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 talked to Tizha Jin about her novel Safe Spaces, published this September from Granta.
Speaker: Tijer is an interdisciplinary artist and author from North London. Her debut novel, Keeping the House, received a Somerset Maugham Award and a London Writers Award, was the Guardian Book of the Year and was shortlisted for a British Book Award and the Desmond Elliott Prize, among other accolades.
Speaker: Her work has been published and commissioned by Granter, London Magazine, Somerset House, Mont Blanc, Cartier and more. Tijer lives between North London and North Cyprus. Welcome. So nice to see you.
Speaker: Thank you for having me. i'm so happy to see you. Of course. um This is very exciting. I love the book. I've got my proof here. Although the cover is like so nice. I'm now like, ah I need to get like the actual cover. I try to get my nails to match the cover of the film. Yes.
Speaker: It's really a beautiful photograph as well. Thank you. I imagine it like somebody looking at at their own mind. and it's Kind of unveiled in front of them. But then Tom Willis, a friend of mine, said that it also reminds him of a sort of spectral character kind of floating in front of the narrator.
Speaker: Yeah, it's really beautiful. Great cover. i mean, I know they say don't judge covers, but like I do all the time. Thank you. I think it's important in the, in the choices that are made are so political that, you know, of course we're always going to judge them and, and have an impression.
Speaker: the first cover was, um, from a different designer and I felt maybe that it needed and us to go in and do a bit more image research just to get like something that was very particular story involved.
Speaker: And so Rafi Ramayar came on and she hired an image research and and we found this one. It's great. Go find it in the world, people. It's out now in hardback. We're recording it just as the book came out, but you're hearing this like a couple of weeks later.
Speaker: Before we talk about the book, I ask everyone how you feel about close reading, what your relationship is to twitter it as an activity. i I love to read poetry quite often and I think maybe there's something inherent within um how how we read poetry that asks us to consider the syllable, the word, the line.
Speaker: And that means that I end up reading prose a little bit more slowly, perhaps, um with the same type of consideration and the same goes to nonfiction onwards. um But I was always, i'm even outside of reading, I've been a close listener, I will listen to a song and then want to work out where the gem clusters are within it and seems like they're trying to get through and work it out.
Speaker: Always unpacking lyrics and... I think for me closed reading feels like um allowing yourself to consider the the weight of a line that exists under lots of different layers and not walk away from it without taking all of that with because then five pages later that will come in and you'll need that. um And i feel I hate to miss out on things, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, and this book, like there's definitely like reverberations back and forth, right? Of like picking up ideas from one one part of the book to the other. So I think, yeah, close reading is carrying stuff with you. It's like a really nice nice way of thinking about that.
Speaker: We're going to look at passage from like midway through the book. It's like on page 93 of my edition anyway. But before we do that, do you want to say anything about Safe Spaces as a novel? Is there anything? you want to just tell us a little bit about it?
Speaker: Safe Spaces novel that follows an unnamed narrator who is witness to and part of a lot of different um communities that make them feel both safe and unsafe.
Speaker: But I wanted to kind of show you how someone might turn to their mind and look after it through... existing in in numerous environments and knowing that the main through line through all of that is themselves how do we return to an ability to self-soothe and reorient ourselves no matter what the circumstances are that face us and especially in a in a world where there are many bureaucratic systems at work that literally control how you do your day to day is that i guess ah a book about agency a book about creative independence and being able to live in your love and not let the world at large numb you.
Speaker: Which is big. yeah but that That's like a, that's a difficult practice, huh? And the book is kind of like broken into these different parts that kind of shift. Some do look like prose, some do look like poetry, right?
Speaker: I love also that it's not end justified. i don't know if this is a you choice or a Granta choice, but like, I want to talk about that. Supported by Granta as well. I really love working with ah the entire grant team but by the time we got to typesetting with christine and hamish so much of how we were working out which poems should be justified in which way um came down to pen and paper and i was drawing out exactly how things should look exactly where words should bend um
Speaker: And that's the same with keeping the house. I did that with the the team there too, made some coriander curly in keeping the house and things like this. And ah but literally the word coriander was like curly.
Speaker: And then in safe spaces, I wanted like, it came to an extent where, for example, there's a poem called I'm ah Only Local in the book, and or Only Local.
Speaker: And I wanted the proximity of the words to each other sometimes to feel like people pressing up on you in a like a very like highly localized setting, like i'm bumping elbows with somebody in an off license. So I think sometimes a proximity and shape of the words and stanzas felt for me to be um offerings towards physical space.
Speaker: i Yeah, i'm really interested in gaps too and I see them as normal, you know. I feel like we're past that point in poetry where making those kind of non-standardised decisions are rare.
Speaker: And because of that, it means there's a language palette that I would hope we're we're already speaking in. So it means I can then use that tool to get across the meaning that I want um quite quickly.
Speaker: and I do feel that i feel really understood by by readers, which is great. And i think going with publishers like Andover Stories, Granter, you are given a sense of freedom. with your creative choice making and you're also pushed to be the best writer that you can be. That's what I'm always interested in as a writer.
Speaker: and i think for that, i i don't like the idea that you would need to exist within one particular canon writing in one particular way. Yeah, it's exciting. And yeah, you're right in a way, like we should be in this new place of like read of people expecting stuff. But this book very quickly, you know, it's called a novel.
Speaker: And then very quickly, the page does things, right? Like you don't get as many pages without stuff starting to shift. And i was kind of like, oh, okay. Like, you know, you want to offset us a little bit or you want to play with those boundaries quite early on. and You kind of train us how to read it in a sense.
Speaker: And one of the things, I mean, I didn't pick one of these extracts, but now I kind of wish I had that some of them have like a second person you voice, right? The one we're going to talk about today is the first person I voice, but some of them are the you And what I love in the book is that like you clarify the you each time. And sometimes those yous are like, for example, one of them is like the you is still him, right? So the you of the passage is like clearly this person that the narrator is talking to, but... Sometimes the you is like, the you is sweet love, the subject of my last hope. And i'm like, okay. And then some of the yous are more poetic.
Speaker: I don't know. It's just like a really interesting way of thinking that second person, which, you know, is having a kind of renaissance of sorts, right? Like through Claudia Rankine and other people and the kind of capaciousness of the way people are using the you voice. I just thought it was very interesting and fun to like clarify that you each time. But sometimes that clarification is as slippery as the use of the you itself.
Speaker: Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be read by you. And it feels like it's such a you know big gift to be able to um experiment in those ways and then not find people who who are up for enjoying it.
Speaker: i I did notice that this kind of um upswell in the second person being used in a lot of contemporary literature, like Caleb Zuma Nelson's Open Water,
Speaker: Love that book. Me too. And I love the tenderness of it. And I just i suppose I wanted to carry on that conversation and think about the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we tell, and who we're telling them to. But to consider a mind that is mercurial is also to think about the way that those...
Speaker: here the way that the distractions or the kind of fascinations or obsessions or longings of of someone's mind might shift according to the perspective. And it felt like a really important through line to have throughout the whole book because it also re-situates when we do land back on the eye as well, I think. And um that was really important to me because every time there's micro movement in the text,
Speaker: I not only would like the reader to feel that shift in atmosphere, but I also want to play with how they might feel it. And um when you're talking about how um sometimes those positionings can be equally slippery, and that's an area that i love to and love to play in because it calls me back to, rap you know, of course, our late friend Boyega or Dipanjohi. really inspired me in his book, Auntie Uncle Poems. He has this kind of cast list of aunties and uncles in the book. And with Keeping the House, I remember I rang him up and I told him how Max Porter, my editor, had asked me to have a cast list at the start of the book.
Speaker: And I said, oh boy, I still want it to feel slippery. I want to like i would have a little bubble with that. um And ah i basically ended up writing it like an EastEnders cast. And every character's name would be introduced by something that tells us something about the character. But I didn't want to write a class list that helped the reader for the rest of the book know who was who. So some of those things were equally mysterious or never once again considered in the entire text. um But it was my way of speaking towards that push that writers are are often given to clarify and yeahp
Speaker: make things easier. i think that contemporary writers are told to make things easier more so than the writers that we have before us. and You know, and the writers that have prevailed in history are people that have always experimented. So then moving through to Safe Space is of course my second book speaks and carries on that thing. um People were saying to me, why have you got this shift in second person within the line? Sometimes a few paragraphs after you shift it again, but it's in the same chapter. And i was like, well, I like it. And it needs to it needs to happen. There's a moment where the second person comes in and it's the self talking to self. I'm so proud of you. And it comes through in the middle of this kind of yeah deluge of of ah hard and hard and difficult memories. and
Speaker: I used that to kind of show that that we can self-serve in the middle of all of these clashing timelines, perspectives, and voicings and speakings, know. Yeah, that kind of desire for ease or simplicity or, you know, like I want to be located on the page, like the reader needs to be located. And it's like, when does anyone ever feel located in their daily life? Like from minute to minute, right? There are times when you're like, Oh, God, what am I doing? Where am i Who am i To be able to formalize that in some way through the language is like really exciting, I think. And people will go along with it right if you're confused for a few lines about who the you is that's okay sometimes yeah like i feel that when i'm out and about or i'm in a club or i'm in a shop or you know or i'm talking to someone i think i know i don't know but being able to play with that through language is a great thing and yes listeners if you haven't read boyega's work please just go do that now auntie uncle poems case
Speaker: ah What a joy of a little pamphlet that is. Like, I love that. Yeah, we could talk about him all day. and it's But if you haven't read Adam, please go buy Adam now. If you haven't read Auntie Uncle poems, go read that now.
Speaker: Okay, the bit we're going to talk about today is called Studio with Ash, or is at least the first part of Studio with Ash. um And it's for listeners, if you're not reading along, this is like one kind of long paragraph, right? Or one kind of long piece. um So I'd love to hear you read it. And then we can we can start talking about it.
Speaker: So I'm going to read Studio with Ash, page 93 from Safe Spaces. The club last night was not my safe space. Oversubscribed and crowded, only an illusion.
Speaker: Barriers hurt my ribs as a TikTok crowd mixed with us and pushed and pushed in. I knew before I walked in that shouldn't have been alone. It isn't the same atmosphere anymore. People dance with a person that half the room thinks is an abuser and the other half thinks is an opportunity.
Speaker: There are no community lines. I wish I'd gone home with my girls in the cab after Shisha, but then maybe I just wish they'd have pulled up with me for a bit. Though this isn't the place for them still. The person programming the night from its early days had to leave because fame is sustainability for a movement, but it's also the final kiss.
Speaker: No one considered we were purposefully out of the way, our seeds and cultures out of sight. Movement's so private they can't be written about in a roundup. a door you can walk through, a refuge from the refuge.
Speaker: But the first time I went, it'd been my haven. I ah danced as I looked at the DJ. I made a song about it. The music video was replays of the dance. A girl in a netted vest and fairy wings took my hand and told me I should come with her and her friends. At one point, three of them were catching a wind together.
Speaker: A wept by KG came on and I moved besides them while they moved too. Anemones that caught the beat moving left to right. Lock drums quicker than an a 808 Music head on a sound system Got catch that Garmin waste Queer sun, foot through a bit of weight The sky of the club shakes with sweat A mirage of light that talks to me for so long That by the time I look around again The dancers, the chain shapes and the three have left My ankle hurt from footwork and enthusiasm. I got to the bathrooms to take a minute and there I saw an old friend. I kissed her in the toilets and she was just like Jessica Rabbit.
Speaker: I'm a big believer in nightclub kisses. She reminded me of a woman I used to date would pick me up in her car and we'd drive through Krispy Kreme. That was then, this time though, on the way home. i saw a fox walking on the platform at Hackney Marsh's. And it was so silver, I wanted to follow it home.
Speaker: and that was my highlight. Thank you so much. And you definitely get a sense as you're reading there. And you get it on the page too, because lots of the sections that I said are kind of broken up. There's lots of different kind of formatting things. But then every now and again, you give us this like dense block of text, right? The lines roll into one another in a way that is like evoking the narrator's thoughts, right? And experiences, but also in this one, like that experience of the club too, right? The kind of like mishmash of people and sounds and kind of bodies. So I really think even as you read it there, the kind of the lines rolling into one another feels, yeah, like that that fullness, that oversubscribed and crowded of the club, which sometimes feels good, right? Like as in the memory and sometimes as in the beginning of here, like the club last night was not my safe space. Yeah. like only an illusion, that kind of density, that thickness is sometimes so enervating and sometimes it just feels too much. So I really like the the way that this kind of comes out as a rush.
Speaker: Did you write it as like a rush? Do you remember writing this bit? I do. Um, In a way, this is one of the set pieces that I spent a lot of time thinking about.
Speaker: I wrote it in a stream, but then I kept going back and knitting new moments into it because what I was trying to do a lot was like, and and throughout safe spaces, you'll notice these moments where I toy with time and things like that meshing that you're speaking about. And for this particular sequence, I really did want to land that quite alienating feeling of like maybe you finally finding your community, finally finding your safe space. And then it shifts, capitalism might come in and um rock up your favorite queer club unless you can't go. Or you've got friends that you're good with, but they're not coming with you to the club because they're not gay and you are. And I just, I don't know, I feel like there's a very particular experience of feeling like you can't have all of the things that make you feel good and safe in one moment and in one place in time.
Speaker: And how can we reconcile that? you know Yeah, I feel that one. And like what's even what's interesting is like the narrator says, like, I knew before I walked in that I shouldn't have been alone, is in the same atmosphere anymore. Like that idea of like finding oneself in a scenario that, you know, it's not the one.
Speaker: Yet you're still there, right? I don't know. That feeling is like, there's quite a lot of that in this book too. of Just like, wait, I'm in this thing. i don't actually want this thing. Now, how do I extract myself? Or what does it mean that I'm in it?
Speaker: ah Yeah, I don't know. just Even just the club is not my safe space. Even just like naming that phrase, which calling a book that title is like quite interesting, right? like because Because the narrator seems to find some places that are safe, but then also is like, what is safety?
Speaker: You know, safety for whom, in what ways, is it totalized safety, et cetera, et cetera. So even here, right, like a queer club, safe, kind of, because there are people in here who aren't my people at all.
Speaker: So now I'm not safe, right? So I don't know, like really interesting, the idea of like safety in what context? And honestly, like in my personal, in my career, like, you know, like the community projects that I run and things like this, I have a safer spaces policy that I, you know, worked with people from Gallup, um Helen from Gallup and a lot of different organisations to develop that safer spaces policy. You know, we've had occasions where um people have come forward and um harassed people on my line-up. So I've experienced occasions where um I often work with transgender artists and, you know,
Speaker: the most doxing that we'll get will be when I work with with artists from who who are experiencing transphobia and and other forms of hatred.
Speaker: And um I never, ever will promise a safe space to anyone. What I will promise is I will do my best to make you feel safe. but And we'll have plans in place for when things go left and sideways.
Speaker: um The original title of Safe Spaces, it was always going to be Safe Spaces, but I was wondering if I should put like a tiny little question mark with the typography at the end, a little ghost of that. But then we were feeling that maybe it would just be a bit too obvious because through reading it, I hope that it comes across that we're querying that and then there's a kind of intimacy then between you and i me writing and you reading where you see that we've kind of come to a similar conclusion that maybe it's not quite so easy to feel resourced in those ways yeah I'm really interested in finances and and the economy in terms of safety.
Speaker: I think that's a huge, that the commodification of of queer culture, for example. I just find it really tricky because we, as ah think any community that that is less resourced, we'll need to take money for things and we'll need to like DJ on a lineup for a club that's really huge. But then it means that the art making that we want to be around can sometimes feel a little bit fraught, like you're you're longing to see the singer who makes you feel super seen, but you're literally getting shoved out of the way by somebody just wants to post it on social media the next day. um
Speaker: i used to wonder if this is like maybe me kind of separating myself across different generations of like hypervisibility or technology usage and things like this. and I'm interested in quietness. I think i think we all need a bit of peace and we need peace on the dance floor too we need to feel protected and um if we want to be invisible on a dance floor we should be able to be we shouldn't you know if we we don't we shouldn't be outed by somebody photographing you you know you should be able to have a cheeky kiss in a club toilet threaten not to go beyond that do you know i mean these ah life is about what's happening within you and
Speaker: with the people that well you're happening with, I think it's not supposed to be surveilled. And that presentness, I mean, I'm a big believer in nightclub kisses is a great line.
Speaker: I'm just like, I'm a big believer in, I don't know, it's just like, it's a funny like way of phrasing it. Like, I don't know, you're like, I'm a big believer in Like so being honest and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. It's like, I'm a big believer in nightclub kisses. you're like, yeah, okay. They're very, very important things. Yeah, yeah. It's just like the most important. And I mean, it's nice that there's like these glimmers of joy in these sections.
Speaker: Because sometimes it's like, oh yeah, like people dance with a person that half the room think is an abuser and the other half think is an opportunity. There are no community lines. Like there are no community lines as difficult, right? Like how do I fit? Where do I fit? Who is protecting whom? And also the room is split into two.
Speaker: I don't know, the unsafeness of that. And I wish I'd gone home with my girls in the cab after she should, but then maybe I wish they just pulled out with me for a bit. And what's interesting is though this isn't a place for them, comma, still.
Speaker: I love that comma, still. Not though this isn't still a place for them or or just though this isn't a place for them, full stop. I think the comma still is like, oh, it's like a little sting in the tail of the sentence, right? Like this isn't a place for them is one thing, but this isn't a place for them still is more of a sting, right? After that comma that, you know, things haven't changed.
Speaker: This still isn't somewhere they can be too. And it's so hard because I think often hetero cultures can feel quite unaccommodating and it's not necessarily that, I think, I don't think the narrator necessarily wants all of their straight mates to join them in the club, but do think they really want to feel understood by their straight people around them. And they want to, think the narrator in the book's constantly trying to find ways to feel understood and really struggling to,
Speaker: get around the fact that maybe they're just a ah strange person. um I'm into the idea of like unlikeable narrators and I think maybe some of the spikes of ego and things like this. I love that in the narrator and I love, i love when they come out with their bullshit, you know, I'm a big believer in that club kisses. Um,
Speaker: But we know, right, that any sort of like confidences or like um of those sorts of jolts of energy and can be so misread and in society. it can be seen as like an unnecessary flamboyance. And it's like, oh, that's necessary to who and to what, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, and what's interesting about that in this section is, you know, it begins with the club being not the place they want to be, really. But then there's the turn, the like, but the first time I went, it had been my haven.
Speaker: I danced as I looked at the DJ. i made a song about it. The music video was replays of the dance. And got these very, like, declarative little sentences, right? There's been lots beforehand that have been quite long and kind of flowing sentences to these really quick, short ones.
Speaker: So we've got a memory embedded within this story. And then what I only noticed as you were reading it, there's another memory later on, right? Like the woman that is kissed reminded me of a woman I used to date, right? So it's like a memory within the memory, which is really funny too, that, I don't know, i just like that idea of the space, the club evoking these other pasts, right? These other the parts of the narrator, or these other parts of the person that's in it.
Speaker: that actually then does become safer, right? There's something about evoking those, this used to be this place and it did this thing for me. I don't know. there's a There's a safety in the memory, which is also a useful safety sometimes.
Speaker: I'm so, so happy you said that. I do, i I personally really, want to emphasize that always because i think i feel like in your mind recess of your mind in the front of your mind there's always a room that you can go to and if you could do that consciously um i guess maybe that kind of thread between feeling good about your brain and maybe feeling a bit out of touch with it is is whether that happened those like jolts jolts happen too quickly and too fast to throw you out of being in the present ever. But if you can be somewhat more appreciative of like of the little signals that happen in life that do allow those glimmers of good memory to come through, i think that those those should have as much of a platform in your mind as the many ways that we might be thrown back into something unpleasant in a memory. And um I think that we're often searching with...
Speaker: when we're talking about something or wondering why why this felt that way, why have I fallen in love with this person? and it's like, well, actually, I don't think I've fallen in love with this person. I think I've fell in love with the fact that they smell like vanilla and it reminds me of this particular moment and it's like the last time I felt safe. And I often think that a lot of our feelings of love come from our feelings of safety.
Speaker: Those moments when we do feel like, okay, this is feeling safe for me right now. Maybe often people think that they're searching for love, but they're they're searching for that kind of, that soothe and calm of safety.
Speaker: Haven, right, is the word going to use. Like, it'd be my haven, like that sense of, yeah, here I can just be, right? And... you know that can lay in my heart yeah exactly like dancing with the girl the netted vest and the fairy wings and then and then that's where like the the language suddenly like takes off a little bit right at one point the three of them were catching a wine together wet by kajeen came on i moved beside them while they moved two anemones that caught the beat moving together left to right log drum like the senses then start to evoke
Speaker: The dancing, the music, right, we're starting to sway to. Music head on a sound system, got to catch that. Gum and Waste, Queer sun thought, thought, thought, a bit of bait. Queer Sun, thought, thought, thought, thought the rhythm is changing right the sky of the club shakes with sweat and mirage of light that take the talks to me for so long like it's the memory is so embodied by the narrator but also by the by the language too that that's really joyous i'm like oh yeah i know i know that feeling I think um something something about you, the way that you read that just now makes me feel of like just writing as an act of memory making, right? And we as the reader always exist outside of their present moment. and
Speaker: But we're also making our own cinema role in our mind, right? And it's this id like you're saying, eliciting all of these feelings and thoughts that you've been through your experiences. And I do think maybe as...
Speaker: As a writer, I'm trying to reach a sense of that comment common commonality. It's such an empathetic act. and With Queer Sun, Foto, a bit of bait, that's like maybe in my mind a sentence that's that's really key for our understanding of the narrator. and It's kind of wedged in amongst this deluge that's happening.
Speaker: All of these like colour washings of experience, but then this comes up and you could miss it. But it's the same way that someone might miss this within themselves. Because I also feel that the narrator is um trying to work out their gender identity throughout the book. And we're seeing, and maybe this is how they feel. um So i wanted it to feel like queer son, but a bit of both.
Speaker: But I didn't want to say a bit of both. I want us to kind of feel this hinge through the use of the word bait that there's another underlying thing. they can be both, it's a bit obvious, but it's also like I'm bringing you, I'm attracted to this thing, um there's something ahead of me that I want to reach, I'm i'm the fish going after my sense of self.
Speaker: I don't know, that that feeds into like the sky of the club, right? Like the idea that the club having its own sky, right? The ceiling and then a mirage of light and then the dances of change shape and the three have left, right? Like the people have swapped. But this idea of like change and mirage and image...
Speaker: Like that's as much about the place and the memory of the place as much as like their sense of self as well. Whereas a narrator, i just love my uncle hurt from the footwork enthusiasm. Great.
Speaker: And then kiss the friend. I kissed her in the toilets and she was dressed like Jessica Rabbit. Like even that and right. Like I could easily expect someone else, right. It's like I kissed her in the toilets because she was dressed or like, but she was dressed or I just think it's like, and she was dressed like Jessica Rabbit. Like you think the Jessica Rabbit thing is going to be I don't know, like a rationale or something, right? Always going to make sense of the person about why they're kissing them. It's just like, I kissed her.
Speaker: And also she looked like this. And then it moves on. i don't know. It's just those little punctures of like flashes of imagery and moment that you do get from a night out, right? You're like, I kissed this person and Dolly Parton was singing. And they that they're connected, but they just, they're not explaining one another. They just are there. I just, yeah, I like this. And she was dressed like Jessica Rabbit.
Speaker: It's that hard thing, isn't it, where we try to, the day after any happening, anything, the way that your brain sorts it is always, it's up to your brain. Yeah. um But then it means that when you're retelling and the told story, is it becomes, becomes,
Speaker: implicated in whichever way your mind has chosen to store all of those thoughts and what then gets relayed i don't think this is a case of like unreliable versus reliable narrator i think that it is um this is the world that this narrator is revealing to you and then you're you're here on this journey you're inside something that is um deeply private and what does that mean i consider it something that maybe implicates the reader it a little bit more as well Yeah, and the fact that she reminded me of a woman I used to date who would pick me up in her car and we'd drive through Krispy Kreme.
Speaker: That was then. This time though, like that like that sudden kind of fall back down to earth, you know, ah both in the the recollection of the night and and in this memory or this kind of like evocation of the place.
Speaker: I saw a fox walking on the platform at Hockney Marshes and it was so silver, that I wanted to follow it home. And that was my highlight. I think that that clause on the end and that was my highlight is also interesting.
Speaker: Like that could easily be at the beginning of the sentence, right? The highlight of my night was on the way home, I saw a fox. But it's like you described the whole line. And then it was like, and that was my highlight. I don't know, there's something, i guess you do that a couple, of that's like with the still right after the comma earlier on. There's quite a few places in this book where you add a little thought on at the end of the clause that is like quiet, but it's actually the thing. Do you know what I I don't know if that makes sense.
Speaker: Thank you. I like Easter eggs. I really love to flower books with move the book. You know, like when the when the title of a film is announced for the first time. yeah Like this. And I want us to feel when we're reading safe spaces that we're catching up with the author's hand as well a little bit because the author is is writing the narrator and um I've got it sounds to come to like I'm talking about myself in third person but and I guess me i'm I'm very much wanting to delay the way the narrator is is getting through to us and and be like oh and now pay attention to this because they haven't clocked this thing but maybe you the reader can um if I put this comma here or if i if i hinge this this here
Speaker: And this is how they're thinking of it in our mind. But when it's literally become when it becomes punctuated and becomes words on a page, we are seeing something in their mind that they haven't yet been privy to because they haven't done that same journaling or meditation just yet or in that particular line yeah um and i suppose that's just like an ongoing conversation that's happening where i feel a responsibility towards my characters to use the act of writing to honor them and their arrival their each and every arrival on this occasion like
Speaker: with the, and that was my highlight. If I'm thinking of this narrator, I'm thinking of maybe they, they're not sure why that's their highlight either. And they're not sure what that's, what that's pointing towards in themselves and what they need.
Speaker: And this is a book where they're, they're looking for their, what they need continually. Yeah, that's like that needs to come at the end of the sentence because it's like, oh, I'm realizing this, but I can't tell you any more information about that. Right. I can't join any more dots for you. It's like I'll describe the thing. Yeah, that was my highlight, actually.
Speaker: and then that bit ends. Right. And then we move to another little part. And yeah, I think that like delayed knowledge or delayed experience. That's like a really interesting so really interesting idea, especially after like a night out where you're like desperate to make meaning out something or like narrated.
Speaker: And, you know, queer time and queer time in itself being something that's, i you know, an experience that is delayed due to all of the different, like, discoveries that happening within queerness. and And I think this book's looking at spectral time as as a concept. And I think within within the spectral time, there's, like, grief time, neurodivergence, trauma time, and queer time. So it's just, like, all of these different, like,
Speaker: things and how they how they interrelate as well yeah and how you might even put that into language is like very hard uh but yeah no I'm thinking of Catherine Bond Stockton's book The Queer Child i don't know if you know that one um she writes a lot in there about like yeah delay right and the spectral like growing sideways not upwards like is a really good description of this book Thank you. And because, i ah you know, the narrator in this book is like late twenty s um It's not, ah I wouldn't consider it a coming of age book, but I think maybe...
Speaker: um people might read it and think that what they're reading feels like somebody younger but it's just not there's someone in their late 20s and um I think you could write the same I could have given them the age of like 39 59 and I think I think they'd still be doing what they were doing it's just about what what's happening around them in those moments of their life Yeah, that particular context.
Speaker: Yeah, this is great. Hopefully readers, this is making you want to go buy the book immediately. So go do that. i want to ask you some broader questions. Do you have a a writing practice?
Speaker: ah Whatever that means to you Does it change depending on what genre you're writing in? But yeah, do you write by hand, computers? Yeah, what is your what is your vibe? i I try to split up my different...
Speaker: mediums of writing across one project and then smush them together usually. um So if we're looking at a lot of larger projects like safe spaces or keeping the house, some of it was in notebooks, some of it was um originally made as songs, um some originally made as films, and then what I do is I lift it back into the master project.
Speaker: But I know that it's all part of my writing. It's all iss all the writing world. And then I just draw draw that all back in. For me, I feel that it's helpful for getting an honest rhythm in the text um for those worlds. So so like, for example, with Keeping the House, um I wanted wink at a kind of journalistic mode sometimes. And so I would literally go and interview people. and then fictionalise those interviews and put it into the book. So that's something that I'm really into as a writer. It's part of my writing process.
Speaker: I love being cosy while I'm writing. have to be in a kind of loose waistband situation, have to be warm, have to have a nice little like cup of tea or something with me. If I'm not comfortable, it's just not gonna happen. I'm just not gonna do it. Because why? What for? like ah I life is meant to be pleasurable as much as possible. You should look after yourself.
Speaker: I like to do a little exit exercise whenever I'm finishing writing i writing sessions. Usually i'll I'll do like literally a safer spaces exercise and I'll go to my safe space in my brain just to kind of let go of whatever I've been doing and come away.
Speaker: i I think it's really important to have an in and have an out. Super, super important. And when I'm doing writing workshops with people, that's always what I do. I always like give them an in and give them an out. We start off with a meditation, a free write, and then at the end, we go back into it and come out with what we've been doing, just so we can let it go. Because I think spending any sort time with...
Speaker: Expression as a mode, it needs a gentle hold. Another really big and huge part of my writing practice is like intake, downloading periods, of course, uploading. And then before I can then upload, I can't remember whose piece of advice that was the download and the upload, but I do that a lot. like i When I sit down to and write an essay, I'll have six books that I've chosen that I feel will speak to the essay and I'll pull from them closely as I'm writing.
Speaker: And then any extra things that come in will feel like where I've noticed gaps, but the the bricks and mortar of the essay will come from me walking into... I've got like a gazillion books at the moment and there's some that I haven't had a chance to read.
Speaker: And that will be the moment that I start to read them. will just feel like a connection to the book that's in my reading power and I'll pull five out and then I'll sit with them and then the essay will come from those. i'm i'm At the moment, I'm writing essays a lot.
Speaker: um I've got enough for an essay collection and I'm really, really grateful for that part of my writing life. I think it's It's been super comforting after writing Safe Spaces and in and amongst all of the poetry I've been writing the last couple of years.
Speaker: ah think that that's maybe an offering that I'd always want to share, which is just that you can and clean your mind up a little bit by moving across to a different type of writing. It can really help.
Speaker: I find the switch always hard. But yeah, I think thinking about it as like you know, like a refresh or like at just a moving your brain into a slightly different track can help in both regards, right? It can help you go back to the other kind of work.
Speaker: Do you have an early memory of writing? I do have an early memory of writing. had diary that my mum gave me when i was like four. i think I wrote like four pages in it and then I forgot it. um but When I say diary, it just would be like, my name is Tizia.
Speaker: I love ketchup. yeah and um But I think those things are really important because maybe I just feel lucky that I've um been kind of given a these really super vital moments in my life where people said, how will pick up a pen?
Speaker: I used to go into my brother's bedroom. He had a computer in his room. And um while him and his friends would be like kind of goofing around, I would ask to go and sit there and write on his computer.
Speaker: And then when I'd finish writing, they'd read it and they'd be like, oh my god she's just been doing this while we've been like just you know hanging out um and it used to be really nice but i think it helped me to kind of not feel too shy about what i'm up to because i'm a really shy person you like as a like my personality i could easily ham it away and i think maybe just the fact that i write in and around ah my big family in a big quite densely saturated area of people as well i can I love writing in busy cathares.
Speaker: I suppose in terms of professional writing, my earliest professional writing experience would be, i started keeping the house when I was doing my post-grad at UCL. And at that point, I only wanted to be an academic. I didn't want to be a creative writer. Although I, My approach to academia is that is it is creative, it's totally creative. And I love that.
Speaker: But suddenly this novel started to kind of sit with me and I didn't have a opportunity to be able to write at home. I didn't have a computer. So I just would sit in the UCL libraries using the word online of my student account and just started writing, keeping the house like that. And I'd stay until they tucked me out and then I'd go back home.
Speaker: And at the time I was a carer and I was working three jobs. And I don't know, it just, it felt really important that when whenever I saw an opportunity to write that I would take it.
Speaker: So it meant that i i finished keeping the house quite young. And, you feel great for what changed my life. You talked a bit earlier about the kind of like landing in a work, like in a writing workshop, like the way in and the way out, which I think is useful in and of it itself. But are there any like tasks or activities or lessons that you do in those workshops that you might share here that listeners might think about?
Speaker: So i like to scan, ah this is you know this is also therapy speak, um I was taught this in therapy, youll just like scan your room around you, do 543T1 and I put it in safe spaces as well.
Speaker: Because you know five things you can see, four things you can smell, free you can hear, two you can touch, one you can taste, the taste in your mouth. And just get yourself back into a very physical awareness of the room that you're in, because you're not in the room in the book, you're not in the room of the page.
Speaker: i I like listening to binaural music as well. and I think, don't know, I just, I feel like having your comfort songs, your comfort playlists are really important. When I was on the way to ah a reading yesterday, i was feeling a bit nervous. So I just put on the Donkey Kong soundtrack and that really did the trick. um just I mean, we need to delight. We need delight. I always, always give myself a little um treat and before and after ah I write as well. So a little cake or a cup of tea with a biscuit, things like this, a stack of fruits.
Speaker: Yeah, i try I just try to kind of delight myself in and amongst the work, you know, yeah because it is work, it is labour. Yeah, love that. And I'm always pro treat before and after.
Speaker: some people my life are like, you get it after that you do the thing. I'm like, no, you get something before because you're going to do it and then you do and then you get something again. Yeah, exactly. We've got so much experience with some goodness. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Can you recommend any good books or essays on like writing practice? You call it craft if you like, but yeah, on on writing itself. Yes, definitely. um and And if you don't mind, I'll share a little quote from each of them as well, just so...
Speaker: so I was thinking about this before we started today. And this is a little bit of a ah jump away, but only because I think having some of my favourite essays and writing have not been explicitly about writing.
Speaker: And um I ah happen don't know if you've had a chance to read ah A Flat Place by Nari Masood. I think it's an essay on Observation. yeah slide of our presence in the world and what those shifts can be.
Speaker: And I really liked, there's a quote, why weren't we lying on our living room floors, watching dance of the dust today and every day? And I think there's like kind of quieter observations for me feel feel like maybe a way that we might consider writing like or what power might we take to note and observe something and what are we doing and what are we yet to do no i listeners go back to episode three where i talked to noreen about a flat place what a joyous
Speaker: I mean, joyous and like profound, so many other things, book. um And Noreen's like energy is so, yeah, like you just talk to her for two minutes and you suddenly are excited and everything that she's excited by. So, yeah, it is a book about place, but it's also about, yeah, understanding one's place in the world. So definitely go back to that one, listeners.
Speaker: And um there's a sequel, Coming to Times by Mona Arshad. Myna Archie is obviously like such a wonderful poet, but also one of my favourite essayists of all time. i think think her essays are just exquisite and lush and um very generous. so and So she said um and in in this one, one of the parts that stuck out to me is, when language fails, there's generally the place where poems begin to bloom sideways. and Misbehaving miscreants holding a mirror up to our own suffering.
Speaker: We've spoken a lot today about like the sideways, you know, with, and I think like, you know, thinking about queer time and that occasion, but also I guess with this essay, I think it is so nice to feel that maybe there's an aliveness to the poem, that it has its own feet and hands and wants to make itself known in your worlds. And you just got to let it dip it, you know?
Speaker: I really appreciate that and Mona's essay was looking at at grief and the poems that we reach for the words and the languages that we need and must articulate and um I think often when I'm thinking about writing it is writing your light way out of silence. And Semar Kyrgisuz is another really wonderful writer who um she's translated by Nicholas Glastonbury. He's great. um and And I really feel like i'm a super important um champion of which to translate it from Turkish as well.
Speaker: and she wrote an essay called A Language of Figs and it talks about articulating silence in a very similar way to Mona Arshi, the idea of suskunluk, to be silenced and what does it mean to not be able to talk and to say a thing as a thing, call a rod rod and I think it's a really beautiful essay. It starts off saying, like everyone, i too am made of language I remember how I came into being like it was yesterday as a single sentence head to toe.
Speaker: It's just so moving. And often when I'm reading essays on writing, I i do look for... the happenstance and the context that those people are writing within because I think it can also help help me to feel more a sense of possibility if I know that there are people that are doing it and doing it large so Marguerite to us so on writing of course ah the but the quote always go to is but and yeah it's just got this like really important insight into being alone right and how space designates who we reach and but also the ways that we're perceived if we reveal our writing and after you just come out of this hole of the total solitude that writing can be there with you within. um
Speaker: To be without the slightest subject for a book, the slightest idea for a book is to find yourself once again before a book, a vast emptiness, a possible book.
Speaker: And think Yeah, even got like going back to the i to like Noreen's book of flat place, I think there's so much of this thing about just standing back and having this thing before you. Yep. And being okay and sitting in that kind of...
Speaker: Yeah, I think it is that bit, right? It's like being okay with the the unknown or the not yet safe, right? To use that language or, you know, the possibility of it not being safe, but being like, i can I can be okay in this moment and and see what I do with that.
Speaker: But yeah, that quote is great. I love those recommendations. Great, great, great writers. Are there any other books or things that you want to recommend to people? Like new books, old books, anything you like?
Speaker: Yeah, I've got a little stack. Can I share them with you? Yeah, course you can. So i was wondering like what books I wanted to share. love this book. So these are my four books that I thought wanted to chat about today. Great. Meow, meow, meow. This is a proof. Ralph's going to get a cover on this soon.
Speaker: So firstly, um I'm actually going back to this book because I've read it like four times. um I'll go on by Hang Donggyan, translated by Emily Yeh-won.
Speaker: um I just feel like it's maybe one of the most, that the sentences are just so beautiful and exquisite and so I think I read it to refresh myself and what that feels like for me. something that I, it helps me also, I write a lot about space, physical space, um always have um keeping the house in safe spaces and I think a lot of my ongoing books will always have that as maybe the frame and I say that because of that book 3, 4, 5, it's kind of been planned. But there's a moment where it says, I settled down on the floor. It was a large space. There was room to spare. No wardrobe, no desk, no bed, no table, no fridge. Only the three of us. In a semi-basement that felt subterranean. The ceiling lofty, air cool, skin s smelling of moss, mushroom.
Speaker: We picked ourselves up from where we'd been lying on our bellies, played a game of open, unpacked boxes. There was no coherent method to our laying out items on the floor. And once all the books had been unpacked, there was nothing more for us to do. and this think yeah I just love the the way that she talks about um sparseness and and how um the imagination can then afford a family the ability to be be comfortable with that sparseness, how to kind of communicate through the lack.
Speaker: um So yeah, I've been enjoying coming back to that recently. I'm writing an essay at the moment that's kind of looking at at that subject matter. And I'm reading out there by William Kjohan.
Speaker: i'm looking I've been looking for some good nonfiction, tender nonfiction. And um he's written so beautifully about his experiences um as a transgender man who's like just experiencing the healthcare system, but also the the kind of being able to listen to himself through and through the book. And it has these like really exquisite moments where poems break up.
Speaker: The whole thing feels like a poem. But yeah, you'll have these like long run-on paragraphs, but then it will occasionally break up and um you'll come to like a kind of clean page where will say something like, I listen, they call me through time, I follow.
Speaker: What is the sound? Only a name. And then we'll go back into a sequence where he's talking about his dad and him. I've been struggling with nonfiction lately because I've found that um it's been difficult for me to find enough that feels tender and light touched.
Speaker: But this whole book does for me. I've been trying to get a proof of that for so long. So i have you? Yes. I do whatever it takes. Look, I try. i'm out here in these streets. You can meet on a corner. like yeah. yeah copies Yeah, it's just, I think it's going to be one of our great books, like, honestly. Mandisa Apana, The World's Darling. um This comes out next week. It's another proof, well, not proof, it's early copy that I've grabbed grabbed up. And I've learned this, actually, because, and I described it as ah a full moon cycle through the poet's inner sanctum.
Speaker: ah For me, um it's very rare for me to find poetry where, contemporary poetry where I think the poet the poet is being very honest about the precarity that they're existing in And really, it's rare to be able to kind of get through and have that opportunity to share your words and share space with um with the page because you know you're in and around life and it's too much and it's too fast and i think this whole book looks at that um yeah there's like moments where the um book will splinter into these sections that can be quite confronting um there's a kind of terrifying tarantula character that appears but then there will also be these like quieter moments um which will be really gentle
Speaker: Like for example, um a love a love song towards a daydream, what it might it look like to have a stable life, a partner, a home.
Speaker: And then also i think, because it to me it feels like a book of eco-criticism as well, it looks a lot like dankness and and moss and the things that can flower out of a world that's um already been a bit drained.
Speaker: This sounds like my kind of book. You you would love it. I'll read bit. You're describing all the things. ah I'll give you a little hello who of it yeah if if you have me. Yeah.
Speaker: The lake. I spent time there on earth too, you know. We were all tight as petals. Us, poles like dogs barking at any slipper shadow in the night.
Speaker: Or jellyfish, yeah. One big thing making big decisions like left right, we felt it all. The synaptic bliss of the rush hour sway chanting our bodies back and forth throughout the carriage. A real dumb hum, 5pm curiosity, never know strangers though.
Speaker: Our dreams were questing each other's every night, lapping against the hollow that wet years carved from us. There were no problems really, just that we'd all cut from the same hour our piece of okay until what was often lacked. was a frantic minute for a billion man catch up call where we'd lag until one of us died and got removed from the group chat.
Speaker: I'm in. Yeah, yeah, I'm happy that you're in. And then finally, as you've guessed, I read a lot of stuff at once, and but they were all giving different things for me and I need, this so I'm also reading this novel. I'm always reading like a novel, he's a piece of nonfiction and poetry, and then a book that I've read previously. and It helps me to, yeah yeah, think. People think I'm weird when I do this.
Speaker: and So there's just different bits of your reading brain, I think. I don't think, it doesn't feel like I've got four or five things on the go. I feel like they're using different yeah parts of you. yeah and But two Two Lovers by Ralph Webb.
Speaker: I think he's one of the most, the way that he uses like, super precise writing to then evoke like a kind of cloud spill of emotions really touches me. And I guess I could just draw your attention to um a moment The water rushed up the pedal pebble beach and the clouds on the horizon dispersed into mist's rain.
Speaker: Week on week I walked across the pebbles, stretches of sands. I followed to the tracks of cormorants, gulls dodging long strips of bladderwrack, their puckered air pockets like blistered skin.
Speaker: I found and pocketed pieces of green glass smoothed by the salt water shells slag in the shape of meteorites on calm days the water was tepid scummy it surfaced like a rubbish sheet opalescent with sewage I skipped stones and remembered the rumours about leakage from the decommissioned factories wondering about mutations and cancers I continued walking and beachcombing I continued yeah i just feel like um you can really feel that ralph is a poet in his prose and my favorite novels are the ones written by poets honestly it's um i don't know it just helps me to obviously so many of my favorite novels are not written by poets as well of course but i think um i'm feeling like something in particular is happening right now where
Speaker: we're all affording each other freedoms and it's helping that people are breaking out of the forms that they're used to. right and this is nothing new, you know, obviously with but james James Baldwin and writers like like him. um But it it feels like a I remember when I started out in the publishing industry about 12 years ago, that wasn't the case. didn't feel It didn't feel easy. It felt quite a cutthroat industry to kind of make it in.
Speaker: Yeah. like I like that, like giving each other freedom to just experiment, play, try, move between genre, say genre is not real. you know You know, all the, all the things.
Speaker: Tizia, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. No, thank you. It's been so, so lovely to, you know, get up close with, with literature. I think, yeah, something I long for. It can feel quite lonely if you can't chat about some, and get into detail with somebody and sometimes. Agreed. So particularly if good to talk to you.
Speaker: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you want more like this, you might go back to episode three with Noreen Massoud, who we mentioned at the end, or even episode 10 with Marnie Appleton if you want more interesting fiction about the contemporary world, experiences of gender and being in and among other people and what safety might look like.
Speaker: Please subscribe to the show if you haven't already. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or on YouTube. Share with people in other places. Follow the show and me on Instagram. Tag me in any posts of episodes you like. And if you can fill out the feedback form, that would be amazing.
Speaker: You can also get show transcripts and information by subscribing to the Substack. This show is made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of Hertfordshire.
