Transcript
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. In today's episode, I talk to Eva Svendiari Denny about her poem, No Ecclesial Song, No Clapping, from her new collection, Girling, which came out in September from Fitzcarraldo.
Speaker: Eve's debut poetry pamphlet, My Bodies This Morning This Evening, was published by Bad Betty in 2022. She's been shortlisted for the White Review's Poet Prize, Aesthetica's Creative Writing Award, the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem, Brackets Performed, and longlisted for the National Poetry Competition. Her work has appeared in the Poetry Review, Granter, BBC Radio 4, and Prototype's annual anthology, among others. Girling is her first collection, and it is very good, people. Eve, thank you for joining me. I really appreciate it Thank you.
Speaker: We've had other Fitzcarraldo poetry play cousins of yours like on the show before. We've had Shone, we've had Sasha Devvick McKinney. So I'm like excited to continue this poetry Fitzcarraldo selection.
Speaker: All good ones. All good ones. Good people. We will we will talk about that in a minute. But before that, how do you feel about close reading? Yeah, I was thinking about it. I don't know. Sometimes it's like, sometimes it feels like similar to like explaining a joke or something. Or it feels like maybe like it's kind of, I i don't like doing it myself, but I love it when someone does it for me. I feel really like um it's very generous and very like, I feel very indulged.
Speaker: But I don't know. i think, yeah, my so I prefer like, intuitively when I meet a text or I meet a poem, it's just to have something wash over you and have a kind of like sensing relationship to it rather than a kind of knowing relationship to it far more enjoyable. And it feels more like you can, i I can relate to, I don't know, relate to it more like music or relate to it more or like a, yeah, like music in a language I don't understand.
Speaker: That's like a really nice, but there's still a kind of like affect. Yeah. um and yeah sometimes I feel like explaining that or kind of like dissecting it or getting to the bottom of why it does that kind of yeah feels like a shame but also like also a generous generous thing to do and like it gives the work the attention that you know you'd hope so yeah I don't know what do you do you like it yeah I think I totally understand that kind of impulse of like it's almost showing too much of the workings, right? We're trying to explain something that a poem is in it its entire, right? It's like a whole thing.
Speaker: And if you start to pull it apart, maybe you lose some of its wholeness maybe, but at the same time, the affect is one part, but then I'm also like, but I actually kind of do want to know how it's doing that thing.
Speaker: or I want, like, to know how it's doing it or maybe like why it's doing it now in this way. What does it feel like after you know? it feels different, I suppose, because a different response to it. Maybe it's not that immediate.
Speaker: Oh, this has hit me in a particular way. But now I have a new, yeah, like a new way of understanding the poem or if not understanding the poem, I have a new relationship with the poem. Yeah, that's so true. I guess it gives you variation, doesn't it? It gives you like a feeling of like, yeah, there's like a, it adds dimensions to what you already felt or saw.
Speaker: Yeah. And it's part of the rereading as well, right? Like I like it, I like it to go back to a text. And I think close reading is one way to go back to a text. It's not the only way, right? You could, you can reread, but i think that affective feeling you get the first time you read something or encounter a painting whatever. and it's hard to re-grasp that, right? Like, like you might get a part of it but I feel like if I re-listen to a song or I re-watch a movie I love or see a painting, there's, I'm bringing newness to it, right? Because I'm viewing it for another time and I wonder what yeah what comes up there especially with a poem that I think by their nature poems need to be reread right it kind of reminds me of like you know when people take pictures of fireworks yeah you're like why you taking a picture of that like why just why don't you just stay why don't you just see the firework because it is a fact it's like this ephemeral thing and it just lasts a second but like stay in that second rather than like I don't know like
Speaker: But I am amazed. I'm like, do people go back and like look at the pictures of the fireworks? they just people so Like as a proper like photography situation sometimes. like This is true.
Speaker: But yeah, no, I agree. I think I feel I feel two ways about it. And I do agree. i agree with you. But I'm also like I quite like the kind of transient nature of feeling something and then it goes and like you don't need to really understand it or know it or remember it.
Speaker: Yeah. But it happened. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, a lot of people struggle with that though with poetry, right? I don't know whether people say this to you or not, but like in classrooms, students often talk about like, well, I don't get it, right? the And if I just say, just just feel the poem and just like see how it lands with you, they're like, yeah, yeah, but...
Speaker: I need to know, i need to write about it at some point, right? I need to write an essay or I need to communicate it to ah someone else. And the, just feel it, they often feel like that's not enough, right? People who struggle with poetry, they're like yeah, but i need to understand it.
Speaker: And ah yeah, there's never a good answer I give to that. I don't know where that comes from. I i think it it's like almost like a GCSE thing. I don't know. i like you feel like i don dunno I just think it's way harder to listen if you if you know.
Speaker: don't know. It's much harder to be present with something if you've got a kind of preordained knowledge of it or a kind of like expectation of it. Yeah, like understanding or like enjoying or like... Yeah, I don't know. I guess i guess there is satisfaction in understanding, though, and I and i i i get i get that yeah I'm not sure why... i don't relate to it. I don't understand why people need to understand.
Speaker: but yeah, I don't know. let's Yeah, giving up on understanding. Yeah, maybe it's maybe it's also... not like I'm not talking about a totalized understanding, right? Like yeah it might be provisional understanding or temporary understanding or revised or something. know what mean? Like maybe understanding is too definitive so that when we talk today about this poem, I don't necessarily want to solve it. I maybe just want to talk with about the things that stand out to me and why and and what and how you feel about them.
Speaker: Oh my God, that's so generous. Thank you. I think, yeah, I don't know. i i would hope the thing that the book, i would or that specific, I don't know, I guess, or when I come into a poem, ultimately, I think it just for some for but the quality of my attention to be changed in some way is really nice. And I think, yeah, like close reading is a form of that.
Speaker: it's really interesting um you know what people say about listening to other people talk about poems as well. Yeah, yeah, for sure. wow like i didn't I didn't see that or I didn't feel that way or like... And that's quite exciting, just opening up some of those things. I like quality of attention. I'm writing that down just like thing I'm going to linger with.
Speaker: Can we hear you read the poem then first and then maybe we can like see where we go? do you want to say anything about it beforehand or...? I wrote it very quickly. I wrote it in a caravan and it was a poem that came out.
Speaker: like a just that that's That's all I have to say. Great. Yeah, I can read it. Great. No ecclesial song, no clapping. Watching an electronic deep sea claw failing to pick the stalk of a dandelion awakens me to where I am on YouTube at a party queuing for the bathroom three weeks into a breakup wearing a little eye shadow but still no closer to epiphany.
Speaker: I've eaten one good green meal tended to my landlord's cat dish small-tailed Suki. With her I vocalise. When is my time to be received as portal?
Speaker: To offer the pieces of myself and hear the final reply like, I'll take them. Oh God, I'm literally flowing through the solar system, bravely opening my words to show the anxiety mites, the lie dials turning in the slow-mo atmosphere of deceit.
Speaker: And I don't lounge around. i don't even call for help. I just carry a heavy bag containing an abundance of disorganized notes, the notes are seeking solution, which could arrive as affirmation yet currently surmount to a lack of ecclesial song.
Speaker: I've made calls about it, reached out, but only the weird ones reply. It was then it became determinate. My married friends are no longer legible.
Speaker: Yet I go on, my life pooling and collating with spirit. This is where the work begins, I guess. So I invest in my sole intention. Return to my landlord's house to check on Suki.
Speaker: Her owner, my landlord, appears from the kitchen. She's back from her holiday in the Philippines now. We watch friends together.
Speaker: it is an act of sublimation. It is like she's telling me a life torn up was once built. I tell myself the same thing, but I'm distracted, spreading my hands to check for any sign they are clapping.
Speaker: I want to trust I can half ascend the room, airing out the fact of pre-recorded laughter. Thank you so much for reading it. So I got this proof of this book a little while back and i kind of inhaled most of it on a two boss journeys.
Speaker: um That's so nice. Partly because, so the book, I guess, you know, just to zoom out for like two seconds, it's called Girling and you've got these kind of recurring poems in there about like girling, right? was like,
Speaker: activity or state like it comes from like you know the girls are girling and the first of those poems about Hayley Bieber which is like really funny and you know you're interrogating that state of like gu what does it mean to be a girl or a woman or what is girling look like, so you've got this kind of recurrent kind of poetic structure through, and then you've got these other poems interspersed, which don't look like that those poems, right? I guess I'm saying this because this poem looks quite different from a lot of the book, right? You've got these really long kind of prose poems, kind of, I don't know what you call them, but they're like right across the page, right? There's like quite a lot of text. And then you intersperse it with these like thinner poems that kind of like run straight down. and I'm really interested in you saying it came out as like a, but I don't know, you did a gesture, like a kind of vomit, right? But like it came out in one piece almost. yeah And I'm just, yeah, I'm just interested in the kind of the flow of this poem. And it's much shorter lines than like the longer lines and the kind of like the prosiness of the other ones.
Speaker: I mean, so much of the work is shaped by like the labour conditions I was in at the time, which was that I was teaching in something called a Prue. Have you heard of that? No.
Speaker: They're like schools for kids that are not able to go into mainstream education. So some of them are like... involved with the police in some way, involved with social services or like, you know, like kids and like but vulnerable kids.
Speaker: And umm a lot of the time they're very naughty. Fair enough. They were, but I think that often ah they wouldn't come to my class. I would have this like hour long, sometimes three hours to just write because there was no kids. And so I ended up with these really long poems. Mm hmm.
Speaker: And the shorter ones were the things I would write after work. And that's really how it how the form came into place. Literally just like time constraints. But yeah, I think, I don't know if i i don't know if theyre i don't know i don't know if they're poems. I don't really know. I think the one of them got called a essay in a prize once.
Speaker: Yeah, maybe they're lyric essays. I don't know. but I mean genre again I don't really relate to I'm like why does it matter but also like fair enough i guess for like the reader that they want to be like what is this yeah I don't know I think whatever you think So maybe that resisting to knowing though again, right? Like, you know, I want to know what genre this is as though that will, as though that'll like crack it open or something, you know? I know. i think it's like a having a kind of like hybrid approach to things is like, it just feels like, it feels it feels a lot less claustrophobic to me. I feel like if I sit down and I'm like, write a poem, I would be like limiting my possibilities. Yeah.
Speaker: Right. So when you sit down, i mean, we can talk more about your writing later, but when you sit down to write, you're not like today, this is going to be more of an essay poem, or this is going a long, thin poem, or you're just writing. Is that what you do?
Speaker: No, but like, as in, sometimes I sit down knowing I want to write a particular kind of thing. Yeah. Right. At the moment I'm writing some body horror poems. So I'm like responding to body horror movies. Yeah.
Speaker: in a way so I have a sense that like I know I want it to look like something this one feels like it needs to be like oh my god so organized but like as in I want it to be like heavy because the film was like mad you know what I mean and you like sit down and you're like you're like I have themes I have I have textures I have like and then you're like go Yeah. Or, or at least like I've watched this movie. I wrote down some like words and phrases that like came to me as I was watching.
Speaker: and now I want to make them into something. Interesting. I don't know. It's an experiment at the moment. I don't know what's going to happen with these things, but like I've written a few now. Sounds like it's going to be good. Sounds like it's going to be very cohesive. Maybe, or just weird, and people be like, what the hell are these? um But, you know, like, I'm re-watching, like, the canonical, like, The Fly, you know, like, went back to The Fly.
Speaker: But then... what Can you tell me some other ones? I mean, most of the, like, John Carpenter ones, basically, where there's, like, bodies coming apart. Like, The Thing, I don't know if you've seen The Thing. It's, like, set in... You and so, so scary. Yeah, yeah, they're great. um Or, like, The Substance, the more recent one with them.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. I was just sad to watch that. It was quite intense. watched one the other day called Possessor ah by Brandon k Cronenberg, where, yeah, this woman, like, implants herself in people's brains. And, like, as she's, like, a hired assassin, but she takes over someone else's body. It's, like, really, like, the viscerality of the body is, like, interesting.
Speaker: I just think i that I then have, like, a sense of what... I might want it to look like or feel like on the page. Like it's not like predetermined. Like I start writing and maybe like, maybe it turns into not that, but like I have a sense. so I'm really interested in you describing the kind of conditions of the work of of what that allows or enables or, you know, but what that does for you imaginatively. Yeah, feel like it's far less, far less organized than what you're saying. But like, yeah, I guess like, that's really interesting to hear that.
Speaker: You've got the Fitzcarraldo book, so maybe you're doing it the right way. No. I mean, the next... I mean, yeah, I don't know. I think having a kind of structure to what you're doing, like, I think there are lots of books like Daisy Lafarge's Life Without Air and, like, Kay Patrick's Three Births, where you have these, like, really beautiful kind of, like...
Speaker: I don't know. They're kind of like just these sort of like meta and macro narratives that exist in this really sort of tightly bound form through the book. And I think that I'm really, I mean, that's like, that's gorgeous. I feel like what I've done is far more like a sort of assemblage of things.
Speaker: o You should see my desktop, honestly, like I can see it in the background. It's just like, there's like a thousand tabs and there's just like, it's just a mess. that I don't think my brain could ever... Okay, yeah, don't show me that. People with like 700 tabs open, like that stresses me out to my Oh my god, you would be, oh it was it's horrible. That's funny though because like as a book, this feels so cohesive, like the girling structure or metaphor or the kind of form, I guess, that recurs, like does feel like it's holding the other stuff also in kind of like not holding it in place, but kind of holding it in some kind of relation.
Speaker: Yeah. So like a poem like this kind of emerges in relation to that bigger structure, right? Of what, like, for example, let me just read some of the titles because people might not read the book yet. Like, Girling on behalf of Proximity to Mammal, ah Girling on behalf of the Impression I am Once Eternal and Dead. like Great titles, great titles.
Speaker: And then you've got these other poems that kind of interrupt that. And I think that's part of what i like about this poem is it kind of interrupted some of those like bigger, denser pieces on the page. And then you've got a title like no ecclesial song, no clapping.
Speaker: i just love a title that already brings in like negation, right? Like a poem that already kind of starts with like not this thing, like not this thing, which I'm always like,
Speaker: I don't know, like it's it's the kind of opposite of like ode to aggression and right where it's like, you know, I've got a specific object, but actually here it's like it's not these things. And you start with this kind of like blurring that I really enjoy, like watching an electronic deep sea claw failing to pick the stalk of a dandelion awakens me to where I am on YouTube at a party queue for a bathroom three weeks into a breakup, etc.
Speaker: Are we under the sea? No, we're on YouTube. No, we're in a party queue. And actually we're like into a breakup. I just love this is kind of like pulling away very quickly from the immediate context to maybe we're in a digital realm and actually we're in a physical realm in like a party queue outside a bathroom. I don't know. I think there's some really fun, if not juxtapositions, but like, yeah, relations there between online, in person, on screen, physical, you know,
Speaker: Oh, that's so nice of you. Yeah, I think it's very important in the book that there's this kind of like switching between registers of reality yeah that are all as true as each other.
Speaker: be Like on YouTube in a party. like i don't know, all those things, that kind of like Russian doll effect of just like standing still anywhere. There's so many sort of like, yeah, layers of experience that you could kind of call, you could choose to Yeah, I suppose. Yeah. And again, this idea of like quality of attention, it's just about like, which register do you choose? um Which reality are you like opting into?
Speaker: And all of them are true. So yeah. Yeah. And all butting up against each other, but also the registers, but also kind of like the language, right? you cut That opening is very kind of direct, but then you kind of, ah but then you say like, but still no closer to epiphany.
Speaker: like, okay, epiphany is interesting word, different from the previous ones. And then I've eaten one good green meal, tended to my landlord's cat dish. So again, we're back in the kind of like the everyday, I guess, kind of language.
Speaker: And then suddenly you vocalize with the cat. When is my time to be received as portal? I offer the pieces of myself and hear the final reply, like I'll take them. You know, we're moving linguistically as well as like conceptually, I suppose.
Speaker: When is my time to be received as portal? I'm interested in that this poem doesn't stop moving. It's like one way of putting it that like every line, we're kind of like, oh, we're kind of here now. Are we here?
Speaker: I'm literally flowing through the solar system. is like a really good way of describing it, right? There's kind of like flow between spaces, places, times that I find really fun and kind of, but also maybe unsettling, perhaps.
Speaker: Yeah. It's so cheap to do in poetry. Like I think if I was to try and do that in a film or in like like a painting, in any other form, it would be so hard and expensive and kind of, I think I like that elasticity is something that I find really satisfying and maybe it's like, yeah, unsettling. Cause I suppose you don't allow the reader a sense of the floor or a kind of like, I don't know. I feel like, yeah, keeping a kind of like, there's a kind of, I guess, anxiety and not in moving in that way and having a kind of, but it's also like,
Speaker: I think quite true or quite true to our sort of experience of being here. If you kind of tap into multiple, the sort of multiplicity of our context, that is what's happening.
Speaker: We are flowing through the solar system.
Speaker: Yeah. that i'm literally flowing through the solar system. Literally are, like the The literally is, you know, contemporary word, you know, they're like the the word that everyone gets fixated on, right? Like,
Speaker: Yeah. The online discourse of like, is it literally or not? like But here it's kind of funny, right? It's both it's both the the kind of colloquialism and no, no I'm literally flowing through the system.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, the to sort of like play with tone is something i really, again, also enjoy doing because it is a kind of like multiple registers existing at once ah in yeah in a sort of tonal sense, especially as someone like...
Speaker: Because I grew up in a household where like my dad had a was from Birmingham and like I had a sort of like Iranian family on my maternal side. And this like jarring of, like I don't know, I think if you come from that ah kind of like mixed background, you get very acclimatized to...
Speaker: these like tonal clashes where you sort of grow up in a kind of like linguistic, like hearing someone from Burma, like a working class, Birmingham but man talking to like a middle-class Iranian granddad is like hilarious. Like it's just like a, it's, I don't know. And I think that definitely is something that, that sort of like playful relationship to tone definitely comes from, or that like sensitivity or like switching between tone is definitely something that I don't know grew up with and also just like find really funny but that's something that's like just coming out as you write or like you're consciously wanting to explore no I don't think any of it's conscious I think like it's just something that's like in the bones I think yeah and it's just kind of like it's what comes out if you like
Speaker: maybe the work kind of starts just like what, what's that it's almost like my hands rather than my head. like What's what, what's happened? Like what am I, don't know. And then something kind of appears. Yeah. But yeah, I think that stuff is all very like, it's just almost like the material of your voice. It's just like your experiences and how they kind of like that just naturally will bleed into your work.
Speaker: And like working with the kind of constraints of your brain as well. It's like, like leaning into the bits, the view that are kind of like, that you feel limited by creates a lot of idiosyncrasy actually. Yeah.
Speaker: um And I think it's almost like a frustration or a kind of like ah a sort of like friction that I find with language is often like where the tone is born from, ah where there's this kind of like kind of like double meanings, triple meanings, like so much can be contained in like,
Speaker: an idiom or like a a word on its own. Like, I don't know. There's just like, it's such like a unwieldy tool and to kind of have a kind of loose and personal relationship with it is really like where I think a voice comes from. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, the the idea of like play and improvisation. I mean, this is something talked with Wayne Holloway Smith. He was talking about improvisation as a kind of like both writing strategy and a and a kind of aesthetic in a way.
Speaker: Again, maybe this is like nice for listeners who don't read write poetry or maybe don't read poetry a lot. like The poem not as fixed object, but as as moving feast, like as movable feast, right? something that is...
Speaker: changing, shifting, even when you're writing it like when we're reading it. I don't know, maybe that does loosen some of that knowing anxiety, maybe, you know, the idea that the poem isn't just like one thing, it's not static.
Speaker: And the in the language you're using here, like the images, the language, the kind of the choices allows us to kind of have some of that freedom too, maybe. Yeah. I'm curious guess why you picked it.
Speaker: I, A, I think it was, i laughed. Yeah. A few times, which I appreciate in a poem. I also, anything that makes me slightly unstable or feel unstable, i like, you know, the constant kind of turns, I guess I was talking about writing the poem.
Speaker: If a poem like makes multiple turns, I'm like, okay, okay I'm in. Whereas maybe, you know, maybe I don't know where we're going in a poem is like, that's exciting to me. i do think the title as well, right? No ecclesial song, no clapping. Like it's a great title.
Speaker: And I do think that refusal made me go like, okay, well, if it's not those things, like what, what is it? You know, in a way, like there's something in my body that's like, okay, it's not this thing. Okay. Like what might it be?
Speaker: So kind of, I was drawn to that. um There's a cat in it. That's always going to like win. But i think I think we get to, you know, that line, like three weeks into a breakup wearing a little eye shadow, but still no close to epiphany, like a lesser writer might just turn this into a breakup poem, right? But you're not doing that.
Speaker: That's just like a little node in the in the storyline of the speaker, I suppose. But actually then the poem goes elsewhere. and I appreciate that too. I think that's why I chose it because it's going, is you're going in different directions and that solar system image maybe is the one that,
Speaker: helps there, right? Like I'm flowing through solar system in the way that the poem is flowing, right? Bravely opening my words to show the anxiety might, the lie dials turning in the slow-mo atmosphere of the sea. Again, like another language shift there, right? Those four lines are quite different from what we've had before.
Speaker: And those, yeah, those linguistic changes are ones that I immediately like jump on as being like, huh, what did you just do, Eve? Like, where where are we where are we going? Yeah. resident it via um now Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker: I think I find it really hard to see what I've written. I've written it. So yeah, it's informative what you're saying. Hmm. Like how, okay, I'll ask you that in a minute, actually. I'll ah i'll come back to that question because that's really interesting what you And like, I just carry a heavy bag containing an abundance of disorganized notes. The notes are seeking solution, which could arrive as affirmation, yet currently surmount to a lack of ecclesial song. Like I like how the notes change from what I imagine are kind of written notes, right? Like notes about the self to musical notes. of song, which makes me think of like the poem as song originally, right? Like the musicality of poems.
Speaker: And then very quickly you do, I mean, there have been a few at the very beginning of the poem, like lines that are like full sentences with like a full stop at the end, but you do quite a far more of them here. I've made calls about it full stop, reached out full stop.
Speaker: but only the weird ones reply full stop. Later on is an act of sublimation. We watch Friends together full stop. She's back from the holiday. like there's quite a few lines that end with full stops too. You go from like the flow to the the break.
Speaker: Again, more of that kind of like disjuncture, I suppose, that I guess maybe you're feeling as you're writing it. But like the music of that is quite interesting to go from like flow, flow, flow to stop. Yeah, true. Another full stop.
Speaker: It's such a nice way to control sound, isn't it? who No, thank you for reading it like that. i think um I didn't edit it really.
Speaker: And that was, yeah, I think the full stops in particular, those moments of like, it feels like quite a percussive poem to me. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of my favorites, actually. i quite like it.
Speaker: Is that common that you, that it comes out in one go and that you don't edit much? Is that like common as a, no? No, it's the only one actually. I've spent like, there's some, I mean, some of them take like a long, long time, like a year, but then they become a completely different thing. And I often feel like I'm like writing every time I'm like writing, I'm basically like trying to write the same thing. There's just like a kind of like orb of something that like, uh, exists in your consciousness that you're trying to kind of like access. Mm.
Speaker: when you get into that state of like, it it's kind of like a miracle or something. It's like this like point at which something arrives and you have something to say. That's good. that's good I don't know. it kind of It's always like reaching for that like point in which you can unlock it.
Speaker: And I think that is ultimately like, it's the same piece of work. It's the same kind of movement. It's the same, like there's something, I don't know what the formation is, but I know when it happens, it happens.
Speaker: yeah That one was, I got there very quickly. m Yeah, I don't know. It really varies. And sometimes you have to really like strain over something. I don't know. i don't know what that does to the quality of the thing.
Speaker: I know when like I've spoken to like painters or like people that work in, it's often like the quick things that, and they're sort of like intuitive flow state where you produce your best work. But you know, that's the, yet I go on my life pooling and collating with spirit. This is where the work begins, I guess.
Speaker: I don't know, like this is that this is the work, right? Like the the poem is the work. When it's talking about like my life pooling and collating with spirit, which is like a funny phrase, right? Like it feels so grand, but the poem itself isn't like a grand poem. You know, it's kind of undoing some of that grandness or grandiosity.
Speaker: And this is where the work begins, comma, I guess. But i just I just think that I guess is so, that feels like of our moment in a way, right? Like this is where the work begins, I guess. Like that real immediate kind of come down of, yeah, this is no ecclesial song, no clapping. Like this is there's something smaller.
Speaker: and And the fact that the poem ends in like, you watching Friends with your landlord and the kind of like, am I clapping? and the pre-recorded laughter as well. Like that as an image to end on is quite interesting, right? Like not like kind of real laughter, but but it's pre-recorded.
Speaker: So it's not quite real. Like I think there's a real nice tension there at the end about like, like where the not where meaning lies, but where like the substance of the poem lies. Yes, the tension between I mean, the tension of watching TV with your landlord is unprecedented. Like, I don't know if they've ever done it, but it's fucked up. You know, like, I think, um yeah, so much of the book,
Speaker: is about sort of opting into capitalism and having this kind of like weird, these like sort of like latent tensions, I guess, in lots of ways, like even like the latent, the in the first poem about, there's a poem about Hayley Bieber and Emma Chamberlain having this conversation about whiteness.
Speaker: but ah that while wearing these like white outfits and this very sort of like white context and, but not really talking about race, but kind of, you know, this, these kind of like, I sometimes think it's like a, so like the gift of depression actually is that it allows you to see the kind of like structures of conversation um really easily gives access because you're just in this kind of like, i don't know, you just go into this kind of a,
Speaker: analytic state or something I suppose you're like questioning, you're kind of like, you're looking at the kind of like, yeah, it's it's a way of looking at structures, I guess. And I think that was, yeah, that conversation, that sitting, when you know, watching friends with your landlord or you're being like fucked over, basically, it's like, fuck you, like, I'm paying your mortgage. Yeah.
Speaker: and now we're watching friends like i don't want to do that i don't want to be the ultimate show about renting right like yeah
Speaker: the ultimate show about renting and also they're so kind of like i love i love that they're always um they're like never at work on that show yeah yeah quite yeah and um when they are it's like fun but yeah a very different relationship to labor Yeah. And also just like time to like have a friendship group is like, okay but yeah, I love, I love friends.
Speaker: I love when, yeah, like a poem the poem kind of regrounds us almost right. Like starting with the YouTube video of the deep sea claw and kind of ending on friends. Like, I don't know. I feel like you've spanned from there to like the solar system.
Speaker: Back to friends again. I don't know, there's some kind of sense of like, yeah, the scope of like the contemporary world. it it And it's kind of like throw away as well as it's kind of like seriousness. And I appreciate that always in a work.
Speaker: Like I wanna make sense of like the now. And I think that's why I appreciated this book a lot. You would love you would love to hear a conversation between an Iranian and a man from Birmingham, I think, cause it's the same thing.
Speaker: Great. Well, in which case. Like what is going on In which case the next family party, I'm coming along. yeah You talked a bit about your writing earlier about the kind of like the conditions if you're writing in the school setting or anywhere else, but like beyond the kind of the time or the space you're working, like are you, do you have a particular writing practice? Like are you do are you always typing? you doing on your phone? Are you writing by hand? Like, do you have a a way of doing it or is it, as you say, like just constrained by the conditions?
Speaker: Well, i was very like, I had the the pleasure of being given PhD funding, which meant I was like essentially like a lady of leisure for three years. I've been able to just like go swimming and sit down and like, but I think the thing I always do, my system, I guess, is read before I write, always. And always i have like a notebook and I make, I kind of,
Speaker: whatever comes into my head, even if it doesn't make sense, I'll write it down. And then I work with what I've got in my notes. I don't know. just It just, it kind of like, it's almost like a it's not, I mean, it's not always like usable and it's not always like, sometimes it's like,
Speaker: difficult to be I mean you don't want to be too porous to what you've just written because otherwise you I don't know but there's something about having a kind of like fresh set of coordinates presented to you by somebody else in their own writing that I find really like animates my brain and I i can't really write unless I've read first and reading like poetry or anything I guess i didn't actually read that much poetry. I read a lot. Like at the moment, I'm reading Hypochondria by Will Reese, which is kind like essays.
Speaker: Really good, actually. I really recommend. Sort of hybrid essay kind of thing. A lot of letters. love letters. Like ah Vida Sackville-West, Jean Wolfe. I love that book.
Speaker: Anything like Fitzcarraldo gives me, I'll read that. Same. yeah they're always good yeah I mean actually every I ah recently read they gave me cafes by Holly Paster I loved that I loved it I was like oh my god I forgot how great poetry is yeah because I haven't read it in so long and I was like this is amazing Yeah.
Speaker: So you're just kind of getting your brain working, like you're just reading anything to then, like do you find that? Because I know some people say like, they definitely don't read while they're writing, right? Like there are some novelists who like, I don't want to read anything else contemporary because I don't want another voice in my brain, but like,
Speaker: I don't know. i get I get that. I understand that for sure. I think I find like it feels more conversational than like ah like a monologue. Yeah. um And a lot of what I write down is my own. Yeah. what What kind of the thing it produces in me rather than the thing that I've read. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. I find it's kind of like that synthesis of like, just hearing a voice and because obviously writing is such like a solitary experience, especially doing a PhD is so solitary and having a kind of like, yeah, another voice or another ah sort of like exterior input to what's already like gurgling. And like, yeah, it kind of helps me shape what's sort of preexisting, but it's not like I would totally understand why you wouldn't want to, wouldn't want to do that as well.
Speaker: hmm i like gurgling is a good there's a good description youre i don't know i find like there's always something like sort of like in the cauldron of the mind yeah definitely a cauldron in mind do you have early memories of writing like Were you an early writer or like when did you write it? love this question. It's such a great question because it reminded me of when I wrote my first ever book at the age of seven.
Speaker: I took my dad's work computer and I wrote a cat language that was them completely based on movement. And it was like a cat sign language.
Speaker: And that was my first book. I was really happy with it. I would so read that. I mean, you so you were writing experimental things from the get-go then? Yeah, I remember loving it. I remember being like, so, yeah, I was always, and I was always like amazed by this idea in language that...
Speaker: to like draw something. It's so like, oh, just to be like, okay, how do I draw like a spoon? How do I draw like, you know, and in with language you just say spoon and it is, and that's like so satisfying. Yeah. i like um I think being able to, yeah, it just, it's, it's just like a, a very cheap and satisfying process.
Speaker: process where a very cheap way of creating images and a very like quick and yeah I don't know i just I found that from a young age I think yeah yeah getting to the thing quickly like you say spoon I know what you're doing but then as your work shows is like you're interested in changing our relationship to that word though right so um is a bit more Playful. Do you?
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe not playful, but you know, the kind of immediacy that you're describing, right? Like I say spoon, you know what I mean, which is quicker and easier than drawing a spoon, making it look like the spoon.
Speaker: But then when you get spoon as an image, one of your jobs in these poems is like kind of upending that a little bit. Yeah, but it'd be the same in art. Mm hmm. I put a spoon in something it's got to be like a it's got to be there's like utility in that yeah and I think um it's is it's magic isn't it and then you can see it is magic do you have any recommendations on like books or essays about writing that you go back to or give to people I have like a person.
Speaker: um I think CA Conrad. He's probably come up before when you've asked this question, maybe. There's the boomerang book, the way CA talks about the longevity of your practice um and how you kind of sustain it and how you can create rituals around and diversions, I suppose, for like, I think they call them like interruptions or something or like where you have even like both praise and criticism kind of
Speaker: can impede the work because you suddenly become kind of like ah self-aware and that's like kills, kills the kind of curiosity of what you're doing. And yeah, I don't know. I think that,
Speaker: workshops by CA or like any kind of like conversation material you can find or like just anything they say I just find I find so useful in terms of like practice and ritual and one of the suggestions they gave was to like stand on salt and like ah put your feet in salt water think about the thing that's like stopping you from writing and like clench your feet hmm And then release your feet and then clench your feet and then release your feet. And that's like, and the salt is meant to help kind of draw out the thing that's kind of, i don't know. It's like, I mean, I do think writing, I mean, it sounds kind of like whether you would be into putting your feet into salt, but I think there's something and writing, I think works operates on a kind of like energetic force anyway. So like, why not see what you can do with your body? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Get it into a different, more like at ease state. Yeah. I think, I think Conrad is great on, yeah. Writing as an embodied practice, not as an intellectual practice. And like, you know, just wear this color for a week for seven days, like the same color and then write about that and like find the crystal that is that color. And then. Yeah. Like look after a crow. Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know. Just great suggestions about how to entertain yourself. I think. yeah I mean, so you've given us like loads of reading recommendations today, but like I ask everyone at the end, like what books you might recommend as well as the things you've said today. Are there anything, is there anything else that you want to thrust into readers' hands?
Speaker: Yes, I would say. An account of the decline of the great orc according to the one who saw it. That's a great title. That is a great title. I know this book.
Speaker: um And I'm looking at my bookshelf. Lily is Crying. Matthew Rice Plastic. Very good. Very, very good. I love that book. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Anything by Rachel Allen and obviously God Complex by Rachel Allen is an incredible, incredible book. And yeah, I think there's letters between like Virginia Woolf and Vida Zachary West are like really underrated. Like they're really, I don't get why everyone's not talking about them all the time. they're amazing And also like, I think reading really, really old stuff is really helpful. Like I recently was reading the Tibetan book of the dead.
Speaker: Now was really good. That was like crazy ideas in that. Yeah. about lights when you die, all these weird lights that you have to go towards. But yeah, ultimately, I think Kavida Sackville-West is better. Great.
Speaker: Have you read it? No, I don't think I have. I've probably maybe... Also read manuals, actually. like I really enjoyed... What is it? It's like ah the handbook of the... like land Landscaping handbooks are really good. Okay. like Any kind of like leaflets about ecology. Yeah.
Speaker: are really and like landscaping and like things to do with like when when you can find something that goes into like the minutiae of like technical language is like really really good also listen to people lecturing about like the google weather
Speaker: Has like a, there's like ah they're going to fire a fleet of autonomous water vehicles across the Atlantic. Okay. um I listened to some lectures about that. I don't know. I just think learning, like learning a kind of like a kind of lateral way into language through kind of like niche pockets of YouTube is really good.
Speaker: Hmm. type of reading yeah yeah or listening yeah oh a really good book sorry i'm gonna stop it it's another one oh my god it's a book about measure measuring because it's written by james vincent who is an amazing amazing um reader and has written this book a while ago let me find a beyond measure by james vincent it's crazy it's about the history of measurement Okay. it's Like how clocks began.
Speaker: Very cool. Great. And also you can get it on audio books so you can actually hear James read and he's very good reader. Okay. Right. I mean, you can move from measurement to Sackville West to the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Speaker: To plastic. Like, yeah, you've covered the entirety of like, yeah, civilization. guessing Yeah. I think, I mean, yeah, eclectic reading is really, it's really good. Yeah. I think I'd always agree and recommend like, yeah, like weird corners. Yeah.
Speaker: Wherever you can find them. yeah i love that weird corners that's the title the episode and you know i feel like some people read really like they like go into like a specific like you know they're very like yeah prescribed reading which is good also no no yeah i read widely read weirdly we love it um eve thank you so much your time today i really really appreciate it this was great thank you chris thanks for having me Thank you for listening to this episode. If you want more poetry episodes, maybe go back to episode 33 with Oluwushan, or episode 15 with Jane Yeh. Both are amazing and would connect well with this episode, I think.
Speaker: Please subscribe if you haven't already. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or on YouTube and share with people in all the places. Please follow the show and me on Instagram. Tag me in any post of episode you like.
Speaker: And if you can, please out the feedback form. Also, please do send in your questions for the Christmas book buying holiday special that I will drop at the beginning of December. Please send in your questions. You can do that via a DM, just as text or as a voice memo. I'd love a voice memo. We can play it in the episode. and my panel of esteemed literary folk will reply to your questions.
Speaker: This show is made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of Hertfordshire.
