What Do We Mean by "Working Class Writing"?
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 4 April 2018
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kit de Waal, Darren McGarvey, Adelle Stripe and Michael Chaplin join Shahidha Bari to examine what we mean by ‘working class writing’. Crowd funding has helped bring a new generation of authors into print but is this because mainstream publishing has neglected diverse voices? What experiences do we want to see on the page and stage? Recorded at Sage Gateshead.
Kit de Waal’s short stories include “Crushing Big”, “I am the Painter's Daughter” and “The Beautiful Thing” - which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her debut novel My Name Is Leon was shortlisted for the Costa First Book Award 2016. De Waal used some of her advance for My Name Is Leon to found the Kit de Waal Creative Writing Fellowship to improve working-class representation in the arts. Her new novel is called The Trick To Time.
Darren McGarvey, author of Poverty Safari, is also known as Loki, a Scottish hip-hop artist, writer and community activist. Darren was rapper-in-residence at Police Scotland’s Violence Reduction Unit.
Adelle Stripe and written 3 collections of poetry and her debut novel Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile is inspired by the life and work of Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar. It was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and received the K Blundell Trust Award for Fiction.
Michael Chaplin has written extensively for TV, radio and theatre. A journalist, TV documentary producer and executive and now full time writer, he created the TV series Grafters and Monarch of the Glen and has written 8 theatre plays and numerous works for radio including Two Pipe Problems and Tommies. He is also the editor of Hame, a collection of essays, short stories and poems by his father Sid Chaplin, the acclaimed writer whose works are mostly set in the North East.
Recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival.
Producer: Zahid Warley
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 that it's a long time ago, right? |
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| 0:32.0 | Hello, I'm Shah Hadabari. |
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| 1:29.0 | I don't want to belong to the well-to-do middle class. I belong to the common people, says Paul Morrill in D.H. Lawrence's novel, sons and lovers. From the middle classes, one gets ideas, he explains, but from the common people, life itself, warmth. A definition of the working class, they're courtesy of a famous novelist with impeccable working class credentials. But is warmth all that working class writing provides? And how |
| 1:34.5 | well have working class people and their experiences been understood and expressed in literature? |
| 1:40.1 | Joining me to explore these questions are Darren McGarvey, otherwise known as the hip-hop artist Loki. |
| 1:45.0 | Darren is an author, presenter and social commentator. He grew up in the Pollock housing estate of |
| 1:49.5 | Glasgow, and his book, Poverty Safari, seeks to understand the anger of Britain's underclass. |
| 1:55.5 | Prize-winning novelist Kit DeValle, she's the founder of a creative writing fellowship |
| 1:59.9 | dedicated to improving working class representation in the arts, and she She's the founder of a creative writing fellowship dedicated to improving working class |
| 2:02.1 | representation in the arts, and she's also the editor of Common People, a crowdfunded anthology |
| 2:07.3 | of working class writers. Adel Stripe, poet and writer from Tadcaster in Yorkshire, her debut |
| 2:13.7 | novel, Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile, Pieces together the life and work of the Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar, |
| 2:20.9 | and Michael Chaplin, who as well as writing Monarch of the Glen for television and part of the World War I series, |
... |
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