You may have seen this nice campaign running today by the European Writers’ Council, the Society of Authors and other international writers organisations for #WorldBookDay2022.
I haven’t seen so many UK colleagues joining in. But I like the idea, so am posting here and on my other social media ICYMI and in solidarity with bookish friends everywhere. Especially wherever writers are being persecuted right now.
PS joinEnglish PENor the local branch where you are, if you haven’t already!
I love collaborating and performing with musicians. I learn so much from how a musician will read and respond to a story. How they can find new themes, structures and ideas in a piece of fiction. And how they open up a story for readers to access in new ways.
It’s always a revelation. Even down to things like knowing how many BPM you read at!
I’ve been really privileged to collaborate with some amazing musicians including Richard Norris, Simon Edwards, Jamie Telford, New Pope, and more. (This photo is from my performance with New Pope at the TULCA Festival in Galway, November 2016.)
I’ve just updated the audio page on my site, where you’ll find various live and studio recordings and collaborations. Most of the tracks are downloadable for you to takeaway and listen to on your preferred device.
An early start today. In fact it’s an early start every day at the moment, as it always is when I’m on the finishing stretch of any novel. And from deep in the edit of a forthcoming work of fiction comes this cryptic note-to-self; part intensifier, part organising principle. What could it possibly mean?
If anyone can guess what it stands for, I’d be impressed.
I found this old press clipping recently, and it’s taken me on a journey to Cardiff. Come along with me.
The clipping’s from the days when Time Out still had destination books pages, and an actual Books Editor in post! It’s a review by author John Williams. It was an important magazine at the time, with huge circulation. Everyone used to read it. So it was a thrill to get a brief positive review in John’s then regular/occasional crime fiction round-up. Especially for a confrontational avant garde novel like Charlieunclenorfolktango!
It was critics in the country’s various listings magazines – The List, The Source, etc. some of you may remember, some may still be going – that responded most positively to the novel in general, IIRC. And BTW some of those reviews are collected on the‘Selected Press’ page on this site.
I have since got to know John Williams a bit. Among other things because a beautiful, short, off-the-cuff poem about Cardiff by him (set in Chapter Arts Centre) is collected in Borivoj Radakovic’s 2002 book for Piece of Paper Press, ‘Posjetiteljeva Knjiga’ (or ‘Visitors’ Book’).
Radakovic’s book is a compilation of scans from his notebook, comprising dedications and short texts by writers Boro spent time with on a trip to the uk in early 2002. Radakovic is an important translator of English language literature into Croatian.
It’s a really wonderful poem in fact. If you can’t read John’s writing I’ll put the text in below.
Here’s how John Williams’s poem looks in Borivoj Radakovic’s book.
If John’s name rings a bell, it may be because he’s written many great books, not all of them Cardiff-related, although some are, including Bloody Valentine, about the murder of Lynnette White and the wrongful convictions of the so called ‘Cardiff 3’. Right now, out this week in fact, his new biography of CLR James — CLR James: A Life Beyond Boundaries — is getting universally brilliant reviews across the broadsheets, and sounds really excellent.
Here is John’s poem in type:
§
We are in Chapter Arts Centre – there are a lot of writers here. There is Niall Griffiths, Lloyd Robson, Sean Burke. There are writers here, this is Cardiff.
This is Cardiff: Clark’s Pies & Brains Beer, steel & wool, docks & ships. This is Cardiff: it used to be a fighter’s town & now it’s a writer’s town.
Handmade ‘business card’ given out by Sarah Lucas (and Tracey Emin) at the opening of Young British Artists II, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Sarah Lucas, Marc Quinn and Mark Wallinger, Saatchi Gallery, February 1993.
Deleting photos to make space on my phone, I found these screengrabs of a Zoom talk by the author Iain Sinclair, maybe some time last year, which seemed too good to lose entirely, so I screengrabbed the grabs.
Having seen him speak many times and shared a platform with him once or twice, I can say that any talk by Sinclair is worth seeing if you get a chance. Guaranteed to be rich, digressive, generous, associative, generative. Thinking on his feet, riffing off a deep knowledge of literary currents and countercultures that’s born of decades of thoughtful practice and of practical encounters, and that fantastic memory; a stream of anecdotes and insights intertwined.
I had the privilege of interviewing Iain Sinclair for the Idler, around the time of the millennium. I wangled us a trip on the London Eye before it opened. I couldn’t believe no one had already commissioned him to write about it. Read Tony White’s interview with Iain Sinclair on the London Eye…
Just a heads-up if you’ve been intrigued by the many reviews, but needed another reason to buy The Fountain in the Forest, I just learned that the paperback (B-format, in the neon blue livery) is currently* half-price on Am*z*n.
I know that lots of readers prefer to buy from their local bookshops, whether indies or chains like Waterstones, Daunts or Blackwells, as well as from online alternatives such as Hive, and Bookshop.org, but equally I know that lots of readers buy from Am*z*n. Frankly, I’m just glad people are reading at all.
As I work on completing volumes two and three of the trilogy, I’m hugely grateful for all of the interest and support that continues to be shown for The Fountain in the Forest – thank you!
It reminded me of several things. Firstly, how privileged we are as authors to have such vision, insight, craft and experience brought to bear in the production of our books. Then, how much I love the detail of Luke Bird’s design, such as the way that Pantone 802c (the flourescent green used for the lettering of the title) interacts and interferes with the background image: Louis Lafitte’s engraving of an allegory for the revolutionary month of Thermidor. And how proud I was to have The Fountain in the Forest going out into the world with such a unique, striking and (perhaps?) influentialdesign.
As well as posting favourite covers on their Instagram and Twitter profiles, Spine Magazine reports on creative and production aspects of the book publishing industry, with many in-depth and insightful articles by leading designers, illuminating the design and production process, plus university press roundups, monthly cover galleries, and more.
If you’re interested in these aspects of publishing, then there will be much of interest here!
During the COVID-19 Lockdowns, online events made it possible for all of us to continue meeting up and participating in bookshop events and Zoom gigs of all kinds, including critic David Collard’s A Leap in the Dark and Carthorse Orchestra events. These weekly, online salons, Zoom gatherings, were a lifeline. Online events dissolved geographical hurdles, and meant that it was just as simple for me to attend author and bookshop events at City Lights in San Francisco as it was the London Review Bookshop or Burley Fisher in London. Or Tariq Shah’s booklaunch (left), which I attended because I happened to be on Instagram when publisher Dead Ink (whom I follow) started the livestream. Anyone who works in books or is into books will have had similar experiences.
But crucially, online events also opened up events to disabled authors and readers, and to those who might not be able or afford to travel and buy tickets. These kinds of access have been real and unexpected benefits of the COVID-19 emergency, so it would be a great shame to lose them now.
#KeepFestivalsHybrid is a campaign to encourage event organisers in the publishing world to prioritise accessibility by running events both in-person and online . . . In 2020, the pandemic saw the publishing world embrace online events. This had an immediate and profound effect on the way that disabled people and those with chronic illnesses could engage with literary festivals and other events for writers and readers. Suddenly it became possible for people in this group to participate in and enjoy literary activities in a way that they had been precluded from until now. This level playing field is now under threat as pandemic restrictions loosen and literary festivals begin to return to their pre-Covid business model.
#KeepFestivalsHybrid, at Red Door Press
Red Door have written an open letter to literary festival organisers, asking them to (where possible) offer both in-person and online tickets for literary events. Add your signature here: https://bit.ly/3bU4bso
Le Tellier is a mathematician and current president of celebrated experimental writers group Oulipo (the Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or ‘Workshop of potential literature’). Its members, including Georges Perec (1936–1982), have been applying mathematical and scientific ideas to writing since 1960. In scientific terms, Le Tellier himself describes The Anomaly as a ‘thought experiment’, but if so it’s one that he pulls off with a rare lightness and aplomb.
Piece of Paper Press & tonywhite.london 
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