconnected from its history or its context. And like for for all their ability to fool a child.
00:20:46
Speaker
and as though they're out to do that, right? It gives them away. I just really, I just love the idea that like these tissue boxes, like maybe they won't know. As you look you're like, this is, this is plastic. But if you tap one with an acrylic nail, like I often do now, i wonder like, were you, did you think about that explicitly when you were writing? But you know, like the A, it's your tactile experience of the box.
00:21:10
Speaker
But like you could easily say like if you tap one, there is no resonanting but hollow clattering sound. But but it's the acrylic nail that is like well, not everyone has acrylic nail. Like this is a very particular experience of like touching the box.
00:21:23
Speaker
And I went, yeah, was that like conscious as you were writing or did that just come out? Because that's the way you were seeing it. Yeah. And also a very particular experience of bringing the reader with you and being like, okay, this is what you can see, but also this is who I am. So let me teach you something. That is a sound you might not know if you don't if you don't have acrylic nails or acrylic touching plastic. That is what that makes. And i think that, you know, soundscapes are so important for a reader to understand, but it's like, you know, a constant reminder that the act of reading is 360 experience of of sound and vision, but also feel and you know, harking back to that whole sensory richness.
00:22:13
Speaker
Yeah, all the senses, right? We've got like, yeah, sound and touch and like sight. and But also like the smells of the living room that it's in, right? Like you yeah here you're not describing the living rooms especially, like you do in other parts of the chapter. But like, again, it's like in a space, right? Even if you don't have an energy and you don't have a tissue box, like I immediately am me i'm reading it and I'm thinking of like my grandparents' house, you know, the spaces in which those objects move.
00:22:37
Speaker
Books that really stay with me, are books that do that in the most sophisticated
Enhancing Experience with Sensory Details
00:22:42
Speaker
way. You know, they talk about a specific sense and you're like, OK, I'm there. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. it grounds you instantly. Right. and Yeah. As you say, like brings you into the world, like it's not conflating the reader with you.
00:22:55
Speaker
Yeah. But you're like, come to my world. A lot of journalism doesn't do that because that's not its intention. you know it's it's to say this thing is happening or like this ah political landscape we're in so these things that i overlooked are overlooked on purpose because they're not so important and sometimes they're not to that story but they are for something else or yeah or the other is like they go to the universal right like we all know this thing yeah yeah yeah we Whereas I guess you're like, no, no, like in these specific things, like no. Yeah.
00:23:30
Speaker
But then the next sentence, like our soundscapes are formed early and are uniquely attached to our interior environment. So again, that's like the zoom out, right? Like we are all affected by the sounds that we grew up in. Mm-hmm. And there's another chapter of the book that focuses especially on sound, right? And the music that leaks through the walls of, um you know, housing blocks or, you know, wherever you're living and how that created its own musical subculture, right? Like, fascinating. Like, I love that chapter so much. Things I'd never thought about before, were like how, like music mixing through the walls of buildings created the subculture and be like, well, of course that song would mix in that one, right? Because I heard it.
00:24:06
Speaker
like mind blown but that idea of like our soundscapes are formed early uniquely attached our interior environment and my young eye was tricked so for a while I thought oh god's like so again you're moving this back and forth back and forth I think is like really hard to do but you are trying to like mimic how do we look at the not just the literal object of the box but like the object of like housing right as like a subject and an object how do we get close to it without it just being like, here is my life story. how do i How do I stop it from just being just my life story to this is actually telling me something much bigger about the cultures that we live in?
00:24:42
Speaker
And how do we think about our universal biology within that? You know, like, even if you don't understand anything else about this, you understand the importance of a soundscape.
00:24:55
Speaker
Yeah. And that our interior environments are important to how we're made. Yeah. It's not just like, it's not like nature, nurture, or like all that kind of nonsense, but rather like you come from a place and that place is very material.
00:25:12
Speaker
Like, it's it's not just, like, what kind of family did you grow up in? It's, like, what was the building? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. and you know, that way of saying not in a drawn...
00:25:25
Speaker
burger yeah that way of seeing it is like even more sophisticated when you've lived many places because suddenly you're like ah oh yeah these buildings are different they do give us something else what is the historical social cultural context of that and how do we exist within them what's that say about you know the time and place that we find ourselves in not only the time of the place that that place was built. You know what mean? yeah So, you know, when we talk about student halls, that is also a story about new labor, of course it is. Like, you know, to me, like those things are so inextricably linked. And, you know, I think that that is a responsibility of a writer to look around and say, okay, these things are connected. i need to share that.
00:26:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's important that we lived in a wild halls together. i mean, you were in the fancy bit, but like, you know, some of us were in a flat with 21 other people sharing one kitchen, right? But that like nineteen sixty s architecture yeah was also the architecture of like my learning how to be in London yeah like if those aren't an extreme like i learned what sociality meant in a space where everyone was crammed into one part and everyone was from like slightly wild backgrounds like you know there was no like there was a leveling but there wasn't a leveling right you know the idea of a university like you always can't you all come in and you're all like you start at the same place you're like no no no no And being a product of political decisions, I think, obviously happened then. But like, you know, the more you reflect on it, maybe the older that you get, you look back and you're like, oh, that is completely the case. You know, things don't just arrive by chance. Things don't just happen. And, you know, a lot the political narrative is kind of that, like, oh, you know, we can't do anything about a neoliberal agenda, let's say, because that's just the way of things. And it's like, no, that has been designed.
00:27:37
Speaker
That has not always been the case and just doesn't have to be the case. And so that is a very simple way that we can reimagine new futures because we need to understand that the past has not always been how it feels in the present. Yeah, most things are not natural or inevitable. Yeah.
00:27:59
Speaker
You're right, like only by attending to their contexts do you get to learn that. Yeah. And, you know, collective amnesia on the society level, we know is so important and crucial for power. You know, the way that, you know, we we even think about rent control, for instance,
00:28:20
Speaker
is like, oh my gosh, I can't even imagine that. Well, we had that up until the 80s. And so it's constantly like reminding people of maybe things that they knew or maybe for younger readers, things that they didn't know. to be like, the way that you are oppressed now via Wren is not how it's always been. And it's also have to be this way. Yeah. And even if you don't want to look historically, you could look around the world and see that it's not done this way. Yeah, yeah.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah. that's lasting Yeah. Imagine looking over listeners go back to the episode with Lola Olufemi, which is what this is reminding me of. Experimenting, imagining otherwise, where the entire book is about like, how do we imagine the otherwise, right? The like the things could always be otherwise. That's what that's reminding me of. Like, and and by giving us this history, but also this like personal history and cultural history, you're allowing us to see different ways of like being and doing, which i think is so important.
00:29:20
Speaker
And then, yeah, that third paragraph, you kind of then zoom out even further, right? Which is one of the moves of the book is to go like in, textured, and then out. The story of how these tissue boxes journey to Britain is hard to pin down. and then you get these two quite long sentences, actually, of the more neutral objective, like history. But even there, like, Mughal emperors often embellished metal boxes, da-da-da-da-da, with rich textiles and gem-set jewelry, transforming courts into luxury residences. Like, even the language starts getting, like, luxurious and rich.
00:29:50
Speaker
Like, you're not just giving us history, but you're giving us history... I don't know. Yeah, again, like, the texture of history, right? The feel of history. Like, this isn't just, like, oh, let me tell you who, like, the Mughal dynasty were.
00:30:00
Speaker
or like, what they were about, but rather, like, why were these things important to them? You know? Which, again, is, you know, i don't know what you call that, but, like, the material history rather than... It's not, like, who, why, and when. It's, like, what emerged and why. Yeah, and, like...
00:30:15
Speaker
to try and give you a little sense of the material conditions of that time and being like, okay, I'm just using that, you know, Sontag method of zooming in in a hyper-specific way on one single thing in order that you might feel something about that time of history. And, you know, whether you know it or you don't,
00:30:41
Speaker
Maybe you don't know how the box it situates itself in that court and my hope is that now you do. Yeah and there's this like I don't know it's just quite a wild link right to be like oh okay these tissue boxes begin in like the royal courts of Mughal emperors and now they're like in my grandparents like front room. Yeah. like in an imitation but like it's still the thing like the grand sweep of history is like in is in everyone's homes right like history is like not out there it's like in here yeah and i think this book just does such a great job of grounding that i think it's very easy to be parochial you know as british people um you know as sorry as a welsh person Thank you.
00:31:27
Speaker
And, you know, I think there is also our responsibility to write against that and be like, I am situated in this place. Yes. However, I'm connected to global conversations. yeah And, you know, we find methods in which to do that.
00:31:47
Speaker
And, you know, I really wanted use the object of tissue box to maybe like start that discourse and being like, it's okay that might there might not be a year zero for many objects that we surround surround ourselves with. That's fine.
00:32:05
Speaker
What is important here is the thinking and the connection, not necessarily like the factual accuracy of knowing an exact year zero that a thing came to exist.
00:32:18
Speaker
Yeah, which is you feeling your way through like the things that make most sense, right? And I want to i want to transition to talking about your writing, which is funny because like, I feel like I was present for the writing of this book, but at the same time, I don't i don't know, we haven't really talked about it in any depth of like, I mean, I know you often write in bed, like, i know and you're not the first person on the podcast to do so, so
Writing Process and Feedback
00:32:39
Speaker
that's not a read. Right. Many people have said they write in bed. But like, A, what is your writing process? Oh, at least for this book, were you writing daily? What was your setup?
00:32:51
Speaker
But also like, how did you transition from like your shorter form journalism to book length? And memoir, which you really hadn't done to that degree before. You'd written in essays, but not really like this.
00:33:03
Speaker
and then The way that I transitioned to writing book length is by writing chapters a time and being like, okay, that's far more manageable, like writing 5,000 words at a time. And i was very lucky because I sent each chapter to my editor. so So I was like, okay, this feels like it's doable.
00:33:26
Speaker
This is the longest thing I've ever written. And I'm not daunted by that because of that process. But I think I would be because I know that some editors are like, oh, I just want to see the finished book. And so they want 80,000 words delivered. And yeah, I don't think I'd be able to do that. So that's how I did that.
00:33:48
Speaker
I think the writing process it has to happen for me in the house. So like you said, partly in bed, um partly at my desk, but I feel like, you know, i have to be outside gathering, you know, in a reporter kind of way. so you know, like I write notes on my phone, I do voice notes for myself, voice memos, and I kind of, feel like that enables me to take the temperature of conversations from strangers, conversations with friends, things that people are thinking about, things that are happening in media. like tabloid headlines you know that are so funny and I'm like oh okay this is the world that we inhabit okay cool let me think about something like that and then come back and then I'll write and so i don't have a fixed amount of words that I write a day i just know that when that flash of inspiration comes to me i have to like write maybe for like days at a time and I need to have coffee and that's the only constant.
00:35:05
Speaker
All cups of tea. like Yeah. We've consumed much tea and biscuit biscuits. ah But also like you know, and thinking about our relationship and, you know, leaning on clever friends and clever thoughts and being like, oh, actually, you know, writing can feel so solitary as we know. yeah and so I don't know why I'm guarding this thought. Maybe I can share it with you. What do you think about this? yeah And, you know, I think, you know, I'm a freelancer.
00:35:40
Speaker
And i don't necessarily think that that is conducive to like shared ownership of an idea or sharing full stop, you know. And I am really grateful to be able to have a support system in my life that allows me to do that because I don't think I'm cut out for a full-time office job in that way.
00:36:04
Speaker
Yeah, but you you're right, it could easily become so atomised that you're on your own just to be like... Which is maybe why so many like think pieces are so flawed. You're like, did you talk to your friends about this? Yeah. People like, I've got this take, and I'm like, send it to the group chat first.
00:36:20
Speaker
People might be like, no, we don't need to hear your thoughts on Odysseus and Penelope, do you know what mean? but You know that Gemma Kirk meme that's like, I think you might be thinking about yourself too much? Yeah.
00:36:31
Speaker
Very much that. Very much that. But yeah, sharing, like, because I remember we had a long conversation about, like, the experience of halls, right? And that moment of moving to London, both of us, and being like, oh, who, yeah, class is a thing.
00:36:45
Speaker
In a way that wasn't very conscious of in Wales, right? Yeah, think social mobility might be a lie. Yeah, I don't know what point we looked each other and were like, hmm, something's different.
00:37:00
Speaker
that kind of false understanding that if you've read those texts that exist in the canon, that will really enhance your writing.
00:37:12
Speaker
And i think it took me some time after I graduated actually, to realize that that's a complete fallacy and being like, oh, okay, that's not what makes me a great writer.
00:37:25
Speaker
ifre wolf yeah in shakespeare um is that is that I have a point of view. Yeah. And yeah. And but that was one of the parts of, I guess, an undergraduate training is like, what do you think, though?
00:37:39
Speaker
You know, i and again, this is a plea for the humanities, given the crisis that we're in in this country and elsewhere. They're like the courses that develop critical thinking are the ones being cut right now. Right. The ones that say like you go into room you say, like, what do you think about this thing we just gave you?
00:37:55
Speaker
And people share their thoughts and opinions and you debate them and you discuss them. It's not like, what is the mathematical formula? There's nothing debate to debate about that. Right. But like our training was literally, what is your perspective? You can't leave the classroom not really having a thought about this poem. Right. You've got to have a take.
00:38:10
Speaker
And boy, did we have takes. When do you first remember thinking about writing or being like, I'm a writer. That's the thing I'm going to do when I'm old. i think when I was younger, i wrote a lot of fiction in the form of short stories. And I think that for a child especially, that's a really great way to like funnel your imaginative impulses, you know, and you have so much imagination and, you know, probably like a lot of writers, i was like a reader.
00:38:44
Speaker
yeah i wasn't really like out doing a boisterous play. I was sitting quietly and well behaved in the corner. which of course And then, you know, i i kept a diary. So I have always done some form of like nonfiction writing and then digital disagree and a And lot of that was like writing essays. And then on the side, i did bits and bobs of journalistic writing.
00:39:17
Speaker
And then when I graduated, I was like, I think that that's what I want to pursue. So, you know, I really made it my business to think about a report on different worlds that I occupied. and then, know, at this stage of my life,
00:39:34
Speaker
would probably like to be a career author or at least maybe write another book after this. And so, you know, thinking in those terms of like not only the craft, but what are the possibilities of the craft? What else can it do? How can it expand itself beyond like 2,000, 5,000 words even? And having those expansive horizons is so important. as a person, but also as a writer.
00:40:07
Speaker
i love that. And obviously you've done other kind of media too, right? Podcasting, TV, radio, all the things, right? that Again, like always about communicate, like how do I communicate this thing that I care about or I'm interested in, right? often you're Often the group text is, hey, did you know that the moon, I'm like, oh my God, what are you researching today? Like what is going on? Yeah.
00:40:29
Speaker
And that like interest in like the stuff, right? Is like the through line. I know you also teach creative writing sometimes and you've done some like nonfictiony stuff. Do you have any like prompts or lessons or things that you get students to do that you'd want to share?
00:40:45
Speaker
So yeah, the module that I teach is called Writing Life. It's about the essay as a form. And so we like study and look at and read and think about ah ah many essays from George Orwell to Sontag to Tony Morrison, you know, across the the whole range really.
00:41:09
Speaker
And so one exercise I do that I'm always like fascinated by is like getting people just to list what they can see around them. And it is always illuminating because, you know, a lot of students really struggle with that because of what Hanif Qureshi calls the rush to profundity. know There is a kind of like rush to be profound and being like, oh, ah this makes me feel like this, you know, looking at the phone, they're like, you know, communication. And I'm like, no, no, no, let's just drop it right back, glass.
00:41:50
Speaker
You know, and I think that that actually, even for me, has been like a real exercise that I do all the time to be like, what can I see exactly?
00:42:03
Speaker
All the other abstract stuff can come later. But what are the objects that I can see? What do I choose to see What do I choose not to And let's have conversations about a mission.
00:42:18
Speaker
Again, like the material, the materiality, right? Yeah. God, you're such a Marxist. Thank you. like Yes, you're such a Marxist, brackets, complimentary, ah ah not derogatory, um as we are often called um us folks. But yeah, like the phone is there, like the phone means communication, my friends, connection, you're like, or...
00:42:42
Speaker
glass, plastic, the interior parts, your plastic bottle. I'm like noticing how much plastic is around me now. Like at you even said that, right? Just like the world is saturated with that.
00:42:52
Speaker
Okay, I might try this afterwards. Like, see, I usually do a version that, but I don't think I get them to like list it in such depth. that I'm usually like, draw one thing you can see and write down one thing you can hear that like just anything that is like drawn to you. But I like the idea of like listing all the stuff and seeing what's omitted. Like what things do not make the list.
00:43:11
Speaker
Yeah, and having that time constraint of a minute, I think is like a really good exercise because suddenly people are like, maybe looking at you and are maybe, ah did I don't know, thinking differently to what they expect. Yeah, like a, you know, a literary degree to be like. So let's just strip this right back.
00:43:35
Speaker
And, you know, people that have been writing for years and years do the same thing as well. That is a crucial part of the craft. And, you know, it's easy to dismiss that maybe and feel like, oh, you know, I need to think about what all means.
00:43:53
Speaker
and yeah less profundity people um okay last question i ask everyone what books are you going to recommend new things old things stuff not yet out i was like guessing in my head what you might pick but i don't know what you're gonna pick Well, my book is in dialogue with ah Eula Bliss's book on having it and being had. um And I think that that is also a really good example of narrative nonfiction that does the work of fiction, but also educates and like strips back completely. And i love it because of that, obviously because of the, content of it but I think it does a really elegant light touch work of of like telling us about the place that she lives in um I also really love Sam Johnson Schlee's uh Living Rooms which is ah like a full length essay that was turned into a very slim book But again he like does that kind of abstract fiction work of being like, this is what you see around you, but maybe let's let's think deeper about it.
00:45:14
Speaker
And i really like, um, Kyle Chaker's The Longing for Less, because I think really good examples of strong nonfiction do that job really well. You know, it's a book about minimalism as a mode of cultural production. So he's talking about like, ah it as an art form, as interior form, as a sonic form. And yeah he's saying, this is the way that we can learn and think about this. And yeah, I really like that. I mean, I'm a non-fiction Gertli.
00:45:50
Speaker
Of course. I read a lot of it. And sometimes I'm like, oh, this is very academic in turn. You know, it's like hard going. And then sometimes I read something that I'm like, wow, that was so easy, so beautiful. And I think that that is not often a word thrown around to describe nonfiction. Agreed.
00:46:11
Speaker
in a way that, you know, it's it's maybe easier for poetry and fiction to be beautiful and to like have a man imaginative landscapes, you know, for you to be drawn into that is a lot more difficult, I think, for nonfiction, especially if you know, like mine is like ostensibly a book about housing. People are like, you know, and so, you know, I think that that is kind of what piques my interest. I'm like, oh, a book about colour, book about heating. oh yeah very
00:46:54
Speaker
ah And so yeah, i I think that kind of acrobatic work of like a writer being like, let me size up this, let me see what I can do with the subject. It's like so like fascinating and beautiful to witness. I just I love it as a reader.
00:47:14
Speaker
a and But also saying that i always recommend command Writing as a Sight of Memory by Toni Morrison. It's a way of thinking about where we've been and how we write there. And also Yagi Arcee's homegoing as a way of saying this is grounded in reality, you know, in the way that Tanya Morrison did with the bluest eye, like you have taken something from the headlines and something that has been reported on and created a fictional world around it. And yeah, I think it's very definitely done. Also, it's like masterclass in saying a lot in very little. It's like a very thin book and it covers so much ground. Yeah, I love that.
00:48:03
Speaker
Amazing. Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why i wanted to make sure I cover nonfiction books on a close reading podcast, right? Because everyone everyone's like, you just can talk poetry every week. I'm like, no, I want to talk about other kinds of books, right? You can close read anything. I can close read anything you put in front of me. You can, But like it's important, right? It's important to say that like nonfiction is ah is language too, right? You're an author that has made linguistic choices that we need to attend to. I'm surprised you did not mention Hanif Abdur-Rakib's A Little Devil in America. like like Oh my gosh, such poetic and beautiful ah masterly nonfiction. That kind of like beautiful management of a theme. Yeah.
00:48:49
Speaker
It is masterful, but it also takes the reader on a journey as you as a writer metabolize all these events. And, you know, many of those things I recognize, even though I'm maybe of a different generation. yeah And I'm like, oh yeah, that does shape the world that I live in. Of course, that shapes my cultural taste.
00:49:14
Speaker
Of course it does. And that in turn shapes person that I am. the person that you are the person that all you're with are. and yeah, I just love that ability to make those connections.
00:49:27
Speaker
Yeah. A book I'm never not thinking about. So listeners, if you have not read that book, go read that book. and The essay on Whitney Houston alone will make you cry and go and watch every video. She's like, yeah.
00:49:40
Speaker
Amazing. yeah um Thank you for those beautiful recommendations. And thank you so much for your time. This has been a joy. oh thank you. It such a joy and such a pleasure to speak to a clever person, of course, but also for someone who who has such reverence for like books and the written form and to be like, yeah, this is important.
00:50:02
Speaker
Yeah, beauty, joy as a resistance. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode. Go back to episode eight with Lola Olufemi on imagining otherwise, which I mentioned in the episode, or maybe go to episode eight with Torsif Khan, where we talked about migration and home in quite a different context. Please subscribe to the show. If you haven't already leave a review on Apple podcast or on YouTube, share with people in all the places, follow the show and me on Instagram, tag me in any post of episodes you like.
00:50:35
Speaker
And if you can, please do fill out the feedback form linked in the show notes. You can also get show transcripts once get them done and more information about the show by subscribing to the Substack.
00:50:46
Speaker
The show was made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.