If you've been writing for nearly 70 years, what drives you to continue creating new works?

I'm Lindsay Johns and you're listening to the documentary from the BBC

World Service. This is in the studio where we meet the world's most creative

people and I've come to the city of Oakland on the west

coast of the United States to speak to a man who can tell me a lot about

continuing to write. At 10 o'clock on a Sunday morning, on a holiday weekend, Ishmael Reeve is ready to work.

In downtown Piedmont pianos,

Ishmael is settling into the store's performance space,

limbering up for the first recording of a new poem

and his own new music to accompany it.

Ishmael Reed is one of America's greatest living writers.

At 86 years old he's done it all, written novels, poems, plays and essays.

That he's working at this hour on a Sunday, on a holiday weekend, tells you a lot about his work ethic and

the kind of man he is.

But he's also more than happy to tell you himself.

I'm inspired a lot by boxing. I want to win all these

championships. Right thing is fighting. Absolutely. Oh Mohammed always said that. But I

like to hold multiple titles in different weight divisions.

Ishmael is the most singular creative force I've ever encountered. In his writing, his literary and

political activism, and his role as a publisher of new writers, he's reshaped

American literature. But this pugnacious firebrand has also relished fighting for what he believes in.

Do you float like a butterfly or sting like a bee or both?

...