Don Paterson and Michael Ondaatje's new books meditate on poetry, time and memory

NPR's Book of the Day

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Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 2024

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today's episode features interviews with two poets whose new works look back in time, either in their own lives or those of their subjects. First, Don Paterson speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about his new memoir, Toy Fights, which recounts his childhood in Scotland. The two get to talking about Paterson's self-described "descent into madness" and the reason his poems go unmentioned in the book. Then, Simon speaks with Michael Ondaatje about A Year of Last Things, and how the Booker Prize-winning writer thinks about going back and forth between fiction and poetry.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Poetry is more of a kind of diagnosis
0:07.7	than it is a calling. That's something said by one of our guests on the pod today, and he's
0:13.1	kidding, I think, but maybe not, because today we've got two discussions that are fundamentally
0:18.8	about the type of person who can write
0:21.2	poetry. In a bit, we'll hear from Michael Undace, the author of the book, The English Patient,
0:26.5	who talks about amphibious writers, you know, writers who can do both prose and poetry well,
0:31.6	think Raymond Carver or Louise Urtrick. But first, the guy who said that quote I opened with,
0:37.1	Don Patterson, the acclaimed
0:38.3	Scottish poet who's out with a memoir titled Toy Fights, and he talked to NPR Scott Simon
0:43.1	about why a famous poet would write a book that doesn't mention poetry. That's ahead.
0:50.6	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:55.3	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
0:59.9	On our new show, Sources and Methods.
1:01.9	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,
1:05.7	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:09.5	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:14.9	Don Patterson is one of the great poets in the world.
1:18.4	He's the only poet to twice win the T.S. Eliot Prize and is a fellow of the Royal Society
1:22.9	of Literature. But he left school at the age of 16 to play guitar.
1:29.0	There's scarcely any references to poetry in his childhood memoir of growing up in a
1:33.9	working-class housing block in Dundee, Scotland during the 1970s.
1:39.2	There are telling and hilarious recollections like this about bedwetting.
	...

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