Episodes
-
"Train Cancellation" by Maeve Deegan, read by Emma Boniwell. Everything changes. For everyone.
Birmingham Lit Fest Presents presents six separate stories, all set late on the same night at Wolverhampton train station. Written by Wolverhampton's Spark Young Writers, the tales are funny, serious, scary -- and every character is in for a surprise during the concluding story.
Produced by William Gallagher.
Wolverhampton Spark Young Writers are part of the Spark Young Writers programme which is a project of Writing West Midlands. Spark Young Writers aims to encourage and inspire young people from the region to write creatively and experience a wide variety of writing genres. There are 17 groups running this year: three online and the rest meeting in person. We have fun in the sessions, with the focus being on creativity not grammar and spelling, and offer a supportive community of young writers with a sincere love of writing.
The Wolverhampton Group meets in Wolverhampton Art Gallery once a month for ten months of the year. The group is lead by professional writer William Gallagher and the assistant writer is Lisa M Billingham.
You can find out more about the programme by visiting www.sparkwriters.org
-
"Eight Minutes" by Doroti Polgar, read by Lisa M Billingham. You can put the world right in eight minutes, but the world never listens to you.
Birmingham Lit Fest Presents presents six separate stories, all set late on the same night at Wolverhampton train station. Written by Wolverhampton's Spark Young Writers, the tales are funny, serious, scary -- and every character is in for a surprise during the concluding story.Produced by William Gallagher.
Wolverhampton Spark Young Writers are part of the Spark Young Writers programme which is a project of Writing West Midlands. Spark Young Writers aims to encourage and inspire young people from the region to write creatively and experience a wide variety of writing genres. There are 17 groups running this year: three online and the rest meeting in person. We have fun in the sessions, with the focus being on creativity not grammar and spelling, and offer a supportive community of young writers with a sincere love of writing.
The Wolverhampton Group meets in Wolverhampton Art Gallery once a month for ten months of the year. The group is lead by professional writer William Gallagher and the assistant writer is Lisa M Billingham.
You can find out more about the programme by visiting www.sparkwriters.org
-
Missing episodes?
-
"Apologies for Any Inconvenience" written and read by William Gallagher. Anger can keep out the cold, but not forever.
Birmingham Lit Fest Presents presents six separate stories, all set late on the same night at Wolverhampton train station. Written by Wolverhampton's Spark Young Writers, the tales are funny, serious, scary -- and every character is in for a surprise during the concluding story.
Produced by William Gallagher.
Wolverhampton Spark Young Writers are part of the Spark Young Writers programme which is a project of Writing West Midlands. Spark Young Writers aims to encourage and inspire young people from the region to write creatively and experience a wide variety of writing genres. There are 17 groups running this year: three online and the rest meeting in person. We have fun in the sessions, with the focus being on creativity not grammar and spelling, and offer a supportive community of young writers with a sincere love of writing.
The Wolverhampton Group meets in Wolverhampton Art Gallery once a month for ten months of the year. The group is lead by professional writer William Gallagher and the assistant writer is Lisa M Billingham.
You can find out more about the programme by visiting www.sparkwriters.org
-
"The 23: 48 to Birmingham New Street" written and read by Lisa M. Billingham. We can hide from ourselves, but not from handsome strangers.
Birmingham Lit Fest Presents presents six separate stories, all set late on the same night at Wolverhampton train station. Written by Wolverhampton's Spark Young Writers, the tales are funny, serious, scary -- and every character is in for a surprise during the concluding story.Produced by William Gallagher.
Wolverhampton Spark Young Writers are part of the Spark Young Writers programme which is a project of Writing West Midlands. Spark Young Writers aims to encourage and inspire young people from the region to write creatively and experience a wide variety of writing genres. There are 17 groups running this year: three online and the rest meeting in person. We have fun in the sessions, with the focus being on creativity not grammar and spelling, and offer a supportive community of young writers with a sincere love of writing.
The Wolverhampton Group meets in Wolverhampton Art Gallery once a month for ten months of the year. The group is lead by professional writer William Gallagher and the assistant writer is Lisa M Billingham.
You can find out more about the programme by visiting www.sparkwriters.org
-
"Departures" by Erin Oakley, read by William Gallagher. Not everyone's intended destination is at the other end of this train ride.
Birmingham Lit Fest Presents presents six separate stories, all set late on the same night at Wolverhampton train station. Written by Wolverhampton's Spark Young Writers, the tales are funny, serious, scary -- and every character is in for a surprise during the concluding story.
Produced by William Gallagher.
Wolverhampton Spark Young Writers are part of the Spark Young Writers programme which is a project of Writing West Midlands. Spark Young Writers aims to encourage and inspire young people from the region to write creatively and experience a wide variety of writing genres. There are 17 groups running this year: three online and the rest meeting in person. We have fun in the sessions, with the focus being on creativity not grammar and spelling, and offer a supportive community of young writers with a sincere love of writing.
The Wolverhampton Group meets in Wolverhampton Art Gallery once a month for ten months of the year. The group is lead by professional writer William Gallagher and the assistant writer is Lisa M Billingham.
You can find out more about the programme by visiting www.sparkwriters.org
-
"23:48" by Maeve Deegan, read by Emma Boniwell. An eight-minute train delay is increasingly tense for one young woman -- but what has happened to her tonight?
Birmingham Lit Fest Presents presents six separate stories, all set late on the same night at Wolverhampton train station. Written by Wolverhampton's Spark Young Writers, the tales are funny, serious, scary -- and every character is in for a surprise during the concluding story.
Produced by William Gallagher.
Wolverhampton Spark Young Writers are part of the Spark Young Writers programme which is a project of Writing West Midlands. Spark Young Writers aims to encourage and inspire young people from the region to write creatively and experience a wide variety of writing genres. There are 17 groups running this year: three online and the rest meeting in person. We have fun in the sessions, with the focus being on creativity not grammar and spelling, and offer a supportive community of young writers with a sincere love of writing.
The Wolverhampton Group meets in Wolverhampton Art Gallery once a month for ten months of the year. The group is lead by professional writer William Gallagher and the assistant writer is Lisa M Billingham.
You can find out more about the programme by visiting www.sparkwriters.org
-
This week, we’re joined by Lucy Hannah from UNTOLD Stories, and Afghan poet Parwana Fayyaz,
who talked to festival team member Olivia Chapman. Lucy and Parwana worked on My Pen is the
Wing of a Bird, a new collection of short stories written by Afghan women before and after the
brutal resurgence of the Taliban in August 2021.You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.
For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/
Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest
Credits
Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands -
This week’s episode is our specially-curated Writing from a Warzone event. The Birmingham
Literature Festival team brought together novelist Priscilla Morris, whose family fled Sarajevo during
the 1992 siege, with poet Parwana Fayyaz, who is an Afghan refugee. The event also included an
interview with Ukrainian novelist Lyubko Deresh, who is still in Ukraine. They were speaking to Dr
Amanda Beattie, from the Centre for Migration and Forced Displacement at Aston University.You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.
For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/
Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest
Credits
Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands -
This week’s episode features two people with unique insights into the UK Justice System: Wendy
Joseph KC sat on cases in the Old Bailey for decades. In that time, she also mentored young people
and tried to demystify the way justice is served in this country. Dr Shahed Yousaf is a prison doctor,
who has worked for most of his career in Birmingham prisons with the most violent inmates. They
were joined on stage by Olwen Brown.You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.
For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/
Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest
Credits
Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands -
This week’s episode is housing lawyer Hashi Mohamed speaking to Guest Curator Otegha Uwagba.
Hashi’s family arrived in the UK as refugees from Somalia in the 1990s, and his book A Home of One’s
Own is the story of his family, as well as that of every family in the UK trying to carve out their own
space in a broken housing system.You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.
For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/
Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest
Credits
Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands -
This week’s guest is one of few who – universally – get referred to as a “National Treasure”. Michael
Rosen has written over 70 books, including many of the most-read and most-loved children’s books
of the modern day. He’s also a poet and memoirist, and joined us to talk about his book Many
Different Kinds of Love, written as a result of his time on an intensive care ward during the Covid-19
pandemic in Spring 2020.You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.
For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/
Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest
Credits
Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands -
On 9 July 2022, Writing West Midlands hosted its annual National Writers’ Conference in Birmingham, the first time back to a full programme of events since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Through panel events, networking sessions, informal and formal meetings, over 150 emerging writers came together to learn from established writers, producers, editors, agents and literature professionals including Kasim Ali, David Chikwe, Maeve Clarke, Lindsay Davis and Gillian McAllister.
Hosted by Jonathan Davidson from Writing West Midlands.
-
2021: A year in review
Welcome to the last instalment of 2021’s commissioned series of writing. Each month, across the year, we have asked writers and poets to reflect on each month as it has passed. As we say goodbye to 2021, and embrace the start of a new year, we have brought together all those pieces to offer you an insightful, searing and beautiful review of the year.
Take a look at the rest of this year's digital programme on our website: https://www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/.
For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest
Credits
Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West MidlandsTRANSCRIPT
BLF 2021: A Year in Review
Welcome to the last instalment of 2021’s commissioned series of writing. Each month, across the year, we have asked writers and poets to reflect on each month as it has passed. As we say goodbye to 2021, and embrace the start of a new year, we have brought together all those pieces that offer an insightful, searing and beautiful review of the year.
January 2021
My name is Thomas Glave and I wrote this piece for the Birmingham Literature Festival, January 2021 Writers’ Blog.
What has this past month, partly a time of Covid-caused lockdown, been like? ‘Weird’, is how a Birmingham friend extremely fond of that word might have described it. But ‘weird’ is too vague, and doesn’t make room for all the specific moments. Moments like a walk I took one chilly dusk through Birmingham’s Brindleyplace, where, amidst all those tomb-quiet buildings, it was easy to imagine the opening scene of the zombie-apocalypse film 28 Days Later, that showed an unnervingly deserted London: ‘Hallo-hallo-hallo’, anyone could have shouted that evening, imagining the final-days echo: ‘Is anyone there-there-there?’ And what about the seagulls that flock through the West Midlands (and all the UK) throughout the year, hijacking unsuspecting people’s lunches? Didn’t they appear to be moving closer to the very few human beings out walking, as the darkness encroached and began to whisper, How’s this, you fancy this? And really, except for maybe one or two runners who darted past (and even they, so thin, might have been just birds or the ghosts of birds), there was almost nobody else about. . .nobody except a lone Brindleyplace security guard, who for a few seconds bent his head over a match’s flare to light a cigarette, before he disappeared behind one of those buildings as if he too had existed in real life only for a moment, then had been drawn back into the realm of dreams where security guards, cigarette in hand, wander alone forever, half-alive and half lockdown apparitions that melt into dusk in this city of hills and tall buildings and twisting stretching canals. . . on lockdown evenings like that one, the dusk always descended in time for the ensuing quiet to gather entirely around and wrap itself, its soft thick arms, all around your shoulders: the quiet of pandemic nights, of people gathered indoors and sometimes also isolated there, sometimes alone.
These past weeks were the unaccustomed quietness of pubs shuttered, restaurants stilled, railway stations and airports emptied, and all of us, the living and the waking, wondering what all this meant or could mean, and – often more insistently -- when it was going to end. Simultaneously, if we knew people who had fallen ill, we worried about them, prayed for them, and did all we could to ensure that they wouldn’t leave us just yet: not leave like that. Not so suddenly, so intubated. Not whilst gasping for breath behind some sterile partition, sequestered in a fluorescent-lit hospital ward. Not like that, without our hands to hold and our face to stroke, as we in turn wanted to hold and comfort them. Through it all, as we thought of them and seasonal gifts like the sorely missed brighter-than-bright Birmingham Christmas market, there was always the cloaking dusk, and then the sound of our own footsteps. Our feet that, as the season progressed, began to mutter Slow down, won’t you….please, for goodness’ sake, you simply must slow down.
And out of the slowing down, if we listened to those feet, arose a kind of blessedness as well. The kind that might have moved us to put up festive lights a little earlier in the season, aware that the increased lights and colours may have helped to cheer our neighbours. The kind that may even have moved us in an era of global stress and anxiety to speak with neighbours a bit longer when we saw them, and with more solicitous interest than usual, especially the elderly and the vulnerable. . . although hopefully always at a two-metre distance.
Our warming planet, meanwhile, began to thank us for lockdown and our decreased travel and traffic. Birds, other creatures, and every tree and bush expressed and continue to express their gratitude, from the Jewellery Quarter to Acocks Green and all the way to Kings Heath, as nature raised its eyebrows at our actual ability to step back and take a breath. Someone told me this week that I should listen carefully, in order to hear the sound of nature politely applauding our efforts. But if we can’t hear it, he said, this will be only because of the silence in between all other occurring things… the silence that assures that in spite of everything else, our hearts really are still in wonderful working order, still fond of us, and nowhere near prepared to stop.
February 2021
Hello, my name is Abda Khan and here is a blog I wrote for Birmingham Literature Festival in February 2021.
When I was asked to write about how February has been for me, I started by looking back at photos from the same time last year. It struck me that during the almost yearlong state of lockdown, not only has life changed in ways previously unimaginable, but certain phrases have evaporated from our vocabulary, whilst others have taken hold. As a writer, I am intrigued by this.
February 2020; kicked off at a packed restaurant for a family birthday, I gave a talk about my Sidelines to Centre Stage Project at Wolverhampton Literature Festival where I mingled with attendees over tea and samosas, travelled to Glasgow and sat in a mosque full of hundreds of mourners after the death of my uncle, went into Tamworth Radio to talk about my novel Razia with three of us crammed into an airless studio smaller than a boxroom, had lunch with and gave a talk at Solihull Rotary Club, visited mac at Cannon Hill Park for discussions over coffee about a forthcoming project. And there were many more everyday happenings, not documented by the click of a phone camera, all of which are now unthinkable; legal work at the office where multiple clients would attend together, meeting friends in overcrowded coffee shops, enjoying the pictures with my kids (although they tell me that firstly, no one says ‘pictures’ anymore and secondly, as the youngest is now nearly 16, they’re no longer kids).
Now, life is Zoom, and Teams, hand sanitiser, and face masks, and everyone knows what WFH me...
-
Writer and Professor Thomas Glave wrote our very first commissioned piece in January 2021, describing a quiet, reflective post-Christmas Brindley Place in the midst of lockdown. In December's offering, he reflects beautifully on that experience in a piece that moves fluidly through dancing and writing and the way that stories move us.
Take a look at the rest of this year's digital programme on our website: https://www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/.
For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest
Credits
Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West MidlandsTRANSCRIPT
BLF Newsletter Podcast Transcript: Episode 12, December: Thomas Glave
Intro
Welcome to the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast and our new series of commissioned writing about 2021. Each month we are commissioning a new writer to reflect on the month that has passed, offering us moments of connection through great writing and the opportunity to reflect about what we have collectively experienced at the end of the year.
We will be bringing you a new short episode at the start of each month, with each piece read by our guest writers. You can read the pieces on our website, where you will also find information about our upcoming digital events.
Reading
Hi, I’m Thomas Glave. This is December 2021 and I’m about to read a piece entitled A Keynote in Three Parts.
FALLING AND WRITING (A KEYNOTE IN THREE PARTS)
Unafraid of Falling: A Dancer’s ApproachOnce, not so long ago, in that part of the world far across the sea, there lived a young girl who dreamt of dancing – in fact dreamt of growing up to become someone who danced constantly, as if no other way of being existed. During those early years, she never envisaged herself as a ‘ballerina’, so to speak, but simply as someone who yearned to, and was always beautifully capable of, moving her long limbs to music, and actually surrendering herself – surrendering what she would have called her ‘soul’ – to music. This girl grew up to become the great ballerina Suzanne Farrell, internationally renowned star of George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet company, and the foremost interpreter, in the late twentieth century, of his ballets. At one point, in 1965 when she was twenty years of age and he sixty-two, she almost became his sixth wife. (Balanchine’s previous five wives had all been ballerinas.) But marriage and romance mattered far less in Farrell’s life, a life dedicated almost exclusively to her art, than her holy pursuit of dance, and to what dance critics and Balanchine himself, as well as other choreographers, began to observe and refer to admiringly, and often with utter astonishment, as her style of ‘off-centre’ dancing. In Farrell’s vision, ‘off-centre’ dancing was a means of attaining ultimate generosity and daring onstage, a supreme gift to the audience but also a gift to and from the art form itself. It presented moments in which the vulnerable performer, dancing out her heart and very being across an enormous stage, and ostensibly completely uncaring as to whether she might be taking risks that could hurl her directly into a disaster such as falling off her dangerous balances or worse, became something like a true force of nature, unrestrained by gravity or fear. As one critic familiar with Farrell’s work and Balanchine’s choreography for the New York City Ballet understood the dancer, Farrell’s off-centre dancing involved ‘astonishing pirouettes, during which...she showed not an eyelid flicker’s worth of concern over whether her partner would be there to catch her at the end. As a rule he was, though there close calls, and a few terrifying occasions when we thought that...she was truly going to pitch herself into the orchestra’.
Farrell’s wildness and even recklessness onstage, especially in startling contrast to her deeply taciturn, even aloof personality, beguiled countless people, myself included, all of whom wondered at and reveled in the utter freedom and daring of her artistry: a freedom from the self-consciousness that we all know as both writers and human beings, known and experienced by all artists. This self-consciousness includes the often gnawing fear that at some point, whilst working on this or that project, or having completed this novel or that play or poetry collection, we may end up making fools of ourselves in front of them: the people out there, actual or imagined (or both): the individuals ever ready, we often fear, to hold our work up not only to cold scrutiny but also inevitably to scorn; the people out there who will surely regard us not with the care and earnest concern for which we yearn, but with cold contempt; the people whose moist breath we can always feel just over our shoulders as we begin writing on a new blank page. What will they think, those disapproving faces both imagined and real. . .
Yet perhaps, like daring ballerinas and other artists, we eventually realise that our work, like the work of dancers risking everything on a stage before an unseeable audience enshrouded in darkness, always involves the greatest daring of our most secret imagining selves. In such vulnerability there can be – and there invariably is – the possibility for humility, our embracing of humility, as we grapple with the fact that such deeper giving in art always requires the jettisoning of our egos in service to the art form’s discipline and demands. A ballerina may indeed fall out of the next sequence of pirouettes or fouettés, but was she giving us all of her energy and soul when she did? We may stumble over a sentence or a stanza, or find that our hands were wrapped too possessively around a character’s throat in this chapter or that poem, or we may mis-hear the lyric’s begging us to reach for a smoother rhyme, but it always seems – at least until the final loss of our faculties or simple end of our existence – that we do have time to work and re-work, and re-work again, anticipating in calmness the inevitability of falling without engaging any fear of falling. And again, and again. We certainly have more time than ballet dancers, who daily strive for beauty and grace against the ticking clock of their aging bodies. As for the patience required for the doing and re-doing, trying and re-trying, the pandemic has impressed upon us nothing if not an understanding of the importance of patience. During the numerous hours I’ve gritted my teeth whilst thinking of the great difficulty, at least for me, in patiently working to inculcate patience, I remembered Farrell insisting that her pre-professional female ballet pupils take an entire ballet class, not only the class’s second half, wearing pointe shoes – ‘Because’, Farrell often told those eager teen-agers, ‘you don’t learn to dance on pointe by not dancing on pointe’. Like those dancers in their ballet studio or rehearsal hall, we know that we don’t become writers by not writing. Yet I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit that tomorrow morning, like so many of us having to face that awful blank page, I remain fearful of falling, and of what ...
-
April 2021’s online event featured author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera discussing his latest book Empireland. In conversation with Sara Wajid, the co-CEO of the Birmingham Museum’s Trust, he discussed the ways in which legacies of empire permeate everything from the NHS to our national museums and how the events of the past year have demonstrated the urgent need for us to understand and reckon with our imperial past.
You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.
For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest
Credits
Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West MidlandsTRANSCRIPT
BLF Series 2, Episode 11: Sathnam Sanghera
Intro
Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast. We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond.
You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.
April 2021’s online event featured author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera discussing his latest book Empireland. In conversation with Sara Wajid, the co-CEO of the Birmingham Museum’s Trust, he discussed the ways in which legacies of empire permeate everything from the NHS to our national museums and how the events of the past year have demonstrated the urgent need for us to understand and reckon with our imperial past.
Sara Wajid
Good evening, everyone. I'm Sara Wajid. I'm the co-CEO of Birmingham Museum Art Gallery, and I'm here this evening to talk to Sathnam Sanghera about his book Empireland. I'm speaking to you from Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. This is the industrial gallery. As this is Birmingham Literature Festival. No doubt many of you will recognise the museum, so I thought I’d give you this treat to be able to peek inside the museum when you haven't been able to for so long now in lockdown. As I said, I'm the co-CEO of Birmingham Museums Trust. And I'm really delighted to be having this conversation with Sathnam. He's such an important person, not just as a UK journalist, but particularly for the Midlands. And this is quite a special conversation. We were talking just now in the virtual green room about whether we've met before. And clearly Sathnam doesn't recognize me or remember me from the early 2000s but he was very much on my radar when I was a journalist, not nearly as good a journalist as him, which is why I'm now museum director and no longer a journalist. For those of you who may want to refresh as to Santhanam’s biog, he was born to Indian Punjabi parents in 1976 in Wolverhampton. He's been a Times columnist and feature writer since 2007 and his memoir, The Boy with a Topknot, a memoir of love, secrets and lies in Wolverhampton, was adapted for BBC Two in 2017. I’m a big fan. His novel Marriage Material was shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards. And he's also presented a range of TV documentaries, including The Massacre that Shook the Empire on Channel Four. Sathnam, welcome. Good to see you. Congratulations on the book, it’s a wonderful book and its been received extremely warmly. I must say I was a bit surprised to see you writing on this topic. When I first heard about the book I was like what's this, he's not a historian. You know us in the museum and history world can be a bit snobby like that, like, right, like what right does this fella have to come into our territory and start writing about this stuff? Doesn't he interview celebrities? Isn't that his domain? Then I read the book and obviously I was very impressed, which is why we're talking now. But firstly, I wanted to ask you a bit about identity. As much as this book is about public understanding of history and Empire, I guess what makes it stand out from historians is your reflections on your own identity and how Empire has shaped you and your journey in writing this book and how it's affected you. There's a bit in the book where you're reflecting on this and describe it saying ‘on embarking on this journey, I'm making an effort to decolonise myself.’ I wanted to know what you meant by that, and how it's going.
Sathnam Sanghera
It’s an ongoing process. And I guess the phrase decolonisation, you know, a lot of people are allergic to it. Actually, I was allergic to because I didn't feel like I needed decolonising because when you've had a very good education, where everyone tells you you've had the best education in the world, you just think there's nothing wrong with what you've learned and what you've looked at, and the way you've focused on certain things. But it was probably three quarters of my way through this book that I realized that actually I had been colonised. I think that what made me realise it as I was reading about the way Indian kingdoms were taken over by the British. And one of the ways they conquered these Indian royal families was by putting the children through a British education. The Sikh Empire wasn't lost on the battlefield, it was lost in a school room, where Maharajah Duleep Singh was turned into an English gent, you know, was sent off to Britain and became a kind of toy for Queen Victoria. That ended the Sikh kingdom. And later in life he realised what had happened and he tried to reconnect with his Sikh heritage, and I really related to that. And I think, at a similar age in my 40s, I realised I had been coloniSed. And I'm trying to do something about it. But you're right, in that it was a bit weird that I'm writing about this subject. You know, I did a reading about 18 months ago, to some friends in a restaurant, it was a small event. And the general reaction was one of complete confusion, because they couldn't quite work out whether it was history or memoir. And it was quite an esoteric subject then. But then suddenly, six months later, we had Black Lives Matter. And suddenly, I was turning on the news and there was, you know, a mainstream news item about how British Empire created modern notions of racism, how we exported racism to America. And suddenly, this niche thing I was writing about, became of international concern. So, it's only accidentally timely to be honest, and there was no certainty that it was going to work.
Sara Wajid
I just want to draw you out a little bit more on what you were saying there about your education. In your earlier memoirs, when you refer to your schooling, and the grammar school, I hadn't registered it as a kind of quite posh school. And that, and that tells you something, doesn’t it because I went to a minor public school, so I'm like grammar school? He's not a posh boy. But actually, when you were kind of reflecting on quite how colonial the ideologies were in your school, because you wen...
-
Solihull based scriptwriter Annabel Brightling has written November's piece for the festival blog. In it, she reflects on the excitement of the premiere of drama SeaView at the Belgrade Theatre, a show she wrote the first episode of, and the need for large production companies to expand their cultural horizons into the regions across the UK.
Take a look at the rest of this year's digital programme on our website: https://www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/.
For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest
Credits
Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West MidlandsTRANSCRIPT
BLF Newsletter Podcast Transcript: Episode 11, Annabel Brightling
Intro
Welcome to the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast and our new series of commissioned writing about 2021. Each month we are commissioning a new writer to reflect on the month that has passed, offering us moments of connection through great writing and the opportunity to reflect about what we have collectively experienced at the end of the year.
We will be bringing you a new short episode at the start of each month, with each piece read by our guest writers. You can read the pieces on our website, where you will also find information about our upcoming digital events.
Reading
My name is Annabel Brightling and I’ve written November’s piece for Birmingham Literature Festival.
Seaview is a supernatural drama set in Coventry centred around a guy who lands his dream job at a law firm, only for his night of celebrations to go awry and change the lives of his loved ones, forever. The show premiered the first three episodes at the Belgrade Theatre on 10th November with further showings on the 11th – 13th November. I was hired as a staff writer for episode one.
SeaView took a chance on first timers, both in front of and behind the camera who worked alongside seasoned professionals. There was an open call for a writers' room. New writers are often told to “Apply to the BBC writers' room or 4Screenwriting. Go on the Screen Skills website. Have you tried the BFI?” All brilliant and necessary companies. But sometimes, you just want to get paid to write. Without the SeaView writers' room callout, I would still be creditless, applying for these four opportunities on loop. Or alternatively, told to get an agent to get staffed in a writers' room and we know how that catch-22 scenario goes. I doubt open calls for writers will become industry standard, but I’m thankful to the producers for making that choice.
Seaview is also proof that there is room for a TV & Film industry to exist outside of London. There should be more stories coming from across the UK. There are places I’ve never visited and will not get the opportunity to see. That’s why I want to watch stories from different towns. Despite being born and raised in Edmonton, North London and I will never give up that identity (currently at war with my fading accent), I’ve always been curious about this little Island.
The curiosity stems from my parents. They were always keen on my siblings and I travelling outside the M25. They wanted us to explore landscapes, historical landmarks, and food. Even though Mum would be up half the morning making jollof, chicken and stew to take with us “just in case”. That curiosity about other towns and cities has helped with the type of topics I cover in my original scripts.
I still have a way to go in terms of my writing skills. Because of my personality type, I will always compare myself to other’s progress. But getting the ‘yes’ after years of ‘no’ or folks just straight-up ghosting my emails, has reassured me. The fact that I got to play a small part in a project which means so much to the Midlands, is even more rewarding.
Who knows if SeaView will be the start of the norm or a blip in the Midlands cultural zeitgeist. It's a win for the Midlands, which showcases the area to a wider audience. I hope for investors, the Midlands will be unskippable. It will soon reach a point where you won't be able to hear an advert anywhere in the UK without a Midland accent penetrating through the speakers. So, in conclusion, invest or lose out...Alright, Bab?
Outro
Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the Birmingham Lit Fest presents…podcast. Follow us on Instagram, twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All information about the festival and upcoming events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org. The Birmingham Lit Fest Presents... podcast is produced by 11C and Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands.
-
May 2021’s online live event brought together two writers whose books are rooted in the Midlands, Emma Purshouse and Lisa Blower. In conversation with author Kit de Waal, they discuss their latest novels Dogged and Pondweed, making space for more working-class writers and characters in contemporary fiction and capturing a variety of Midlands dialects on the page.
You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.
For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest
Credits
Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West MidlandsTRANSCRIPT
BLF Series 2, Episode 10: Lisa Blower and Emma Purshouse
Intro
Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast. We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond.
You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.
May 2021’s online live event brought together two writers whose books are rooted in the Midlands, Emma Purshouse and Lisa Blower. In conversation with author Kit de Waal, they discuss their latest novels Dogged and Pondweed, making space for more working-class writers and characters in contemporary fiction and capturing a variety of Midlands dialects on the page.
Kit de Waal
Hello, everyone, its my pleasure this evening to introduce you to two friends and two great writers, two great women, who both have books out - these two books - which we're going to hear a lot about this evening as well as more generally talking about accents, dialect and snobbery in literature, which obviously is one of my pet subjects. Just to introduce who we're talking about this evening, first of all, we've got Lisa Blower. Lisa is the author of the short story collection, It's Gone Dark Over Bill's Mother's which came out in 2019 and a contribution to Common People which was the anthology of working class writing that came out the same year. Her fiction has appeared in The Guardian, Comma Press anthologies, New Welsh Review, Luminary Short Stories Sunday on Radio 4 and her debut novel Sitting Ducks was shortlisted for the inaugural Arnold Bennett prize and longlisted for The Guardian Not the Booker prize. She's also a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Wolverhampton University. Emma Purshouse left school in the early 1980s at the age of 15. She's got an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Met and her passion is writing about working class communities she's lived in, often making use of Black Country dialect within her work. In 2017, she won the international Making Waves Spoken Word Poetry competition, she's also Poet Laureate in the city of Wolverhampton and she's also one of the writers in Common People, the anthology of working class writing, and she teaches poetry in schools and community groups. Hello, both of you. We've all got the short vowels tonight, which I'm very happy about it, so to speak to you, and speak to you about two very, very funny books. First of all, it's such a comfort to read these books, because it's about worlds that are so familiar to many of us. And I just want to talk to you, Emma, first about Dogged. And I don't believe I've ever read a book before that revolves around a win on the bingo, which I love. I mean, it's just so fantastic to read. In fact, you tell us, what is the book about and who are the main characters?
Emma Purshouse
Like you say, it's sort of about a bingo win initially and the two main characters are women in their late 70s. You got Nancy Maddox, and you've got Marilyn Grundy, and it's Marilyn who has this bingo win, but nobody's quite sure how much it's for. And really, the idea behind the book is about how Marilyn has to protect the bingo winnings. And then Nancy gets enlisted into this and it's the adventures they have as they try to protect the bingo winnings, which are stashed in a shopping trolley.
Kit de Waal
And so not only have you rooted it very much in the working class, but you've rooted it in an area, you've rooted it in the Black Country. How does the Black Country feature in this story and more generally, in your work?
Emma Purshouse
I think in this story, it's where it's set, but they're ingrained in the landscape. Everything's kind of, you can’t have one thing without the other. And when the dialect comes in, it's as much a part of it as the characters in the landscape. They say, write what you know, it's what I know. So that's why I've set it there. In my poetry, again, it's what I'm living in so I kind of want to respond and show people what it is and talk about it and share it because I love it.
Kit de Waal
What I think that does come through both of these books is a massive sense of pride and no apology about who we are and where we're from, there's a real sense of pride in this. Do you want to just read us a bit Emma.
Emma Purshouse
I’ll read the prologue which kind of introduces the two women really.
‘Nancy stands on the step. Her shoulders have been aching all night. Years of scrubbing quarry tiles up at the Dartmouth are taking their toll. She rolls her shoulders forward and twists her head to peer over towards her back. A lump has started to form under her overall. “Wot now? If it ay one thing, its summat else.” As she watches, the lump starts to bulge, move, and rupture the skin. She hears Mr. Maddox’s voice.
“If God’d uv meant uz to fly, e’d uv givun uz wings.”
The voice is accompanied by the sound of a trickle of whiskey being poured into a glass.
Her emerging wing - just the one - unfurls itself in a grand gesture and then flails against her back. It is large and black. It is oily, tarry, nicotine-stained, and the feathers are stuck together. It hangs like wet washing in a back yard on a windless day. “Sort of bost,” says Nancy. “Shit!” she thinks, as Marilyn comes out onto her step and waves. Nancy tries to wave back without showing her new wing.
“Is that…?” says Marilyn screwing up her orange lips into the shape of a cat’s arse.
“No!” says Nancy, cutting her off in mid question. “It ay!”. The conversation is ended.
“Bloody dreamin agen,” she thinks as she awakes.’
Kit de Waal
Oh, that's great, that's good. ...
-
In June 2021, we hosted an online live event with author Caleb Azumah Nelson about his debut novel Open Water. In conversation with Birmingham Poet Laureate Casey Bailey, they talk about Caleb’s beautiful love story about two young artists who met at a pub and the novel’s broader discussion of race, art, masculinity and vulnerability.
You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.
For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest
Credits
Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West MidlandsTRANSCRIPT
BLF Series 2, Episode 9: Caleb Azumah Nelson
Intro
Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast. We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond.
You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.
In June 2021, we hosted an online live event with author Caleb Azumah Nelson about his debut novel Open Water. In conversation with Birmingham Poet Laureate Casey Bailey, they talk about Caleb’s beautiful love story about two young artists who met at a pub and the novel’s broader discussion of race, art, masculinity and vulnerability.
Casey Bailey
Hi, guys, I hope you're all good and blessed. I'm really excited about this conversation that we're about to have and I hope you all are too. I am Casey Bailey, Birmingham Poet Laureate and a writer from Birmingham and far more importantly than that, I will be talking to Caleb Azumah Nelson. Caleb is a 27-year-old British Ghanaian writer and photographer who is living in Southeast London. His photography has been shortlisted for the Palm* Poetry Prize and won the People's Choice Award and his short story Pray was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2020. Open Water, which we'll be discussing today, is his debut novel. Caleb, how are you?
Caleb Azumah Nelson
Good. I'm good. How are you?
Casey Bailey
I'm blessed. I can't complain. This a real privilege to be having this conversation really. The first thing I wanted to talk about and really get into is around the reception of the book. I first became aware of the book, I was on a podcast with Yomi Sode and Que from Dope Readers who I'm guessing you're aware of, and Que has done a feature on the Dope Readers Instagram page, where he had taken the book Open Water out into water, and took this like amazing photograph. And at the time, it was the first I'd heard of the book. And I thought, what a big response, like what an outlandish response to this book. And actually, it was just kind of like the seed of all of the responses to this book, because it has really taken the literary world by storm, and people are talking about it and can't stop talking about it. And the first thing I really want to ask is, how has that been for you as the author? Firstly, congratulations on writing the book, then congratulations on the book being published. And then this response, how's that feeling for you?
Caleb Azumah Nelson
It’s really something, especially in the current climate of the world, to have this sort of response and to really have the energy that I spent a good amount of time putting into work reciprocated, you know. You can really feel it when someone feels the emotions and the feelings that I put into the book like you when someone really feels the texture and when they reply, that was something that I felt, without even being prompted. Yeah, I'm grateful for it, I think gratitude is the thing, I'm overwhelmed even.
Casey Bailey
Were you taken aback by how broad that response was? It’s definitely deserved but I'm sure you know, that sometimes you feel like something is going to get that response and it doesn't quite, you know, how does it feel getting that kind of, wow, yeah, this has been heard the way that I heard it when I came up with it.
Caleb Azumah Nelson
Yeah, it's amazing. I can really see the moment when I first started putting pen to page and I'm like, in a similar process in my next work and having this going on at the same time is such a wonderful reminder of where the work starts. And it is the page, us being present and really like bringing ourselves to the page and being vulnerable and being disciplined. There was a moment when I was writing Open Water where I quit my job and that was the only thing I was doing. Like I really like gambled and really was like, I need you to trust yourself in this moment because what you need to say right now needs to be expressed. I don't know, it's not that I expected that there would be this sort of reception, but for me, the writing of the thing was the prize. I was reading this book last week and there was a sentence of it that I don't think I'll ever forget. And the guy said ‘love is both the practice and the prize’. And I think this was a real act of love. Like everything I write feels like an act of love and like the prize is the practice.
Casey Bailey
I’m kind of like obsessed with process and how we process things, how we process our emotions. So many heavy themes are dealt with in the book, and you could have dealt with them through photography, I'm sure you probably have, you could have dealt with them through poetry, through theatre. Why do you feel like this particular thing came out as a novel, had you always had this idea of writing a novel or did something make that happen?
Caleb Azumah Nelson
You know, through the different art forms that I straddle, I always think of myself as a writer, despite the fact that language can be so limiting. And we often, I know you know this, but often find ourselves like trying to like bend language to our will, it’s something that I think I'll forever just be trying to get closer to the true expression of how I'm actually feeling. I think when I started writing Open Water, I had just connected with my literary agent and she had come to help with nonfiction actually, I was writing a lot of nonfiction about photography and music and about love. And I was just consistently writing, and she was the one who was like, I think you have the voice for a novel, I think that you could write a novel and it was something that I'd always wanted to do. And I think it was that moment where it's like, okay, I can do this. It was also that moment where I asked myself - I want to write a novel, but what could the novel be like? What could it contain? I know that some of my favourite work is very subversive, or that it kind of straddles different...
-
This week, bestselling novelist and acclaimed podcast host Elizabeth Day, talks to Sathnam Sanghera about her new novel Magpie. Join them as they talk about writing thrillers, and a novel that tells a gripping and unsettling story about power, motherhood and envy.
You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.
For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest
Credits
Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West MidlandsTRANSCRIPT
BLF Series 2, Episode 8: Elizabeth Day
Intro
Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast. We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond.
You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.
This week, bestselling novelist and acclaimed podcast host Elizabeth Day, talks to Sathnam Sanghera about her new novel Magpie. Join them as they talk about writing thrillers, and a novel that tells a gripping and unsettling story about power, motherhood and envy.
Sathnam Sanghera
Hello, I'm Sathnam Sanghera. I'm a journalist and author originally from the Midlands and I'm talking to my friend Elizabeth Day today, who's also an author and a journalist but she's originally from Northern Ireland, aren't you Liz?
Elizabeth Day
I am. Well, I was born in Epson, but we moved to the north of Ireland when I was four, but I do have a Midlands connection because I went to school there, I went to school in Malvern from the age of 13.
Sathnam Sanghera
Oh yeah, I always forget that. Anyway, I should say who you are although everyone knows who you are. You are the author of four novels and the Sunday Times bestselling memoir, How to Fail. Your debut was Scissors, Paper, Stone, which famously won a Betty Trask award. And Homefires was Observer Book of the Year. Your third book, Paradise City, was named one of the best novels of 2015 in the Evening Standard, and The Party, which was your last novel, was a Richard and Judy book club pick. You're also an award-winning journalist and you present BBC Radio 4 Open Book and the Sky Arts Book Club. And you're also the creator and host of the chart-topping podcast How to Fail. So, I feel very self-conscious, because you're a pro at this, aren’t you?
Elizabeth Day
Well, I think I'm an amateur who's learned through experience, and you were one of my first ever guests. And so, I'm so grateful to you for taking a punt on How to Fail when no one really knew what it was about. But it's nice having the table's turned, it's very nice hearing you introduce me.
Sathnam Sanghera
It's quite surreal for me, yeah, I mean I think I was very relaxed in that podcast, because I thought it would fail, ironically. And then it became a massive thing.
Elizabeth Day
You have so little faith in me.
Sathnam Sanghera
It's huge faith now, huge faith now that you're successful. And your novel Magpie, which I actually only just finished reading this morning, it's so good. You know, when people hype things, I'm so contrary, I'm inclined to believe its not true. But it's really addictive, unsettling, I didn't know what was going to happen until the last few pages, and totally original. I mean, it's a thriller, based in the world of fertility, I guess. Is that too reductive?
Elizabeth Day
No, that's absolutely what it is. And also, can I just say, thank you so much for that compliment. Because listeners might not know, the recurring trope of our friendship is that I'm the emotional gusher and you're the one who's quite cynical and sparse in your compliments. So, for you to say that carries so much meaning.
Sathnam Sanghera
Yeah, just don't ever mention it. I said it and I’m kind of stabbing my leg with a fork as I say it.
Elizabeth Day
Well, thank you. But yeah, you're right. It is a book that uses the architecture of thriller writing, without it being a kind of police procedural about a grizzled detective with a complicated personal life. And I love reading those, but I find them very complicated to write. So, I use the architecture of a book that I hope is compulsive to read. And I hope is slightly sinister, slightly claustrophobic, and you don't really know what's happening as a reader. And then there's a big twist in the middle. So that's why I'm talking in such vague terms. But the themes that I explore are fertility, motherhood, the pain and battle that can go into becoming a parent, what that does to you as a human being and mental illness and the human condition. So just those tiny, superficial topics I thought I'd put into what is hopefully an accessible and readable format, and that's Magpie.
Sathnam Sanghera
Yeah, I mean, that's a really rare skill to be able to deal with those really heavy subjects in such an accessible way. I guess your last book, The Party, your last novel, that was a literary thriller, but this feels like more of a deliberate genre thriller. Am I right or wrong?
Elizabeth Day
You're right, in the sense that I knew that I wanted to write a book with a twist because I find that enormously satisfying as a reader. And I pride myself on being able to spot most twists either in books or on screen. And so, I knew that I wanted it to be a really, really good one. And it was from there that the rest of the book came about. And so, it was a deliberate choice to have that kind of reading experience. And the other thing that I think draws together a lot of my novels is that I really enjoy, as a writer and also as a reader, the experience of a kind of unreliable narration, and never quite understanding whether what you're being told is the full truth. So, Magpie opens from the perspective of Marisa, who is a woman in her late 20s, who's had, as many of us have, the dispiriting online dating experience. And she finally meets this man called Jake, who's a bit older than her, who seems to tick every single box, who seems decent and straightforward and kind, and it moves quite quickly. And they move in together quite quickly into this house where most of the action takes place. And they decide to start trying for a family together. And at this point, Jake's business isn't going that well. So, they take in a lodger, Kate. And she seems to act in quite a kind of intimate and possessive way around the house...
-
This is the Canon, written by Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne and Kadija Sesay, is a book that aims to decolonise what we think of as the literary canon, which is all too often dominated by white authors. In this week’s episode the authors talk to writer Thomas Glave about disrupting the accepted norm, highlighting different cultures and stories and their favourite books to add to your bookshelves.
You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.
For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest
Credits
Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West MidlandsTRANSCRIPT
BLF Series 2, Episode 7: This is the Canon
Intro
Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast. We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond.
You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.
This is the Canon, written by Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne and Kadija Sesay, is a book that aims to decolonise what we think of as the literary canon, which is all too often dominated by white authors. In this week’s episode the authors talk to writer Thomas Glave about disrupting the accepted norm, highlighting different cultures and stories and their favourite books to add to your bookshelves.
Thomas Glave
Hello, welcome to another episode of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents. Today we're very thrilled to have three fantastic guests discussing their new book, This is the Canon: How to Decolonise Your Bookshelves in 50 books. Our guests today are the co-authors of this title, Professor Joan Anim-Addo, who is Professor Emeritus of Caribbean Literature and Culture at Goldsmiths University, and the co-founder of the world’s first MA in Black British literature. Also Dr Deirdre Osborne, who is a Reader in English Literature and Drama at Goldsmiths University, and the co-founder of the world's first Black British literature MA. She is also associate editor of the journal Women's Writing, and she edited the Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian literature. Our third co-author is Kadija Sesay, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Kadija Sesay is a writer and editor of several anthologies, and is the founder of Sable literary magazine, and Afro poetry app. She is also co-founder of the Mboka Festival in The Gambia, and as a co-editor of IC3 published by Penguin, which will soon celebrate its 20th anniversary. We're very happy to tell you that This is the Canon is now out and available in bookshops and online everywhere. Welcome to our three guests. Thank you very much for joining us today. I'd like to start by asking you in sequence some questions just about this idea of decolonising. Starting with you, Professor Anim-Addo. What is decolonising exactly in the context of this book project?
Joan Anim-Addo
Thank you very much, Thomas. I think that decolonising has been a subject on the lips of lots of people and it's always seemed as if it's something that someone else is doing. And as readers, it seemed to us that we have a task also too. As readers, it seemed important for us to read a range of books, and insist on reading a range of books with different ways of storytelling, different characters, different rhythms from different spaces, not just Britain, for example, but to read as well as we possibly could. So, decolonising the canon, in a way opens up the way for the reader to take on that possibility, equips the reader to find a range of books to begin thinking about reading much more widely.
Thomas Glave
Thank you, Professor, very intriguing, very provocative indeed. And Dr Osborne, could you expound on this question as well? What is decolonising for you as a co-author of this book?
Deirdre Osborne
Well, I guess what's so wonderful about the book is that Joan and Kadija and I work from three very different locations in terms of perhaps how we were raised, when we were raised, where we were raised, and where we ended up living. And so decolonising is something that we have had, I think, to embrace really with all our work in literature and academia and also in a sort of literary activism that we've all been pursuing throughout our careers. And so, for me, I think it's an unquestioningly transnational idea of the capabilities of literature, that we need to open up our horizons because one person's canon, which is the sort of agreed list that gets consolidated throughout education - everyone must read these books to be an educated or learned person, which as we know, has had quite a limited framework around it - so one person's canon in another part of the world is an unknown book. And so, what we're doing with our work is to sort of make that more porous, to bring that together. So, something that might be canonical in Britain or in Senegal, and isn't in either of the other spaces, that we understand that actually, they can be read and enjoyed and also, they can serve as an inspiration to just how pluralized human beings are in the way they create and represent their experiences. So, decolonising, for me, is very much I suppose, opening up those borders of reader awareness.
Thomas Glave
Thank you, Dr Osborne. Excellent, really fascinating. Then Miss Sesay, I'd like to ask you as well. What is, for you, decolonising?
Kadija Sesay
What's been interesting, as I've just been kind of finishing up my own research for my PhD as well, which has been around Black British publishing, I actually think of it very much in a publishing context, as well. So, working with a major publisher, on such a book, when my whole work has been around decolonising publishing has been very interesting, as I'm sure you could imagine. But also, I won't go over what Joan and Deirdre have said, but I think one of the things that really, that came out of working on this in terms of an extension of thinking around decolonising, which is very easy to forget, is that this is just the first step. I think, as Deirdre mentioned, this is just a selection of books, that could be decolonising your literature, but it goes past the selection of books, it goes past showing your guests who come to dinner how decolonised you are by showing them what's on your bookshelf, it goes then to the reading, how are you reading this work and interpreting it? You have to then start shifting your mind about how you interpret it, yes, you're going to come to it from your own background and your own understanding of literature. But then you have to start thinking ...
- Show more
