SIM Ep 853 Chops 255: Cornwall, rural poverty, resilience and writing

Standard Issue Podcast

Standard Issue

Society & Culture

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Working-class poet and writer Natasha Carthew is Cornish. She grew up in a small village called Downderry, where the rockpools, beautiful beaches and hedgerows were as constant as the low wages, high property prices, lack of nearby resources and services, and the high rates of alcoholism, drug misuse, mental health crises and suicide. How’s that for a picture perfect postcard? Rural poverty often gets lost amid the stats on urban poverty, so in her first non-fiction, Undercurrent: A Cornish Memoir of Poverty, Nature and Resilience, amid recollections of her youth, Natasha investigates the state of poverty in rural places in general, and Cornwall in particular. In this Chops, Natasha chats to our Mick about the generational trauma of rural poverty, the othering of poor kids, and how careless tourists add to the problem. But it’s not all doom and gloom: Natasha is a huge champion of working-class voices and so they also talk about the power of resilience and writing, and the return of the excellent ClassFest in 2024. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, welcome to this week's Sunday Chops. It's Mickey bringing you the weekend
0:18.2	good stuff, and I say good stuff because poet and writer Natasha Carthew is a total
0:23.0	delight, but it is also maddening stuff, because we're chatting about rural poverty and how,
0:28.8	well, how not many people in power seem to give a fuck about it. Natasha is Cornish and grew
0:34.0	up in a small village called Downdairy, and her new memoir, Undercurrent, charts the poverty,
0:38.8	nature and resilience that marks her childhood and marks her forever. Amid recollections of her
0:44.0	youth and the rock pools, hedgerows and bays that make Cornwall one of the UK's most beautiful
0:48.5	places, Natasha investigates the state of poverty in rural places in general and Cornwall in particular,
0:54.8	and that picture is definitively not pretty. It's not Natasha's first time on the podcast,
1:00.8	I chatted to her in October 2021 about her brilliant literary festival, The Working Class
1:05.2	Writer's Festival, or Classfest, as it's known, and that will be back next year, which is very
1:09.8	exciting. She is a huge advocate and activist for working house voices, writing pretty much saved
1:15.6	Natasha, and she works hard to ensure it can be the same lighthouse for others. Undercurrent,
1:21.2	a Cornish memoir of poverty, nature and resilience is a glorious roar of a book,
1:25.3	published by Coronet, and out now. Hello, I'm joined on the Zoom by Working Class
1:31.3	Power and Writer, Natasha Carfew, Natasha, hello. Hi, Mickey, good to talk to you again,
1:36.4	been a long time, I think. Good to have you back on the podcast, it's been like a year and a half,
1:40.9	I think. Really, wow, yeah. I purposely put the identifier working class in my introduction,
1:47.6	because it is really key to absolutely everything you do, isn't it? It is, yeah, it's part of my writing,
1:54.3	and it's part of my activism, I suppose, as artistic director of Class Festival, which hopefully
2:00.4	is coming back next year, but yeah, it's in my own writing, and now with my memoir, it's like
2:04.9	upfront and personal. Absolutely, so your new memoir, your first memoir, because I'm hoping
	...

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