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Ep. 13. Okechukwu Nzelu, Here Again Now
90 Plays27 days ago
In this episode, we read a passage from Okechukwu Nzelu's Here Again Now (p.47 of the UK paperback). You can buy this book and Nzelu's previous novel from your local bookshop or at Bookshop.org.
Dr Okechukwu Nzelu FRSL won a Northern Writers' Award from New Writing North in 2015. His debut novel, The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney (Dialogue Books, 2019), won a Betty Trask Award; it was also shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Polari First Book Prize, and longlisted for the Portico Prize. In 2021, it was selected for the Kingston University Big Read and distributed to all staff and students at three universities. His second novel, Here Again Now (Dialogue Books, 2022) was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award, the Polari Prize, the Jhalak Prize and the Diverse Book Awards. He has made several appearances on national radio, and is a regular contributor to Kinfolk magazine. He is a non-executive director of ALCS and CLA, and Lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. In 2024 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Episode references:
- Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf
- John Milton, Paradise Lost
- Janet Burroway (with Elizabeth and Ned Stuckey-French), Writing Fiction
- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
- Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
- D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow
- George Eliot, Middlemarch
- John Williams, Stoner
Follow the show (and Okechukwu) on Instagram. Please leave feedback here.
Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Books Up Close'
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello, welcome to Books Up Close, the podcast. I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for writers, readers and language nerds.
Meet Okuchuku Inselu
00:00:11
Speaker
In today's episode, I talk to Okuchuku Inselu about a passage from his novel Here Again Dr. Akuchikun Zelou won a Northern Writers' Award from New Writing North in 2015.
00:00:23
Speaker
His novels The Private Joys of Nana Maloney and Here Again Now won and been shortlisted for numerous awards and honours, including the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Betty Trask Prize and the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award. He's a lecturer in creative writing at Lancaster University and in 2024 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
00:00:42
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me. This is really exciting. This is great. And this book, I have so many thoughts about this book. I think you know that anyway. And it took a really long time to choose a passage. But I wanted to pick this passage because it feels really tender. And I think it does so many of the things that you're doing in the novel as a whole.
00:01:00
Speaker
So that's why we've Zoomed on that one. And for people reading at home, if you have here again now... by Okachukwu and Zelu. It's on page 47 of the paperback edition. So go find that page and then you can read along with us.
00:01:13
Speaker
But before we get into that, I want to know what your thoughts are on close reading as an activity, as a practice.
The Art of Close Reading
00:01:19
Speaker
I know you teach creative writing, so I'm sure you have thoughts on this. And also, how do you feel about close reading your work here now on Mike?
00:01:27
Speaker
Close reading is something i'm I guess I came to, first of all, through my English degree, because that was my first... undergraduate that was my undergraduate degree I studied English literature and it was this really central fundamentally important part of the degree was close reading and we had to do this compulsory module called practical criticism which to this day I find bewildering because the point of it was that you should be able to read something a poem some song lyrics an extract from a short story
00:02:01
Speaker
and not care about the context and just be able to speak about what you see in front of you. Or at least that's how it started out, practical criticism, the idea. And then I think by the time I was at Cambridge, I left in 2010, I graduated in 2010, it became this thing where you were kind of supposed to be able to know about all that stuff.
00:02:19
Speaker
It got very muddled. i remember feeling muddled at the time. So I feel like close reading, maybe there's not a shared understanding of exactly what the purpose of it is. And and I feel like what's interesting for me is that there it means different things to different people in different disciplines, and certainly
Creative Writing and Character Development
00:02:35
Speaker
at different times. Now, teaching creative writing, close reading is something we do with a kind of a different hat on, right? That you come and you look at a piece of prose or poetry or whatever,
00:02:45
Speaker
And you're thinking, what is how is the writer doing what they're doing and how can I borrow from that? Or what are the pros and cons of the choice? What are the risks and rewards? And what do I need to be aware of if I want to write a sex scene or if I want to explore the setting of this completely new planet?
00:03:02
Speaker
And it feels very different and much freer, I think, in creative writing. To me, it feels like a freedom. i get I guess to me, it just feels more exciting because that's what I do. And I think it's helpful for students as well, because we can talk about ideas in theory all we want, but it's really lovely to be able to look at a text and see how is the writer doing what they're doing.
00:03:22
Speaker
And for me, I guess, personally, to to read the close reading of my own work, it's lovely to be asked. I'm really happy to be here. At the same time, it is also a little bit strange.
00:03:34
Speaker
I think any reading of my work feels close in the sense that it feels a little bit, you know, like a little bit almost too close. And there's a part of me that is a bit nervy about that, but it's also really lovely to see how somebody else thinks about what has been, been in my head for so long.
Character Relationships and Significance
00:03:52
Speaker
I think there's something just absolutely fascinating about that. Right. And we can talk a bit more about your writing process later, but this came out in 2022, right? Yes. Which is like a bit, you know, when I write something like a year later, I look it and I'm like, who the hell wrote this?
00:04:06
Speaker
So it would be interesting. I don't know. I mean, i I definitely don't know to the point where I'm like, I want to change my name on this. This is not my name. So yeah, it'd be interesting to see how you like feel like returning to it at that point.
00:04:18
Speaker
So we're reading a bit from early on, as I said, from page 47. It's at the end of a chapter. Now, do you want to do the practical criticism thing and give no context to the listener? Or do you want to say a tiny bit of like, maybe who the two people are, why they're on this bus? Or should we say nothing?
00:04:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think it's good to give some context, especially if anybody listening hasn't read the book. So... This, as it happens, it's a section that I really like reading from.
00:04:44
Speaker
But once I was a literature festival and I forgot what page it was on, i had decided at the last minute to read it. And I was thinking, and it took me and I was saying, kind of, you know, vamping to the audience while i trying to find it and saying,
00:04:55
Speaker
You know, talk amongst yourselves and trying tell the odd little kind of anecdote when I flipped through to try try and find it. And then it just got longer and longer and longer waiting for me to find this page until I said, does anybody know the passage? do-- didda And then somebody actually called one of the assistants for the festival, one of the volunteers said, oh, it's on page so-and-so.
00:05:13
Speaker
ah which is really, really lovely. I think of that every time I think about this passage. Yeah, so this passage has Achike and Akene who are in the narrative presence of the novel. They are in their sort of mid to late 30s and they are two Nigerian, well, British men of Nigerian origin, of Nigerian heritage, who live together in London and have always had a kind of a will-they-won't-they relationship where there's clearly love and affection and mutual attraction.
00:05:40
Speaker
But for various complicated reasons that the novel explores, they've never been in any kind of explicit relationship committed in any way. um They've always just kind of, I guess, young people now would call it a situationship, the the use of which word makes me want to throw up.
00:05:57
Speaker
But I think that's mostly because of the experience of it and how gross and annoying that experience is, not the word itself. And we're not young people anymore. Speak for yourself. I'm very young, 36. Yeah. Yeah, they ah so this this extract that you've chosen is a flashback scene um that kind of takes us a little bit back to their origin story, I suppose. They're at school together in Manchester where they both grew up. They moved to London because they both want to be actors and unfortunately because of the nature of many of the arts in this country. Yeah, it's very, very hard to practice them outside London, and especially if you rely on that kind of multi-agented, I suppose, style.
00:06:34
Speaker
world that acting isn't involves. It's not like writing where you sit at your desk and then send it to somebody. And at this point in the novel, they are on a bus and Achike is having a migraine. And he, the kind of migraines that he has and that I have, in fact, I mean, that he struggles to see that he's in lot of pain and he's only 16 and he's not really able to look after himself in a way. Akené is, I guess, the slightly less responsible of the two generally. And this was, for me, quite a nice moment to explore.
00:07:04
Speaker
Acheike being less responsible in the sense of being kind of helpless and Akené being more responsible in the sense of being a bit more tender and attentive. Interesting that I picked those passages in, if it's one that you always read. Like, we didn't have a dialogue about it beforehand, so that's quite nice to know. Okay, would you be read it for us would, thank you.
00:07:21
Speaker
Achike closes his eyes and tries to sleep, somehow trusting that Akene will wake him up when it's time. For the next three stops, Achike allows his head to loll on Akene's shoulder. And for each of those three stops,
00:07:33
Speaker
Akene inhales the smell of Ichike's hair and imagines how it would feel if he reached out and ran a finger through it. He thinks it would feel very good. He thinks it would make Ichike feel good.
00:07:45
Speaker
He knows he has been elsewhere. When Ichike got too close, Akene went away. He hates himself for this already, so young. When will he learn to look after good things?
00:07:57
Speaker
Then the bus stops outside a shopping centre and people get on. They bring their noise and their friendship and their eyes, their own conversations and their separate laughter. Had Ichike and Akene been hand in hand, they would have unclasped quickly so as not to draw attention to themselves.
00:08:12
Speaker
Instead, they move slightly apart, knowing that it takes only an inch of daylight between them to designate what they have, this thing of theirs that they will spend decades trying to understand, as only a common male friendship.
Narrative Techniques and Themes
00:08:25
Speaker
Nothing to stare at, nothing to be remarked upon. Only silence, only stoicism, only a little distance. But Ekenne is still imagining how it would feel to hold Achike's aching head in his lap and run his fingers through Achike's hair, soothing the beautiful boy's pain with only his touch.
00:08:44
Speaker
And in Achike's mind, they never did unclasp. that In his mind, they are walking, hand in hand, into this strange, too bright world in which they must make their solitary way.
00:08:56
Speaker
Thank you so much. Yeah, it's a very tender little moment of the book. And actually I've noticed something else that you just did, which I hadn't noted beforehand. For listeners, I pick the passage or poem, whatever we're talking about, ahead of time.
00:09:09
Speaker
And then I do my annotations like 15 minutes before this recording, just to keep it fresh in my brain. And I do that for a number of reasons. But one is like, to see what I see in the moment, right? And I think that's what one thing close reading does for me is that you come to it one day, you see some things, you come to it another day, you see other things.
00:09:26
Speaker
There are interesting stuff throughout. I mean, the dominant thing I want to talk about is repetition with you today, because I think there's something really going on with repetition in this passage. as well as some other things. But the first thing to notice, I guess, is that this book is written in this third person, but it's moving really easily and seamlessly between characters that you do throughout, right? It's often free and direct discourse, right? You don't often, and free and direct discourse being that we are not explicitly saying blah, blah, blah said, or blah, blah, blah thought, but, you know, Achike closes his eyes, somehow trusting that it kind of will wake him up when it's time. Like that's Achike's thoughts, right? That's his voice in his mind, right? You're not telling us that explicitly.
00:10:03
Speaker
I wonder just as an open question, like how, like why you picked that voice? Were you ever tempted to do like first person voices for this book Because you've got three main male characters, right, in this book. And was it always that?
00:10:14
Speaker
Yeah, it always was that. And I think so that was because I felt that free and direct discourse is, well, A, it's this very literary thing that is so specific to the way we think about literature, especially um Western literature.
00:10:29
Speaker
we credit often Virginia Woolf with it, but it was Jane Austen who first came up with it in Emma and Virginia Woolf. She just popularised it. She just improved it. But yeah, it's this very literary thing that I thought, given that this novel was for me in part a project about representing Black queerness and Black queer love and how complicated it is and how worthy it is in spite of or because of those complications and how human it is because of that.
00:10:55
Speaker
And the fact that black Black masculinity is seen within such a narrow lens that does not even come close to the full breadth of humanity that Black men live and feel. for me this project this novel was in part a project about exploding that stereotype and you know maybe not inventing a language through which black men could be themselves because there are so many black men who've come before me who've done wonderful things but certainly about yeah the virginia wolfing that language i suppose was like popularizing it and i wanted he write this novel in a way that felt elevated and to an extent rarefied i think that
00:11:33
Speaker
one of the most important things about representation isn't everything. It is not, it is only part of the picture, but it is so important. And one of the important things about that for me, for blackness is that black people are given the freedom to live and represent ourselves in all sorts of different ways.
00:11:49
Speaker
Some of which will be close to the stereotypes and some of which will be nothing to do with them. And I really wanted to be able to give this portrait of black masculinity and black queerness that broke those bounds.
00:12:03
Speaker
And that felt, yeah, rarified and elevated. And for me, the third person, the free and direct discourse was a real part of that. Something that felt fluid and loose and poetic was really important to me because much of this novel is about, yes, absolutely.
00:12:17
Speaker
As well as celebrating
Literary Devices and Influences
00:12:18
Speaker
black men and black queerness, it is also about celebrating... the primacy of love and care over the primacy of familial bonds and the kind of rules we have about who looks after who and who loves who.
00:12:34
Speaker
That's interesting. You know, form and content, always inseparable is the thing I'm always telling students. But like, it's it's interesting to hear your perspective on that because I think In this passage, it is the dance between these two boys, right? Like for the next few stops, Achike allows his head to lull on Akane's show, like allows his head. Like there's this is real tension between passivity and activeness, right? Between like allowing himself to be close to his friend or whatever they are. and And you really get a sense that maybe that free indirect discourse is helping that shift back and forth, right? If we were entirely in Achike's mind, like how that scene would be described is very different from how Akane might describe it
00:13:12
Speaker
And I think there's something about being able to move between their minds that allows us into both of their worlds and seeing that, the kind of tissue of connection or not. And what is dominant in this scene is that, and you get it from here and feature of those three stops.
00:13:26
Speaker
And then for the next three stops, he thinks, he thinks, he knows. There is so much repetition in the language of, and I don't know, I have various thoughts about it, but there's a sense of trying to like get closer to the thing, right? As though repetition will get us closer to describing something precisely and what you do by the end of this passage is you don't give us that and i'll talk about that in a minute but i just really think it's like so fascinating when something so explicit as repetition feels really seamless in here right you know it's like one of those rhetorical devices right you learn it in school like repetition as a thing you do to like have emphasis but here you're doing it throughout in so many different ways almost to me as i say as like a way of of attempting to get at something
00:14:08
Speaker
How conscious were you when you were doing, when you were writing? Like, was that on your mind? Yeah, very conscious of that. I guess the technical term is anaphora. This kind of the repetition of phrases at the beginning of different sentences or words at the beginning to different phrases.
00:14:24
Speaker
But I was very conscious of my sort of process being informed by the Bible. and especially the Old Testament, where we see repetition used a lot in a way that I think will probably strike a lot of modern writers, including me, in a kind of a jarring way, because you're right, we're told, ah you know, in school that repeating yourself kind of helps hammer home the point. But at the same time, we're also told, and I think this is quite right, that artless repetition can feel kind of boring or feel like a mistake.
00:14:51
Speaker
And I think that's also something that's really drilled into us. So when you come and when you look at the Bible, having been told that, or when you're told that having looked at the Bible, as I was, it's like, and I grew up with that text. I'm not Christian anymore, but I was raised in the Christian household.
00:15:04
Speaker
I went to Sunday school and read the Bible and all of that stuff. So having that text in my mind really... fundamentally meant that I guess I had this other way of thinking about the patterns of language that I was trying to draw upon. And I think there's, again, there's something quite freeing about that once you realise that if you just shift the way you think about repetition,
00:15:26
Speaker
or if the repetition itself is used in a certain way, there can be something really poetic about it and something very lyrical about it. And and at the same time, you're absolutely right. it is a sense of there is a sense that I was trying to give of ah the narrative voice almost being just as frustrated and desperate to communicate as the characters themselves are. the I guess one big thing about this novel is that all three character all three main characters, perhaps everybody in this novel...
00:15:54
Speaker
is trying to say something to somebody else but doesn't have a language to do it, but ah at least not until towards the end of the novel. And I guess I wanted the the narrative voice to kind of be like just as frustrated and just as desperate as the characters themselves were.
00:16:09
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm not going to spoil the novel for anyone that's not read it, but you also frustrate us as readers,
Black Masculinity and Queerness
00:16:14
Speaker
right? About haffa about halfway through. in a way that actually I was like, no, no he's not gonna. Is he Is he gonna?
00:16:21
Speaker
Oh, he did. i did. and i and and that's part of the tension here, right? Between like, he imagines how it would feel if he reached out and ran a finger through Achiko's hair.
00:16:32
Speaker
that these two men are like so close but so far apart that that that tenderness only exists in the imagination at this point, right? He thinks it would feel very good. He thinks it would make Achike feel good.
00:16:42
Speaker
Like the yearning is psychic at this point, not like physical. And the repetition is serving that frustration. Yeah, as you're saying. And even that line, which I actually find at the end of the paragraph, he hates himself for this, comma, already, comma, so young.
00:16:59
Speaker
Like that's a devastating little parentheses there, right? In those commas. You know, you could have done he hates himself for this already, or like he hates himself for this full stop. But that those little pauses of those commas already so young really seems to add like melancholy there in a way that pierces through sentences have gone before. It's quite a different sentence from what you've just written for like most of the chapter, actually.
00:17:22
Speaker
yeah Yeah, you're right. I guess I was trying to communicate that, because by this point of the novel, we're we're on about nearly page 50, and the novel is about 280, 300 pages long. So by this point of the novel, we've had about 40-odd pages of Akenet in the narrative present where he is...
00:17:40
Speaker
He's not a bad person at all by any means, but he is less responsible than Achike. He messes up and he makes bad choices sometimes. um And we've kind of got to see that. And he kind of has this complicated relationship with his own self-esteem. he he's For reasons that we find out in the novel, he's not entirely comfortable with himself.
00:17:59
Speaker
And I wanted to kind of nod back to that. in this flashback and kind of like this is somebody who's as sad as it is and difficult as it is to watch somebody wrestle with low self-esteem um and self-image as an adult like to see that in somebody really really young like a teenager think is harder and more painful and I kind of wanted to bring that home with this like already he's struggling with this really difficult thing that he's going wrestle with for well into his adult life Yeah, and we are already positioned, as you say, narratively in that future. so like the flashback serves to only just make it sadder. Like you really, you really want us to be sad in this novel. Yeah.
00:18:40
Speaker
he's Like, when will he learn to look after good things? That's his question to himself, right? That we're getting again through that free and diary discourse. But like to look after good things, that's both Achike, but also like himself, but also his feelings. Also like, you know, life world, so many.
00:18:55
Speaker
And that could be a flash forward to like what happens later in the book, right? In a way, that's a kind of hint of like what happens if we don't look after the good things in life. Like what where what are we left with? Ah, yes.
00:19:07
Speaker
Anyway, um again, i wouldn't say too much, but yeah, like a real a real moment of you ground us in the body, right? Like closes his eyes and tries to sleep. And then it slowly like zooms out to this or zooms in maybe to the kind of this interior world.
00:19:22
Speaker
And then paragraph break, then the bus stops and you're like, okay, like that hard kind of change in tone and people get on. And this sentence interests me. They bring, like the people get on, they bring their noise.
00:19:33
Speaker
and their friendships and their eyes their own conversations and their separate laughter again the repetition of their right which i think something's happening with that they're like a real the otherness right you've got the two boys and then you've got everyone else and the their their their over and over again really just dramatizes that separateness of like the us and them which is it which is the theme that obviously runs throughout the book right but also the unexpected words like they bring their friendships and their eyes you're like Okay, like noise and friendships and eyes. They're such different things. I think that's just like a really interesting move linguistically to kind of throw us off.
00:20:10
Speaker
Right. It's not like they bring their noise and their whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of, I guess it's, I'm trying to communicate the chaos of that and the sense that Chike and Akane have been in this really peaceful moment of their own.
00:20:24
Speaker
And then suddenly they're thrust into this world that is noisy and chaotic and kind of partly hostile. And what I was doing there, if you look at the very ah the very bottom of this extract, I'm so glad you chose this, i end with them walking hand in hand into this strange too bright world in which they must make their solitary way.
00:20:43
Speaker
Now, that is a reference to Paradise Lost in which Adam and Eve leave the garden of Eden have to go into this like thin fire that we're in now. And which is also what Charles Dickens used at the end of Great Expectations, I think.
00:20:58
Speaker
And just, yeah, just this idea that I guess, yeah, that they've had this very small moment of paradise and now that now they're kind of thrust into the into the real world, which we all hate to be in. Yeah.
00:21:09
Speaker
But also like the the real world, but it's almost the other way, maybe the other way around that the real world is like smothering them,
Societal Pressures and Personal Growth
00:21:15
Speaker
right? They're in their world. The world is coming onto the bus. It's like, it's like, wait, we didn't ask for this.
00:21:20
Speaker
yeah Yeah. So really, I guess a more opposite reference to be like season six of Buffy where she's brought back to life after she's been in heaven and her friends yank her out of paradise. That I think is what yeah, let's go with that.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah. um this season six, I can't cope with season six. I tried to give up because it's just too much. I can't do it. Wait, is this the first? Have you not seen it all before? No, the last two years I've been like watching from the beginning.
00:21:49
Speaker
And this season, the whole stuff, the current spike, it's really thrown me off. I don't like it. It makes me feel weird. Wow. Oh my God. I would love to live and inside your head and see it for the first time again. yeah part of me was like do i tweet along these episodes as i'm watching i'm like yeah need time for this just stop just watch it and so again so like you've got this world like flooding in on them and then another one of these like things aren't happening sentences so like it would feel really good if i touched his hair but i'm not doing that
00:22:20
Speaker
how did cheekca again be Had they been hand in hand, they would have unclasped quickly so as not to draw attention to themselves. So like this is both a sign of what would it mean to be seen as queer in this world, but they're not even seen as queer because they're not doing it. Like it's like a double whammy of like self, I don't know.
00:22:37
Speaker
Yeah, maybe like self editing, right. ah of This is what we would do if we would if we were doing it. Like that's doubly heartbreaking somehow. yeah Yeah, exactly. Like the biggest sign of affection that they give each other is in negating or editing the gestures towards affection.
00:22:56
Speaker
Like really sad in that it's like, oh, if we were together, we'd we'd have to separate our hands. But we're not even that because we haven't defined what we are. Yeah. yeah coming for us really early on instead the next line they move slightly apart knowing that it only take that it takes only an inch of daylight between them to designate what they have it's interesting phrase and of itself and then you do like a little dash this thing of theirs that they will spend decades trying to understand dash as only a common male's friendship so like the gap between them the physical gap between them designates what they have
00:23:34
Speaker
And then your parenthetical bit is saying they can't actually designate what they have because they spend decades to try and understand it. Right. So it's like the closest is this section gets to defining is like an anti-definition.
00:23:46
Speaker
Right. It's like a thing they will never actually have language for. and And that feels like a real hard turn. To me, like that that's the real moment where we like clarify the stakes of this relationship.
00:23:58
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. it is. I mean, I don't have to tell you this because I'm sure you know it. But there is, I think, in the heteronormative heterosexual world, especially male world of friendships, there was something quite flattening about it.
00:24:11
Speaker
and And there's research that's been done on this that, you know, most men, certainly in the age of which these two characters are kind of mid to late 30s and above, only talk with their male friends about a very small number of things there's all these rules about how you can and can't show affection and what you can and can't discuss and obviously that has terrible consequences in terms of mental health and and suicide but there is that kind of flattening is how you stay safe as a man with regard to your behavior and gender represent gender presentation but also with regard to your friendships and your relationships and who you
00:24:45
Speaker
you're allowed to hold hands with and I kind of yeah I was trying to find a way of representing that that flattening force and the wildness of the feelings that is really trying hard not to succumb to that yeah it's only a common male friendship it's like it's almost like they've read that phrase somewhere or heard that phrase somewhere like It's just a common male friendship. It feels so clinical in language, doesn't it?
00:25:10
Speaker
It's like, that's all it is, honestly. But that common male friendship stands out so much linguistically that you're like, okay, you're repeating it because you know that it's like actually quite hollow as a phrase. Like maybe that's also what the repetitions are then, right? Like within this passage, like you repeat something.
00:25:25
Speaker
i mean, let's not get Freudian, but like you repeat something when you you haven't mastered it, right? In like psychoanalytic terms, we have to repeat to try and find a way to get through the thing. like in the way that people repeat trauma, right, or repeat certain patterns of behaviour because they've become stuck in it.
00:25:40
Speaker
But also, the thing I only noticed as you were reading, that they will spend decades trying to understand, again, that little telescoping of time, right, that, like, we are ahead in time with them, right, we we are in that present, but also, yeah it really stretches out the tiny moment into something much bigger, and that's really fascinating to me, how we get from that, like, tiny to the massive quite quickly.
00:26:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's, I guess, I guess that's something that I'm trying to do throughout this book, really. And I mentioned it is that I'm trying to look at moments of people's lives, but also look beyond the individual moments themselves.
00:26:16
Speaker
These relationships that these characters have, yes, they exist very powerfully in the moment, but they also exist in the context. I'm going to do a camera. They exist in the context of everything that has come before. And I think that's really important for us to understand because I think queerness, not queerness, but homophobia and and racism and all these isms make us feel alone. like, we don't have a history.
00:26:36
Speaker
And I think especially because queerness is something that you don't inherit from your family. It is something that makes us feel, and again, there's lots of writing, there's lots, much ink has been spilled on this before me, but there is because queerness is not something that you inherit, it is something that can make us feel isolated as though we are different from the people around us. And I think that's because we don't teach history very well.
00:27:00
Speaker
And there's a lot of history that we ought to know. And so you'll find people saying that, you know, being gay is un-African. which is completely untrue in a historical.
00:27:11
Speaker
And, you know, i wanted to look from one relationship to another, to another and look and find points of connection. um Not just to kind of make the the point that everything is connected, which is true, but maybe a bit obvious, but also to make the point that we are not alone, despite what we have been told and continue to be told.
00:27:31
Speaker
But then at the end, like they were, and I know you mentioned the Paradise Lost, thing but they are walking hand in hand into this strange too bright world in which they must make their solitary way they're both solitary and together right they're both they're both separate and like because the two of them but it's also just them individually and that's also kind of like a heartbreaking moment right that you can walk hand in hand but be alone that that's like a really hard end to this chapter yeah and i guess i wanted to portray that kind of bittersweet quality to it because on the you're absolutely right that they are
00:28:02
Speaker
Together and alone, they lack the support of their families, for example, in but at the same time, there is something, this kind of, it's us against the world thing, which, i am yeah, and they're very fortunate to have found each other, and in a very real way, they are not alone because of that.
00:28:22
Speaker
and And again, the the lines kind of running up to that, like nothing to stare at, nothing to be remarked upon, only silence, only stoicism, only a little distance. Like the the repetition is getting harder here, right? It's getting much more insistent.
00:28:34
Speaker
as like a, no no, there's nothing here. Like when we're just friends, it's not anything else. Don't like look too closely. And again, the defenses come up when we know that something's going on. And then again, we're like in his mind, right? Like, and in Achike's mind, they never did unclasp. In his mind, they are walking.
00:28:51
Speaker
The novel is maybe telling us that so much of experience is like just in our minds, right? It's just caught up in our consciousness and not like put into action. that's quite devastating realization really, isn't it?
00:29:02
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot in this book that happens in characters' minds. And I think that that is, yeah, because of the fact that there are a lot of restrictions, I guess, in how they can behave.
00:29:15
Speaker
And that a lot of the novel is really very much about people trying to fight through those restrictions and be themselves and love as themselves. And obviously at this point when they're just kids, really, they they're not they're not ready yet. They're not able to do that.
00:29:30
Speaker
But there's a journey. So keep reading.
Inspiration and Writing Habits
00:29:33
Speaker
That's a nice place to end that bit maybe. Go read this book if you haven't read it already. If you have read it, you know you know what's going to happen. And you know that Okachuku doesn't care about us. He wants to be really sad.
00:29:44
Speaker
I do, I promise. I think of this book as like my euphoric sad songs. Like, theres there is joy. There is joy. you just have to get through some of this stuff. But it's definitely album two, right? Like, Nenna Maloney is, like, much brighter in certain ways, in in certain in frames. And this, like, then is like, okay, here's the dark second album where we get introspective.
00:30:07
Speaker
Let's get into it, girls. Yeah, for sure. I want to ask you a little bit about writing and some other books and stuff. Your writing process, like where and when, like, do you have, do you have a process, right? Like all the, the, how to write books say you've got to write a thousand words a day and you sit down at the same time and you do the work.
00:30:26
Speaker
Do you do that? Do you write on computer? Do you write hand on your phone? Do you have, you know, rituals? Yeah, this is really interesting. i think my process has definitely changed and evolved over the years.
00:30:38
Speaker
I used to really pride myself on being able to write anywhere, whether on a train or, you know, in a library or a cafe. And I think that is probably still true-ish, but my favourite place to write and my most productive place to write is just at home, on the sofa, with my laptop, my phone in another room.
00:30:57
Speaker
That is how I write best. If I write in a cafe on a train, i feel as though I'm performing. my i remember, I really remember vividly, i was quite musical at school. I remember really vividly one of my teachers impressing on us, like the importance of the difference in between rehearsal and performance.
00:31:14
Speaker
And performance is when you have to get everything right. And rehearsal is when you mess up and you make mistakes and you change things and you explore and you figure out how you want to play that phrase or the articulation in that piece of music.
00:31:26
Speaker
And it's explorative and it's forgiving as well. And I feel as though when I'm in a cafe, even though nobody cares what I'm writing about and It's not like people are like stopping me in the street, but I feel as though I'm performing to a crowd. And that to me feels quite restrictive at the sort of writing and drafting and editing stage.
00:31:48
Speaker
And when I'm just trying to come up with ideas and hear my characters' voices, I just want to be on my sofa at my laptop. And I wish I could say that I wrote at the same time every day, but it just really varies.
00:31:59
Speaker
I'm most inclined to write in the evening because that's a time of day when, a I've had enough time to think and read and reflect upon stuff and decide upon things. And I often find that my writing is better after I've had some exercise.
00:32:11
Speaker
like i mean um if and that Whether that's a walk or going to the gym or whatever it is, I think it's just quite a nice meditative
Balancing Comedy and Inspiration
00:32:18
Speaker
time. and The endorphins are flowing and um had time to kind of breathe and I'm getting some fresh air. And i I think I'm most inclined to write in the evening, but that is dangerous because left to my own devices, i will write from 8pm until 1am and that is not sustainable.
00:32:32
Speaker
um So I try now to write in the mornings first thing. i remember reading years ago that John Ashbery, the poet, had a therapist who told him to write first thing in the morning before his inhibitions set in.
00:32:46
Speaker
But my inhibitions get up my my inhibitions don't really go to sleep. or they they'll go to sleep at like They're like a toddler. They'll go to sleep at like 7pm, which is why I prefer to write in the evenings. But I think I'm just healthier if I write in the mornings.
00:32:59
Speaker
It's a bit more of a push, but it's better for me. it's a great answer i mean at night when you're like on the sofa like have you got like tea are you drinking is there like a little vino going like are we snacking so i can't drink alcohol and write well um oh mean i think there's i'm not gonna lie no there's been the old time when i've had like a glass of something but i feel like writing is so complicated that because you're trying to make, you know, I tell this to students, you're making a hundred thousands of different decisions ah every second about the rhythms of things and phrases and how you're going to portray this character through this object and what we need to know about this setting and where the story is going to go after this. You're trying to juggle so many things in your mind.
00:33:44
Speaker
if that I'm like I'm only like just about hanging on with my fingertips if I'm stone cold sober so if you take that away from me then I'm really going to be fighting for my life so I try not to yeah I don't generally drink at all when I'm writing I'm just like yeah the the fewer distractions the better sometimes if I'm really struggling to get my own voice I will read something just to get me in the kind of into into the space of writing or even like watch a bit of something to imagine comedy now and um I feel like I've burned through all of the a lot of the comic fiction that I really really like so I'm like resorted to sitcoms as well to kind of like remind myself what it is to be funny I think I really struggle to write comedy if I'm not reading or watching something that is very funny and
00:34:33
Speaker
I don't find it difficult to separate my own voice from another writer who has written. i don't find myself muddling my characters up with other characters, or I don't think I do But I need just to be in that sort of brain space of like coming up with jokes and laughing and editing jokes and thinking about where the punchline is.
Craft Evolution and Aspirations
00:34:51
Speaker
And if not, it's just really, really hard. Wait, like a comedy novel or like... Yeah, yeah, this movie was a comedy. Yeah, so closer in tone to Nana Maloney than Here Again Now. And yeah, thinking about jokes instead of like, only human suffering is great.
00:35:07
Speaker
but Yeah. Do you remember when you first started writing? Do you have ah or a glimmer of like, when you thought like, oh, this is the thing i want to do? Yes. For me, when I was very, very little, i remember writing stories just being like, I thought that was what you did. Once you learned how to write letters and words and sentences, I thought, oh, well, this is just what you do. You write a story.
00:35:29
Speaker
So i'm not saying it I'm not saying it was any good, but I remember just that thing of, oh, but well, this is just what you do, isn't it? For me, it wasn't so much a process of like, I am not writing from to writing, but like writing to trying to write well and thinking about what that means.
00:35:45
Speaker
and trying to write well to try to be a writer in the world which is a which is its own different thing right it's about okay if I'm going to do this how am I going to make money what's that going to look like and if I'm going to get a day job what's that going to be how's that going to make room for writing and you know what does it mean to be a black writer and a queer writer and what does it mean to be able to find your way in this world and negotiate all the tricky little different things that you none of which you really know about until you actually get into it and which make things so much more complicated but yeah that was that was my journey rather than thinking I wanted to write I've always wanted to write it was more like how but yeah but how How do I do that? And now you're just writing coffee shops while everyone stares at you because they're like oh my God, he's here. He's here. He's writing.
00:36:33
Speaker
Oh my God, leave me alone. I'm shy. You need your signature on everything. I'll have your poster up next to the coffee shop. ah Do you have any recommendations of books on writing or essays on writing that have like helped you?
00:36:48
Speaker
Yeah, so there's a book that I always recommend to students. and They're probably just tired of, but I think that is bleed when I mention this book's name, but it's so, so helpful. um It's called Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway.
00:37:00
Speaker
And um I think there were two authors, Elizabeth Stuckey-French and can't remember the name of the other one, but they're kind of with Janet Burroway. She's the main author. And it is just a very good book about creative writing because it's written not from the point of view of an English literature student, but somebody who wants to learn how to write. And she goes through all the basic things like character and setting and all these things.
00:37:20
Speaker
And she's she gives examples and she's just very clear and concise and thoughtful, but not overly figurative. I think I often try to avoid using metaphors when talking to students and to myself about writing. If I'm thinking about, I banned the word flow in my creative writing workshops because I think it's too vague. I want people to understand what it is that's working or not working.
00:37:44
Speaker
I think that Janet Bowie does that really, really well. She articulates, this is what dialogue, these are the things that dialogue needs to do. you need to bear in mind that it needs to move the plot forward and tell us about the character and all these other things.
00:37:56
Speaker
And just having that, it's not clinical, but just practical advice, I think cuts through a lot of the stuff that is just really, really difficult about getting started with writing.
Books and Personal Connection
00:38:05
Speaker
hmm amazing before i get some book recommendations from you like what books or authors is here again now in dialogue with do you think like you mentioned a you know a couple of references earlier but like when you are writing like who are the people you're turning to or how do you see this book in relation to others yeah there are probably quite a lot of books that this is in dialogue with leaves of grass by walt whitman definitely in terms of the prose style the bible i mentioned earlier
00:38:32
Speaker
um The Eyes Were Watching God was a big one by Zora Neale Hurston. That repetition of this image of the pear tree that keeps coming back to her. I think that made me, that gave me permission, I suppose, to feel like I could play with repetition in that way.
00:38:47
Speaker
D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, i was reading that while I was writing this and it probably shows. um it's the fluidity of his prose the northerness of it the way that he really delves into characters minds and hearts i absolutely love i feel the need to publicly distance myself from some of his politics because obviously believely he was a bad man um and i am not but his prose beautiful those yeah probably the main ones No, it's always interesting to hear that. It's only because you mentioned a couple of those in the conversation that I thought, oh, I need to ask you about this.
00:39:21
Speaker
So there's a question I put, like are there any books you wish you could have written? No, although I think that there are books which I feel like get me, which is maybe quite close to that.
00:39:33
Speaker
So I think it's like Middlemarch as a book which is mind-blowingly... And yeah, and There Is A Watching God, both of which I read because of essays by Zadie Smith, actually.
00:39:44
Speaker
about those two books, which are so insightful, such insightful essays. But yeah, books, those two books, I think, they just they just get me, you know? They just get me. They are so wise about humanity and so forgiving, but also really, really sharp and funny and and incredibly moving and so well-crafted.
Conclusion and Recommendations
00:40:02
Speaker
And I just think...
00:40:03
Speaker
yeah i feel there are books that you read and you feel understood and you kind of see yourself in them not necessarily because of the characters but because you feel like this is somebody who understands what it is to be a human being and those two books for me are like it i would love to hear the conversation between you know but george elliot and zora neil hirston like imagine sitting those two down just being like please talk yeah i mean i think george elliot uh I think she did say some kind of racist stuff in her time, but I'm sure that, yeah, I'm sure that Zorniel Hurston would have plenty of interesting stuff to say in return.
00:40:36
Speaker
so Yeah, exactly. Okay, those weren't, yeah, those weren't the books I thought you were say, so I'm excited for that. That's great. Interesting. Can I ask what you thought i was going to say? No, I didn't know. I didn't know you were a Victorian-ish 18th century girly as much as you were. Yeah, a little bit. I did the, yeah, I sort of studied them a lot at university. Okay.
00:40:56
Speaker
ah to So, yeah. like Because both of your novels feel like very like of the moment kind of books, if you see what I mean. like In it like a positive way, but they are you know the language, the settings, the the focus, if you like.
00:41:08
Speaker
So I'm always interested then when an author's like, oh, I go to Austin and Elliot and D.H. Lawrence. was like, D.H. Lawrence? I wasn't expecting you say that. So yeah, kind of interesting. oh yeah bigs like big bigs like loved the rainbow absolutely loved it my mind in which case so you've given us loads recommendations in so doing but are there any others that you want to recommend that maybe you're currently reading or like stuff you go back to or new books that haven't come out yet that you want to shout out
00:41:36
Speaker
So I am currently reading ah book which I think everybody else has already read, but um Stoner, which obviously came out in the 60s and then had a resurgence maybe 15 years ago.
00:41:48
Speaker
And everybody read it then. And I'm just catching it now. But yeah, I think it's really, really interesting. It's so interesting. And I'm just fascinated by the way that he writes because so it's this kind of, it's the opposite of my prose, the prose that I kind of am more inclined to. As you know, in Here Again Now, in that passage you read, I really, i lived in this really, not flowery, but kind of expressive prose in which there's lots of repetition and we delve into people's minds.
00:42:13
Speaker
Whereas Stoner has written this much more restrained, dare I say, Anglo-Saxon way of writing, which feels... much more kind of polite and and i and i don't see that for myself so much but i find it fascinating um and really well crafted so yeah that's i'm really enjoying it great thank you again ahi for joining me it's been a joy thank you so much for having me i've really enjoyed this conversation thank you
00:42:42
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode. Please subscribe if you haven't already, leave a review and with people you know. You can also follow the show and me on Instagram at Books Up Close and on YouTube.
00:42:54
Speaker
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00:43:07
Speaker
This show is made possible by Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.