Mould-Breaking Writing
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 1 December 2020
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From surrealism and science fiction to inspiration drawn from historic objects in stately homes and the painting of Francis Bacon: Shahidha Bari hosts a conversation with Will Harris, who has written long-form poems; new Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Max Porter and Chloe Aridjis, who have written poetic novels which play with form; and academic Xine Yao, who looks at speculative fiction.
Max Porter is the author of Grief Is The Thing With Feathers and Lanny. He has also collaborated with the Indie folk band Tunng and has a book out in January called The Death of Francis Bacon.
You can hear dramatizations of Lanny at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000pqdc and Grief Is The Thing with Feathers on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000plzl
Chloe Aridjis is a London-based Mexican writer who has published the novels Book of Clouds, Asunder and Sea Monsters, and was awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2020. She was co-curator of a Leonora Carrington exhibition at Tate Liverpool and writes for Frieze.
They have been announced as Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature to mark the 200th anniversary of the RSL https://rsliterature.org/
Will Harris is a writer of Chinese Indonesian and British heritage who won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2020 and is shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2021 for his collection RENDANG. He co-edited the spring 2020 issue of The Poetry Review with Mary Jean Chan.
Xine Yao is one of the 2020 New Generation Thinkers on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the AHRC to turn research into radio. She teaches at UCL on American Literature in English to 1900, with an interest in literatures in English from the Black and Asian diasporas, science fiction, the Gothic, and comics/graphic novels.
You can find more conversations in the playlist Prose and Poetry on the Free Thinking website, which includes Max Porter discussing empathy, Christine Yao looking at science fiction and the experimental writing of the Oulipo group, and a whole series of conversations recorded in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vh
Producer: Emma Wallace
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps |
| 0:21.2 | it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream |
| 0:26.1 | van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. Hello, how do you |
| 0:33.3 | feel about novels with birds that talk, plots that meander and lettering that wobbles on the page. |
| 0:39.2 | We'll be talking about mould-breaking writing with Will Harris, Chloe O'Rejus, Max Porter and Zain Yao. |
| 0:45.0 | Join me Shah-Davari for the ever-adventurous Arts and Ideas podcast just after this. |
| 0:51.7 | Classical Fix, the show from Radio 3 which opens up the incredible world of classical |
| 0:56.4 | music to people who don't know where to start. I'm Jules Buckley and each week I make a playlist |
| 1:02.5 | for a special guest, a DJ, pop musician, writer and they give me their honest reactions. I really |
| 1:08.8 | loved this piece of music. Really stunning. I was so |
| 1:12.1 | distracted by this horns. I just got really annoyed and switched it off. Pick one out of the six. |
| 1:19.0 | This is tough. Classical Fix, available now on BBC Sounds with a new episode every Monday morning. |
| 1:27.4 | Hello, in today's program, Talkative Crows, Kianu Reeves and Sea Monsters. |
| 1:32.7 | As ever, anything goes in an episode of rethinking, but especially in today's program |
| 1:37.5 | where we'll be exploring experimental writing with a group of genre-busting and |
| 1:42.1 | mole-breaking novelists, poets and thinkers. |
| 1:45.5 | Just how mould-breaking they are, you might have to decide for yourself. |
| 1:49.9 | There's novelist Max Porter, author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, and Lanny. |
| 1:54.6 | His latest book out in January is about the artist Francis Bacon |
| 1:58.2 | and comes in the intriguing form of seven written pictures. |
| 2:01.9 | And then there's Chloe Aregis, the London-based Mexican writer whose novel Sea Monsters, |
| 2:07.1 | which won the Penn Faulkner Prize for Fiction this year, features runaway dwarves and surreal dreams |
... |
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