London Review Bookshop Podcast

Brenda Shaughnessy’s Liquid Flesh (Bloodaxe) gathers together poems from across her first five collections, as thrilling and unpredictable as any contemporary American poet. Writing about her work in the Boston Review , Richard Howard says that ‘when anything is as fresh as this diction, as free as these associations, as fraught as these passions, it is not descriptions or definitions which are wanted but the thing itself, the new words in new places, the necessary instigations’. Brenda Shaughnessy was in conversation with Amy Key, whose second collection, Isn’t Forever , came out with Bloodaxe in 2018, and whose new book inspired by Joni Mitchell's Blue , is forthcoming in spring 2023.

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In Ruth Padel’s latest pamphlet, Watershed, the poet reflects on the natural world, on water, and on the psychology of denialism, particularly where it concerns the climate crisis. Padel was joined in reading and conversation by Sean Borodale, whose latest pamphlet is Re-Dreaming Sylvia Plath as a Queen Bee.

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In Toy Fights poet Don Paterson recounts his childhood in working-class Dundee. This is a book about family, money and music but also about schizophrenia, hell, narcissists, debt and the working class, anger, swearing, drugs, books, football, love, origami, the peculiar insanity of Dundee, sugar, religious mania, the sexual excesses of the Scottish club band scene and, more generally, the lengths we go to not to be bored. ‘A tremendously engaging memoir’ writes William Boyd, ‘seasoned with Don Paterson's customary wit, total recall and love of language. A classic of its kind.’

Paterson talks about the book with poet Declan Ryan, whose whose debut collection, Crisis Actor, will be published by Faber in July.

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Ian Patterson, in both poetry and prose, revels in language, its possibilities, absurdities and contradictions. He joined fellow poet Keston Sutherland for conversation at the Bookshop, and to read from and present his latest collection Shell Vestige Disputed.

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Buy Shell Vestige Disputed: lrb.me/ianpattersonpod

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30 years after he reinvented the family memoir with And When Did You Last See Your Father? poet, critic and novelist Blake Morrison returns to the subject of his family in Two Sisters (The Borough Press) which reflects on the recent deaths of his two sisters as well as on the often fraught relationships of siblings in history and literature.Morrison was in conversation with Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of Everyone is Still Alive (Phoenix).

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Based on the true story of an unsolved mystery, Sophie Mackintosh’s new novel, Cursed Bread (Hamish Hamilton), centres on a small village community upturned by the arrival of a glamourous couple. Jo Hamya calls the book‘sensuous and haunted, like Madame Bovary reworked as a ghost story’. Mackintosh was in conversation with Rebecca Watson, author of Little Scratch (Faber).

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In Affinities, aseries of linked essays, Brian Dillon investigates what it might mean for a thing to be like something else, and what it might mean for things to be connected even when they are nothing like one another. Currently Professor of Creative Writing at Queen Mary, University of London, Dillon’s writing is always surprising, and revelatory. Expect both revelations and surprises.

Dillon was joined in conversation by the writer Jennifer Higgie, whose latest book isThe Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World.

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Fellow of All Souls, Oxford and regular LRB contributor Clare Bucknell argues in The Treasuries: Poetry Anthologies and the Making of British Culture (Head of Zeus) that the selective way in which poetry has been presented over the past three centuries tells a fascinating story about the democratisation of literature, class, gender, politics and nationalism. She talks about it with another regular LRB contributor, social and architectural historian Rosemary Hill.

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In one of the most eagerly anticipated debuts of 2023, LRB editor Tom Crewe presents a fictionalised account of the lives and loves of John Addington Symonds and Henry Havelock Ellis. The New Life charts their collaboration on a revolutionary work that set out to transform our understanding of sexual ethics. Tom Crewe was in conversation with Paul Mendez, author of another ground-breaking debut Rainbow Milk.

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Novelist and essayist Michael Bracewell reads from and talks about his latest novel Unfinished Business. An apparently ordinary, suburban office life, with its regular troubles of work, ambition, disappointment, marriage, age and bereavement becomes sharpened as pleasure is mistaken for happiness.

Bracewell is in conversation with Gwendoline Riley, author of First Love and My Phantoms.

Find upcoming events on the Bookshop website: lrb.me/eventspod

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