Backlisted - Winter Reading 2022

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

Happy New Year! We begin 2022 with a stack of books to see us through the winter: poetry, history, fiction and science. Andy, John and Nicky discuss and read from The Kids by Hannah Lowe (Bloodaxe); The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow (FSG/Allen Lane); Love in Five Acts by Daniela Krien (MacLehose Press); Men Who Feed Pigeons by Selima Hill (Bloodaxe); The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (Fitzcarraldo Editions); The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English by Hana Videen (Profile Books); Eat or We Both Starve by Victoria Kennefick (Carcanet). Plus there's a special quiz to kick things off.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)07:45 - The Kids by Hannah Lowe. 14:18 - The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. 22:25 - Love in Five Acts by Daniela Krien. 27:56 - Men Who Feed Pidgeons by Selima Hill. 37:54 - The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk. 42:03 - The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English by Hana Videen. 45:52 - Eat or We Both Starve by Victoria Kennefick* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today you find the three of us connecting across the ether for the first time in 2022. The Christmas baubles have been stowed away, the last mince pie has been eaten, the Yule log extinguished,

but the pile of books on the table continues to grow. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund the books they really want to read. I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And I'm Nikki Birch, the producer of Backlisted and co-host of Lotlisted. Happy New Year, everyone. And today it's just the three of us discussing the books we've been reading over the Christmas break and we're calling it our Winter Reading Special. Not summer reading, everybody, winter reading, do you see? Can we call it the Winter of Our

Reading Special? Yes, let's call it that. It's the winter of our reading special. But before we get on to the books that we've been reading and you might enjoy reading in the months ahead, it's time for a quiz. Oh, Andy. No, don't worry. I didn't set this one.

Half an hour later. You didn't think that the last quiz was difficult i think it was very you know what i we shouldn't get off topic immediately but it really wasn't that hard and all you people who've complained about it have a word with yourselves my best friend from school thought it was pretty easy top quizzes frank cotrell boyce and john mitchinson would beg to disagree yeah all right that's that's fair i'm still impressed that I beat John Mitchinson in a quiz. There you go. Unprecedented.

You didn't have a fellow of all souls. No, you didn't. You had Frank, obviously. No, you had the fellow of all souls. I had the fellow of all souls. I did listen back to it and thought my glee at how hard it was was perhaps too apparent, actually. So I'm sorry about that, everybody.

Fine, we loved it. Anyway, we've got a different quiz. And this is a quiz set by backlisted listener Edie, who is seven years old. Hello, Edie. Edie. Thanks, Edie. This is really great. Edie's mum, Carolyn, contacted us to say that Edie and her brother, Tom, both love reading

and they've read loads of books over the last year or two during lockdown. And that Edie has just published the first issue of a magazine called Books Are Us. And her mum sent me a few photos of the prototype issue, Books Are Us. Edie, it just looks brilliant amazing so we're what thank you for sharing it with us and on the front cover it promises five things to read

a book quiz and much more so if you like backlisted listeners make sure you get hold of a copy of books are us because it's basically the same format but better than us anyway edie's written us a quiz fantastic and um so i'm gonna ask john and nikki the questions what's it on really good it's a book quiz nikki perfect let's be honest it's a big subject i what what edie is asking you for guys and it's first person to answer is fine is could we have the title of the book that's all we want just the title of the book and the author if you want to show off show off yeah all right so i'm just gonna and edie's written a little blurb for each one so i'm just going to read you edie's blurb and then you tell me what the book is so question question one, here we go. Father Goes and Comes Back.

Railway Children. Yes, Nikki, it's the Railway Children by Ian Esbit. John couldn't remember two weeks back, but that is what it is. I've got the advantage of not having had COVID in the last two weeks. That's true. That's true. John's off his game. Still everything to play for. Everything to play for. Okay. So that was great. Father Goes and Comes Back. That's The Railway Children by E. Nesbitt. Question two.

They become poor during the war. They become poor during the war. Carrie's war? Is that your answer, John? That is my answer, yeah. I'm afraid that's not correct, so I throw it over to Nicky Birch.

They become poor during the war. Nicky, I'd just like to say I had to ask Edie's mum what the answer to this was. This is the hard question. I'm trying to think of... Which war? I'm afraid that stopped quibbling with a seven-year-old. They become poor during the war.

I don't know. It's a classic, isn't it? It's another classic. Yeah. It's one of the most famous books for young people ever written. Not The Silver Sword. It's not The Silver Sword. It's not Swallows and Amazons.

It's not Swallows and amazons during the war um do you give up yeah go edie you got me and you got them it's little women oh my god do you know what that's awful because i watched that last night shame on me this is interesting isn't it because war i just think of blitz and doodle bugs yeah me too and kids in short trousers and shrapnel and and yeah brilliant brilliant question and so that onto the third one yeah it could still be a draw goes to wizarding school harry potter harry potter oh john mitchell's oh you got there i will give you that yes harry potter in the chamber of secrets yes to be fair john you let's let's yeah let's choose a specific book but my goodness what a brilliant quiz thank you

thank you edie and carolyn and Tom as well for listening to the show and for sending that in. It was brilliant. Superb. In fact, I'm going to steal that middle question. It's a really good question. It's a good question, isn't it? It's really good.

Also, we'd like to say to everybody listening to this who listened to Christmas Day and sent the episode on the Railway Children. Thank you. Sent feedback about it. Thank you very very very much thanks to katherine and frank for being the guests and to listeners for all the wonderful feedback and also we should just say uh thank you everyone who's listening to this we hit a million downloads in a year last year um which was it was it actually landed didn't it, Nicky, on Christmas Day.

Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I don't want to say that was the most magical thing about this Christmas, but it wasn't far off. So thanks very much, everybody. That's been brilliant. What shall we talk about on our winter reading special, everybody? We're going to talk about a few books, and we're not doing the normal thing of discussing one book.

It's a bit like, what have I been reading, but ad infinitum. Yeah, what have you been reading this month is the question. That's right. So, shall I kick off? Yeah. Yeah. What have you been reading, Andy, this winter? Well, this winter, which people might like to read in the months ahead, I thought this would be a really nice opportunity to talk about a few books of poetry that I've been reading,

because we don't often talk about poetry on Batlisted. And these are all new, published in 2021. And the first one I'm going to talk about is The Kids by Hannah Lowe, which is published by Bloodaxe. And last night it won the Costa, or the night before it won the Costa Poetry Award. And it's also shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Hannah Lowe, I think this is her second or third volume. She taught, she was a teacher,

and she taught for a decade in an inner city London sixth form. And the kids of the title refers to her students, the teenagers that she taught. But the kids also mean the poems that she writes retrospectively about herself as a teenager in the 80s and 90s, and indeed her own children, her kids, her own children. So there's a conversation going on between generations of young people, herself looking back, the children she taught, the teenagers she taught in school, and her own small son. It's a really lovely collection, and it's written in the form of sonnets, although I'm going to confess that I didn't know that when I was reading it.

It's the sort of poetic conceit that passed me by. So in a sense, it matters and it doesn't matter that it's written in sonnet form. They're short, really. So I'll read you a few of them, and I've chosen three that I feel give you a sense of... Have either of you read this book, by the way? No, although it's on my list because everything I've read about it

makes me think I would love it. I can see it being very popular. It's very accessible and moving. And so, yeah, I mean, I recommend all the books that I'm going to talk about today. Otherwise, I wouldn't be talking about them. But I think you'll really like this. So this is the first one. This is called The Sixth Form Theatre Trip.

And it starts off with an epigraph an anonymous epigraph do i mean epigraph yes i do what does epigraph mean a quote from somebody else okay not an epigram that's why i was that was you know let's not get bogged down in me thinking aloud that That would be terrible. Anyway, this is called The Sixth Form Theatre Trip. And the epigraph reads, Anonymous, this is more like bloody dog walking than teaching. You've got more dogs than you can count. Big dogs and small.

One badass dog in headphones mooching up the aisle. A dog who smuggled in a hot dog. Two loving dogs back row already smooching. Some dogs are up on haunches barking. A dog or two already dozing, heads in paws, dog sighing and dreaming. The other theatre dogs look down their snouts, a pair of tutting chow-chows, some sloney poodles in the box. But when the curtains lift and your dogs are hypnotised, their ears like little hoisted sails, the wag of tails, their shining dog hearts fling wide open. They know these words, these lines, memorised like buried bones. And don't you love your dogs?

That's so good. Oh my God, that is, I get it now, the sixth form theatre trip when you've been studying that text forever and you finally go and see it. Amazing. Want to hear another one? Yeah. This one's called Peeps, as in Samuel Peeps. Yeah. ribbony hair, each with a fan of starry GCSEs, a summer of youth hostels in Europe behind them,

and the future wide open to them like a rainbow parasol, or so I thought. It was Restoration Comedies and I was reading the class an essay, and though I'd seen his name, I'd never heard it. Peppies. I said it. Peppies. Over and over, until one girl spoke up. Do you mean peeps? She said. Her voice pulled taut as a noose, as if I were the girl and what could i have said i read on peppies peppies peppies cool cool as the trickster ridiculous as the fool brilliant so there's one poem about her taking sixth formers to the theater and another poem about her being a sixth former. And then the final one I'd like to read is called Sonnet for Rosie. And this, it seems, brings both the previous things we've heard together. Sonnet for Rosie.

That girl called Rosie, soft-spoken, shyly clever, always dressed in high-tops, corduroys, a khaki bomber, and everywhere I saw her, kissing or holding the hand of a graceful black boy from the year above, turned out to be my old professor's daughter. I can't recall who told me. It doesn't matter. But how clearly I remember, catching a bus to Stamford Hill to find his flat, short dress, red lips, and lost, I asked two men in big fur hats who looked straight through me, walking on. But I found his door and upstairs talked music, film, ate buttered toast while a tiny girl called Rosie grabbed my book and crawled away across his kitchen floor.

across his kitchen floor. So it's all there, those generations of child and pupil and teacher. So that's published by Bloodaxe. That's called The Kids by Hannah Lowe. And that's the first of my poetry recommendations today. John Mitchinson, what have you been reading over the last months for in your in your sickbed well i've um i always love to have a bit of a a tackle a big history book at um especially when i've got covid and really ill especially when i've been let's be honest i have

been compromised and um and this the book that i chose is is it's already i think a bestseller kind of number one in pre-history and amazon is a brilliant mind-bending bit of history by david graber the late david graber anthropologist um and one of the theorists behind the occupy movement and david wengro an archaeologist and they have been working on this book for 10 years or were working up to david graber's untimely death last year and it is the most brilliant re examination of of the last sort of 30 000 years of human history most of which has been obviously lived in we had always traditionally been told small family bands of hunter-gatherers you know kind of being small family bands of hunter-gatherers until uh we discovered farming and then farming we started farming and then we

started to have to have cities and then we started to have to have kings and laws and police and money and so it's it's a kind of what if that isn't true because it isn't true the archaeological evidence that we've amassed over the last uh 50 years is beginning to show us that our whole vision of history is based on a sort of back formation, that we assume that everything is led up to what we've got now. There is no possible alternative. This is what the dynamic, they say, is a sort of flip-flop between the Hobbesian idea of human history, which is that life is nasty, brutal, and short, and human beings are venal and unpleasant.

I'll come on to that in a moment. And the Rousseauian idea that the noble savage that we were the fall from grace you know that we were we were once used to live in eden and everybody got along and they're just saying this is check out the evidence guys the evidence doesn't suggest that the evidence suggests that for the much more complex and interesting uh picture and they have researched they I mean, it's just a phenomenal amount of research that's gone into it. But it's written in this, I'm going to read you a bit,

it's written in this clear, quite punchy, I mean, you could give this to anybody, big kind of capital letters at the beginning of each small section saying, you know, exactly why they're, I'm totally in love with this book. It's the best history book i've read for a long long time how how long did you say it was well it's about it is about 700 pages long but quite a lot of years work is it though it's 10 years and quite there's quite a lot of footnotes i think the text runs to about 560 pages and to say that i devoured it i mean it's it's i mean i am interested in prehistory i'm interested

in archaeology and anthropology but it's like every page there's a sort of zinger and you're thinking what how did i how have i got to this stage of my life and not know more about it so if you've ever been to stonehenge and pondered what the hell was going on if you've ever thought about i mean there's a very simple idea right we we have had the same brain more or less for the last 250 000 years right there is this theory that we we didn't start doing anything useful with it until about 70 000 years ago because that's the only stuff that we found we've only found stuff that's all yeah so it's the old you know ever why would we assume as jared diamond another big theorist and yuval harari they're kind of we assume that early early

human beings were living lives of sort of savagery like sort of like kind of apes and yet why do we think that it's just a ridiculous thing to think if you think about it. If they have the same rights, why weren't they capable of political thought, of deciding that actually one of the things about farming, quite often they started farming and then they got bored with it and decided they preferred to go back to a more kind of mixed life of foraging. The world was relatively underpopulated at those times. They were having to deal sometimes with climate. It's really, the narrative is beautifully done.

I'll read you a little bit just to give you a flavor of the punchy, really, really well-written, amazingly researched. I've got a list of books now I want to go and read on the back of it. They're talking about the modern-day Hobbesian would argue, yes, we did live most of our evolutionary history in tiny bands who could get along mainly because they shared a common interest in the survival of their offspring, parental investment, as evolutionary biologists call it.

But even these were in no sense founded on equality. There was always in this version some alpha male leader. Hierarchy and domination and cynical self-interest have always been the basis of human society. It's just that collectively we've learned it's to our advantage to prioritize our long-term interests over our short-term instincts, or better, to create laws that force us to confine our worst impulses to socially useful areas like the economy while forbidding them everywhere else. As the reader can probably detect from our tone, we don't much like the choice between these two alternatives. Our objections can be classified into three broad categories. As accounts of the general course of human history, they, one, simply aren't true, two, have dire political implications, and three, make the past needlessly dull. This book is an attempt to begin to tell another more hopeful and more interesting story, one which at the same time takes better account of what the last few decades of research have

taught us. Partly, this is a matter of bringing together evidence that has accumulated in archaeology, anthropology, and kindred disciplines, evidence that points towards a completely new account of how human societies developed over roughly the last 30,000 years. Almost all of this research goes against the familiar narrative, but too often the most remarkable discoveries remain confined to the work of specialists or have to be teased out by reading between the lines of scientific publications. To give just a sense of how different the emerging picture is, it is clear now that human societies before the advent of farming were not confined to small egalitarian bands. On the contrary, the world of hunter-gatherers as it existed

before the coming of agriculture was one of bold social experiments, resembling a carnival parade of political forms, far more than it does the drab abstractions of evolutionary theory. Agriculture, in turn, did not mean the inception of private property, nor did it mark an irreversible step towards inequality. In fact, many of the first farming communities were relatively free of ranks and hierarchies. And far from setting class differences in stone, a surprising number of the world's earliest cities were organised on robustly egalitarian lines, with no need for authoritarian rulers,

ambitious warrior politicians, or even bossy administrators. And so it goes on. Anyway. This sounds like leftist propaganda of the most outrageous stripe. It makes sense because, you know, when you look at people, you say, oh, how did they do that, Stonehenge? And how did they do that? You know, the Egyptians, how did they build this?

Because they're clever. Like we are clever. Like we're clever. Honestly, it's the most refreshing history book I've read in a long time. What's it called? It's called The Dawn of Everything. Who's it by? And it's by David Graeber and David Wengro,

and it's published by Alan Lane. Very good. Right. Well, listen. Well, people's brains are already palpitating with the art and science they've been pummeled with. Nikki Birch, what have you been reading over this winter period? Well, I've been reading a very nice German translation

called Love in Five Acts by Daniela Krein. Oh, I like that cover. Oh, look at that. Beautiful. It's nice, isn't it? called Love in Five Acts by Daniela Krein. Oh, I like that cover. Oh, look at that. Beautiful. It's nice, isn't it? And it's a really lovely book. And I suppose I just wanted to talk about it because it was so,

it was just such a, I suppose, you know, you just want to have a book that just makes you forget about everything else and just enjoy reading it. And that's what this book did for me. And I, at the end of it, I just looked up who Daniela Krein, and it comes to no surprise to me to know that she's exactly this book did for me and i at the end of it i just looked up who daniela crying and it comes to no surprise to me to know that she's exactly the same age as me oh it spoke to you uh it spoke to me exactly so if you're a 46 year old middle-aged gray-haired woman yeah you might enjoy this everyone who listens to this so that's fine did you um did you apart from our seven-year-old listener

did you um apologies is this a new book newish yeah yes it was published last year right yeah yeah it was published last year it's a translation by something called jamie bullock did the translation and lovely jamie bullock do you know jamie bullock oh right well he's done a very good job you can tell him he's very good it's called love in five acts and i suppose what's so nice about it is it we were talking i think it might have been on a lock listed uh andy but we were talking about three women we were indeed the non-fiction lisa today a book and this has a very small sort of bear similarities in that and then it's five women and it's a it's fictitious so um but it's talking about love rather than relations but in this case

they are all heterosexual love uh so they are all related about relationships with men so that's the sort of similarities but it is it is a novel in the way that three women is non-fiction written is non-fiction but it's written in a similar way. And what's so lovely about it is it's a bit like, I've read a few Japanese novels when they've been translated and they're lovely and sparse. And it's got those gaps. It's very sparse and it doesn't tell you everything.

And I really like that. It looks at five women's romantic lives as they move into middle age with all the complexity and baggage that comes with that. And all these women are linked in some way, but there's no conclusive narrative. It doesn't wrap up neatly or anything like that. It's just linked by complexities of being a woman. And a woman in Germany, it touches on having a history of having been born in East Germany. But, you know, that's the sort of backdrop. But it does this really great thing where it jumps about in time.

You're never quite sure when they're speaking or what point in time in each of the narratives, but that's kind of, it's okay. And it follows it really well. And that kind of adds to that sort of space that it gives it. It's really beautiful. And it's, I think think somebody i read a nice little review that says that probably does a better job of describing it than me but um says with psychological refinement daniela crime recounts the chaos of feelings and the short half-life

of modern ways of living nice i thought oh that's really lovely this is going to be my pedestrian question every time we talk about a book today how long is it that's what i'm reduced to how how long is uh is love in five acts it's 249 pages but there's lovely big spacing between the words sounds restful compared with everything we've been talking about it's very great yeah can i read you a little bit? Please. So this is Judith, one of the five women. And Judith is more interested in her horse than dating, but she does go on internet dating sites. Okay. Judith clicks on another message, Judge 52 with photograph. Dear stranger, it will be a pleasure to have the opportunity

to invite you for a walk and a coffee afterwards. I was most interested by your profile. Our promising compatibility results leave me hopeful of a positive response. Yours, GH. Judith looks at his profile. 1.82 meters, non-smoker, two children, none at home, exercises several times per week. How does his perfect day begin? With the woman I love. What is he allergic to? Broken promises and inconsiderateness. Three things that are important to him, my children, my lover and art. She looks at his picture again. 14 years of visible age difference. Despite this, she checks her compatibility results with GH. Their gender role balance is exactly the same,

both of them scoring 104 points for my masculine side and 109 for my feminine side. For how empathetic are you, the two of them both notch up an above average 118 judith only gets 85 for adaptability whereas his score is 109 in the categories willingness to compromise introversion generosity and determination they deviate from each other by no more than three points she rarely has a result like this gh gets a message no it's good thank you so that is love in five acts by daniella crime very good so we've covered poetry history science fiction in translation get a bonus point for that uh i've got poetry again good so this is another book that's um shortlisted for the t.s elliott prize and also is shortlisted for the forwards prize

for poetry collection it's by a poet called selima hill who is published by blood axe and it's called men who feed pigeons and it's quite challenging it's quite challenging to both talk about and read this only because there should be a lot of space around each very short poem to allow each one to sink in we don't really have the time to do that but i can tell you that i've actually read this book twice over christmas because the first go-round was one of those books that was just the warm-up for the second go-round um this is something like salima's hill salima hill's 20th collection she is uh i believe she is in her 70s and um so she is a veteran and she is prolific. And this is a collection of seven sequences of very short poems. And I'm going to read to you a bit from the third sequence, which is called Billy, which is about a relationship, a friendship between a man and a woman.

You are left to do quite a lot of thinking about what the circumstances of that friendship might be. But just to say the other sequences in this book include, the first one is called The Anesthetist, which is about men at work. The second one is called The Beautiful Man with the Unpronounceable Name, which is about somebody else's husband. Biro is about living next door to a mysterious uncle with a dog. I mean, they're so wonderful. And each little sequence is like, each poem talks to all the other poems. So to get the full sense of it, you can't really just read one at a time. But nevertheless, I'm going to read a few of them from Billy, which, as I say, is about a friendship between a man and a woman.

And I'm just bringing my interpretation here, but I think the two friends may have known one another quite a long time and that one of them is becoming ill. That's my feeling. I don't know for sure. So the second poem in the sequence is called What It Feels Like To Talk To Him and it runs like this. When I talk, it feels like I'm talking to somebody who doesn't speak English, somebody who's new to this country and doesn't understand what's going on. And that's the poem in its entirety, right? So that's the, I'm going to read it again because I want to give the space around it.

It's called What It Feels Like To Talk To Him. When I talk, it feels like I'm talking to somebody who doesn't speak English, somebody who's new to this country and doesn't understand what's going on. That's it. Okay, so I'm now going to read you a sequence from the middle of this, of Billy. I'm going to read you six poems in a row, and I'm just going to – I'm not going to say anything between them. So you don't have to react to

them guys you just just let them sit okay first poem is called my life as a pair of crocs I try to look both earnest and adorable like surgeons crocs before they're sprayed with blood the extra large crab sandwich before they're sprayed with blood. The Extra Large Crab Sandwich He orders me an extra large crab sandwich. I do my best to look pleased to see. I do my best to do what God would do, if God exists, and if he eats crab. The Sea and if he eats crab. The sea.

He's sitting with his back to the sea facing the car park in a bobble hat. I myself am facing the sea. I thought the sea was the whole point. On the beach. On the beach on the beach he shouts at my dog I say don't shout he buys himself a bun

kindness some of us like to be kind and some of us are tired and can't be bothered. And finally in this section, trolley. He's like a patient propped up on a trolley who doesn't want to know he's going home, who can't or won't respond to the arms trying and failing to help him.

What do you think them being so short brings to the poems? It makes them endlessly re-readable. It's really fascinating. Every time I read through this, even as I've been reading it to you, I've been thinking, that's interesting. That goes with that thing I read in six pages time. Or in a sense, forgive me, it's all one poem. I mean, they're tiny, tiny Coen-like poems,

but they add up to a bigger thing and the feeling of them. And I'll just end by reading you the last two. And the final one is the longest poem i think in this sequence and maybe in the whole book anyway the first one says the hospital at night the patients are adrift on their wards like dust and sugar in the kitchenette the doctor says there's no way of knowing which of them will pass away next. Do you want to hear the last one? Go on.

It's a bit of a heartbreaker. It's called Kilimanjaro, Kilimanjaro, Kilimanjaro. I ask too many questions. Why is the orange orange? What's that noise? Who is author? How can it be shown flamingo lilies purify the air? Who called Kilimanjaro Kilimanjaro? Which is worse, jealousy or envy? Does he agree with the so-called moral relativists that what is right for some is wrong for others? And why do drag queens seem to love the 50s, Macintoshes, shampoo and sets? And by the time I ask him if the doctor has mentioned blepharitis, he's asleep.

If the doctor has mentioned blepharitis, he's asleep. His eyes, already small, look even smaller, defeated like two pigs in a poke. So that is Salima Hill's collection, Men Who Feed Pigeons. What I thought was interesting to do on this backlist, it is I've very consciously, I'm going to do another collection of poetry before we end. But I thought it was worth saying, you know,

these are all shortlisted collections by women. They're all wildly different from one another. Absolutely. Because why wouldn't they be? Because there are different poets writing about different things. And actually, I was a bit anxious about reading the selena hill because you could so easily rattle past it but actually it really sat very happily there as we talked about it so um they have that they have those amazing, almost like imagistic thing, don't they? The kind of the two or three lines.

I mean, I love short poetry like that. They're really, really… They're very English, I would say. Yeah. They're very sort of almost… You can almost feel a strain of Alan Bennett or Victoria Wood running through them. Yeah. Yet at the same time, they are poetry. They do land on your brain and stay there.

And the more you read them, like I say, the more they seem to talk to one another. So, yes, so that's published by Blood Act. That's Salima Hill. Are they presented as poems? Because they're all obviously, as you said, all one poem. How are they presented on the page? They're absolutely presented as poems? Because they're all obviously, as you said, all one poem. Oh, yes. How are they presented on the page? They're absolutely presented as poems.

They're two-line or four-line poems with a title. I mean, the first section, which, as I said, is called The Anesthetist, every poem is called The Anesthetist. They're arranged in alphabetical order. The Anesthetist. Do they all roll on in a narrative? Yes, but you have to do the work. You have to find your way through.

The anaesthetist, the banker, the care worker, the chauffeur, the childhood sweetheart, the classics teacher, the childhood sweetheart. And then we'll move on. But the childhood sweetheart, I've just spotted here. Look, this is brilliant. The childhood sweetheart and then we'll move on but the childhood sweetheart i've just spotted here look this is just this is brilliant the childhood sweetheart nobody lives here except sheep we spend the days standing in the river eating slows and freshwater shrimp he is one one and I, the other, gender. Oh, so good. Anyway, I really, I mean, I recommend all these books,

but that's such an interesting elliptical kind of collection. Selima Hill, Men Who Feed Pigeons. The book chat will continue on the other side of this message. John, what more have you been reading? I've been reading an even bigger book than the last book. Hooray! I mean, I'm talking epic. Oh my God, it's taken up the whole screen.

And I am, I am, where am I? I am... Two pages in. It still counts. I'm about here. Two pages in. Thank God. It still counts. I'm about here. It still counts. Yeah, where is it? Yeah, fine.

So one of the things about this book, the book that I'm holding up, everybody, is a novel. And it is a work of genius. How many pages is it? It is. Hey, don't take my question. It looks a lot from here. It's a lot.

Well, one of the curious things about this book is that it's numbered backwards so you start on page 892 so a countdown, what is the novel in question? The novel in question is The Books of Jacob

by Olga Togarchuk who is last year's, last year's, was it last year or the year before's Nobel Prize, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. Published by? Published by, in translation, a brilliant translation by Jennifer Croft by Fitzcarraldo Ed editions in the UK. I had read a previous book, which was called Flights, which I loved, which was much more contemporary and very Zeybaldian. This is set in 18th century Poland.

And I'm not going to give it a full review because I haven't finished it. But it is the most immersive than this. This, if anything got me through my, my COVID delirium, it was this book. Oh,

there's your quote for the cover. Um, it's. So if you're out there with COVID at the moment, people, this is the book to buy. All I'm going to do is read you the subtitle because it is the most immersive. It is as though you are in 18th century Poland in a small provincial town where there's a Jewish community, there's a Catholic community, there's an Orthodox community.

It's the smells. I mean, it's like the best of Russian literature, but it's also got this incredibly modern sensibility. I've not read anything. I haven't read anything like this ambitious and this brilliant for a long, long time, I have to say. So I'm going to store up my breathless superlatives for when I've actually finished it. You're going to bring this back to the group, aren't you, later? I'm going to give you the subtitle because I think it captures a spirit of the books of Jacob. Or a fantastic journey across seven borders,

five languages, and three major religions, not counting the minor sects, told by the dead, supplemented by the author, drawing from a range of books, and aided by imagination, the which being the greatest natural gift of any person, that the wise might have it for a record, that my compatriots reflect reflect laypersons gain some understanding and melancholy souls obtain some slight enjoyment isn't that a brilliant dedication wow i am i am i am in awe i don't think i've as i say i don't think i've read anything quite as remarkable for a very long time and the translation is flawless there is a buzz around this novel, isn't there? There is. Our friend Catherine Taylor gave it a glowing review.

I mean, it's, you know, let's just say it's long, but it's not long. It's one of those books when you're, you know, if you're in that slightly kind of delirious state, fiction is the most brilliant thing. You know, that kind of half awake, half asleep. And it's, yeah, I'll bring it back and tell you what. I mean, if it can sustain it

for the next 500 pages. You're a mere 350 pages in. Yeah, it's called The Books of Jacob. And it's Olga Turgachuk and it's published by Fitzcarraldo and marvellous. It's the book that won her the Nobel Prize, I think. Yeah.

Gotcha. And you've got another… Oh, yeah. Shall I tell you? This is a book called The Word Hoard, which is basically a book about… It's a little history of Anglo-Saxon. And it's just…

If you're interested remotely in language or Anglo-Saxon in particular, the lives of the Anglo-Saxons, it does, it tells you, you learn a huge amount by, she takes you through the vocabulary for eating and drinking, for warfare, for religion, for sort of, you know, self-knowledge. Is that by? And it's by Hannah Vidin. Now, Hannah Vidin runs the brilliant at oe word horde um that very popular you know an anglo-saxon word a day on twitter and that's kind of where the book starts but

i'll reach it should i reach should i reach a tiny yeah yeah so listeners who joined us at well this is one for them in fact, yeah, stand back. Oh, really? Have you still got that kind of chesty stuff from uh from covid is there something wrong so what she says is it's not obvious how this should be read aloud let alone what it means guesswork is hopeless even a rough pronunciation guide for these lines is unlikely to help so and then she goes through um explaining why it's um you know why it's end up with, so we spear days and days gone by, great kings of glory heard of how those noble men brave deeds performed. That doesn't make much

sense grammatically to us, but for those speaking it, word order wasn't essential. Unlike middle and modern English, old English uses inflection, word endings rather than syntax to indicate meaning. When we say the cat chased the dog, it means something different from the dog chased the cat, even though the spelling and form of the words are identical. The syntax subject-verb-object tells you who is chasing who and who's being chased. In Old English, as in Latin, you have to look at the word endings, um, ah, as, etc., to get the meaning. Armed with this knowledge, if we were to translate these lines using modern syntax, we'd get something like, so, we have heard about the glory of the

Speardanes, great kings in days gone by, how those noble men performed brave deeds. This not only makes sense, it has the stirring sound of an epic about to begin. Each time a translator tackles Beowulf, and we know about them, they must balance how true they are to the text, how easily their translation is understood by modern readers. And on top of that, every writer has their own literary style, their own unique voice. Reading a new translation of the poem can sometimes feel like reading a new poem. It took us many steps to reach an understanding of these lines. And it would be the same with most other Old English texts, whether poems or land charters, sermons, or medical remedies. Old English is the language you think you know until you actually hear or see it. It may as well be a foreign language to English speakers today.

And as with any foreign language, we learn Old English with study, practice, and ideally a good teacher. This book is not like a language primer so much as an old photo album. Old English words are familiar but also strange, like seeing pictures of your parents as children. There's something recognisable in their smiles, but before digging into the more recent family history, blah, blah, and then she goes on. Oh, it's great.

It's really well written. As you know, I've done a bit of Anglo-Saxon in my time. Yes, it's a very, very superior toilet book, published by Profile. I was going to say, what do you buy the man who published Cain's Jawbone at Christmas? Turns out to be this. Okay, so that's The Word Hoard by... Hannah Wiedin, published by Profile. We're going to hear a poem from the third and final collection of poetry I want to talk about,

but let's just hear the poem first. During the past two years of this pandemic, we've all had perhaps more than we like time with ourselves. And even though this poem predates that pandemic experience, I think it might still speak to it. Selfie. Sitting alone in the house, eating my fingernails, watching the sky move away. The room is full, versions of me crouching on the floor, balancing on the windowsill, reclining on the pout of my lower lip, asleep in the crease of my eyelid. Not alone, with myself, a snare I have been running from.

I do not live the way humans are supposed to, compare my face to others you know. I fall short, Compare my face to others you know. I fall short. An embarrassing fringe. No matter what face I try on, it's exhausting. All versions shake our heads. There is much to do until we think we are not what we are. Victoria's. I see those letters written on envelopes I know are for me. Because of the shape of that word. That greedy V. It's two arms open wide, ready to accept anything. That is Victoria Kennefic reading her poem Selfie from a collection called Eat or We Both Starve. This is her debut collection, slightly mind-blowingly.

Shortlisted for the Costa and again for the TSLA. How different, right? This is what I mean. How different. They're all on the same shortlist. How different they all are from one another. And actually, I was so pleased to find that because I'm going to read... And it's good for poetry at the moment isn't it yeah one of i'm

going to read one of the poems myself and then we're going to hear from another poem by her but she's such a good reader of her work this is this is a really interesting provocative rather beautiful and rather disturbing collection about the relationship between Irish history, female identity and food. And I went into it thinking, what am I going to get from this? And I came out of it thinking, well, like all great poetry, what I got was the sense that I was somebody else. And Victoria Kennevic's ability to articulate a way of seeing the

world, a place and a way of life, seemed to me totally persuasive and surprising, actually. And again, I read this twice because it took me the first reading to get my head around some of the reference points and then having got them, go back and dig into them. And again, like the previous two collections I've talked about, what I'm fascinated by is is volumes of poetry that work as volumes in their own right you know there is an argument that says you shouldn't do that that you should the poem is the atomic element and the poem should be separate but all

the volumes of poetry that I really like work as books and these all work as books these all are collections whose which are structured with a view that you would read them through. So I'm doing them something of a disservice today by picking out individual poems. If you want to read them as books, you should read them as books because that's the intention. Isn't it a little bit like albums? You know, if you're just sticking stuff in to fill inside too, it's probably not going to be, you know, I think that whole idea of the shape of a collection is really important.

And I mean, like you, I've started to now, I love to go back and read, you know, my favorite poets in their original collections because A, there are quite often poems that don't make it into selected poems if they're the kind of writers or that it's just also there's just a sequencing you can see that there's been sequent there's been thought put into the way the poems are arranged yeah it's like nikki you were asking me about selena hill are they set out as poems in a sense all the books are the same that They're all, you could read them all as long poems full of poems.

The poems speak to one another as they go along. But can you quote them all separately? Well, I'm going to read one, and then we're going to hear Victoria reading another one because I think there is a real difference between what I'm able to achieve and what she the author is able to achieve but that you know i'm cutting myself some slack there i just thought it was really interesting to hear a man read one of these as opposed to a woman who is the author read one of them. So this poem is called Choke.

I want to hold things in my mouth, a key, buttons, a fingernail, the click of a boiled sweet against enamel. A toddler, I stole my mother's pills, prized the lid off the bottle with tiny teeth, arranged the capsules by colour and size. My mother panicked when she found me, tablets skittled on the bedspread. At the hospital, the nun held the cup of charcoal to my mouth. the cup of charcoal to my mouth. I spat black into a white bowl. Its burnt taste, I thought, must be bad. A child, given a boiled sweet by a cousin, I popped it in my mouth, turned a dainty shade of blue. My father spun me upside down, the sweet shaken loose. In another version, my mother pushes the sweet down my throat with a finger.

Or maybe that was when I was three and nearly choked in a different cousin's house, gagging on another boiled sweet. Maybe that's what I'm looking for. My mother's finger down my throat, pushing sugar deep into me. I mean, that seems to me so personal and brave, that poem, to hand it over to me to read, as it were. That is really, really striking. If I was a listener, Andy, I'd be saying,

ooh, I got halfway through that and then I had to order it. Well, good. That sounds amazing. I mean, it is incredibly rich. Get it from the library. Get it from the bookshop. Really rich period of poetry. All three of these are brilliant. They're nothing like one another.

And different age groups, different types of poetry, different effects, different concerns. They're all marvellous. Let's hear another one from Victoria herself. This is Victoria Kennefic reading Cork Schoolgirl considers the GPO Dublin 2016. Cork Schoolgirl considers the GPO Dublin 2016. Quark schoolgirl considers the GPO Dublin 2016. I'm standing outside the GPO in my school uniform, which isn't ideal. My uniform is the colour of bull's blood. In this year, I am 16, a pleasing symmetry because I love history. Have I told you that?

It is mine, so I carry it in my rucksack. I love all the men of history sacrificing themselves for Ireland, for me, these rebel Jesuses. I put my finger in the building's bullet holes, poke around in its wounds. I wonder if they feel it, those boys. I hope they do, their blooming faces pressed flat in the pages of my books. I lick the wall as if it were a stamp. It tastes of bones, this smelly city. Of those boys in uniforms, there's bloody too. I put my lips to the pillar. I want to kiss them all. And I do. I kiss all those boys goodbye.

So good. So there you go. That collection is called Eat or We Both Starve by Victoria Kennefig brilliant Andy thanks for bringing us to those poems just really wonderful

I'll tell you what else about poetry poetry and light reading is a solitary pleasure but as soon as we talk about it it unpacks it in a different way it's so uh interesting to have brought those to the to backlisted today so yeah so all the books are available uh to borrow from the library or buy it from our bookshop i think are they they probably are most of them yeah bookshop. I think. Are they? They probably are, aren't they? Most of them, yeah. Bookshop.org you mean? Forward slash

backlisted. That is what I'm referring to. The backlisted bookshop on bookshop.org. We can't tell you what the next book is going to be on Backlisted, but it's very, very special. The one member of the gang.

And unless you're on our Patreon, in which case we'll be telling you next weekend. So there's still time to sign up for the episode of Locklisted. We'll put it in that. And there might be a little competition in the next Locklisted as well. But we'll save that for then. A quiz. A quiz.

Locklisted for the uninitiated is us talking about not just books but films and music and stuff like that too so yeah go to our Patreon if you want more of this it's quite like this really isn't it it is but we've got the next several episodes of Backlisted lined up and ready to go we think you'll be pleased

there's some good stuff coming up thanks again everybody for listening thanks Nikki Birch from Backlisted is there anything you want yeah there's some good stuff coming up thanks again everybody for listening thanks nikki birch from backlisted is there anything you want to add are there any final matters you wish to bring to listeners attention no i'm just really looking forward to um beating my uh number of books that i read last year because i write them all down now since i've started working on backlisted and uh this year was a bit of a fallow year for me compared to last year, so I need to up my game.

We've ruined your life. Yeah, sorry about that. That's excellent. Anyway, so yeah, go forth and read. That's what I'm looking forward to and excited to see what books we're going to have in this year. All right, John, take it away. That is all we have time for.

Thank you for listening and for the support you've given us over the past year you can download all 153 previous episodes of bat listed okay every and one day i'll say this without laughing it just seems so absurd there's 153 episodes anyway you can download all 153 previous episodes plus follow links clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website batlisted.fm and we're always pleased if you contact us on twitter and facebook and now in sound and pictures on instagram too you can also show your love directly by supporting our patrons nick you just said www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted we aim to survive without paid for advertising your generosity helps us do that all patrons get to hear backlisted episodes early

and for rather less than a Now TV subscription, lot listeners get two extra lot listed a month. The show where we three kick back and share notes on the things we've seen, heard, read, and mostly enjoyed in the previous fortnight. Lot listeners also get to hear their names read out on the show as a mark of our thanks and appreciation. And this week's batch roll call is Susan Duffy.

Thank you. Paul Marshall. Dominic Hartley. Faye Young. Oliver Stanier. Luke Williamson. Vicky Johnson. Matty Tong.

The great Una McCormack. The great Una McCormack. Former guest. Well, I mean, former guest. Guestack, the great Una McCormack, former guest, well, I mean, former guest, guest again, I'm sure. Regular guest. Regular returning guest. Michael Livingston, Anita Ives, Padma, Deborah Jones. And we're also delighted to welcome Susan Reynolds and Audrey Gaynor to our Guild of Master Storytellers,

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every single one of those books we talked about. All three volumes of poetry and two very long books and a novel and we'll see you on backlisted next time thanks everyone bye © BF-WATCH TV 2021 If you prefer to listen to Backlisted without adverts, you can sign up to our Patreon. It's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. As well as getting the show early,

you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted, which is Andy, me and Nicky talking about the books, music and films we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight.