RMSYL 40: Gemma Seltzer reads Tom-Rock Through the Eels by Amy Hempel

Posted on October 10, 2012 by | Leave a comment

gemma seltzerGemma Seltzer is cool.

I am probably not the first person to arrive at this estimation of her, and I shall no doubt be one of a very orderly queue lining up to say so now and in the future.

Her book Speak To Strangers has everything in it that I find exciting and compelling about creative nonfiction. Which some people call docufiction. Anyway, one of those reality-hungry hybrids.

You’d probably just call it great writing if you were to read it, which you should, which it is - formulated around a beautifully simple and elegant notion.

This short story has nothing to do with E’s Eels (those Novocaine For The Soul Eels), but you still might need some 2-(diethylamino)ethyl 4-aminobenzoate after listening. It’s powerful stuff. That’s what we dispense over here at RMYSL The Chemist.

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Posted in Hempel, Amy

RMSYL 39: Le Pont Mirabeau by Guillaume Apollinaire (read by Anouche Sherman)

Posted on September 23, 2012 by | Leave a comment

The machine, the industry that is culture works predominantly with and in the “now”.

The official ethos is a warm, mindfully glowing “Be Here Now”. But what that really translates into is “BUY THIS NOW!”.

Fair enough. Literature is a kind of sustenance that doesn’t adhere to the same rules as other forms of nourishment. I can no longer be nourished by the food I ate last week, but I can be just as nourished, perhaps even more so by re-reading a book I bought ten years ago.

This is not good news for publisher, or writers churning out their Next Big Thing. But it is good news for us readers as long as we can ignore 93.2% of everything we are “fed” by Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon.

This is another reason why I love getting together with people to hear them read me something they love. It is hardly ever the most recent thing they’ve read. Deep abiding affection and esteem (love?) takes time to bed in.

Even though this poem, particularly for the French, is familiar enough to no doubt have bred contempt for some, it is still probably a more interesting poem than 93.2% of anything written in the last month or so.

Our conversation felt “new” too. And so it was. For never has this poem been passed consecutively through these pairs of eyes and ears (Anouche’s and mine), and talked about in the way we did.

Even the poem itself has never read entirely this way as Anouche provided her own translation of this classic “pont”. Perfect listening for a rainy, autumnal day.

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Posted in Apollinaire, Guillaume

RMSYL 38: Mount Appetite by Bill Gaston (read by DW Wilson)

Posted on September 10, 2012 by | 1 Comment

It seems kind of fitting that I first heard DW Wilson’s prize-winning[1] short story The Dead Roads about this time last September, midway through a ten-mile hike through the Chilterns.

Even more fitting would have been to listen or read it whilst out camping in his beloved Canadian Rockies. One day.

Sometimes when creating these podcasts, I have to leave dozens of glittering minutes of conversation on the cutting room floor in order to get an episode that isn’t going to tire out the average listener.

This time round I thought I might offer it as an Extra for those who are interested to hear Dave speak a bit more about his connection to Bill Gaston and what he learnt from him. He also makes some incredibly interesting comments about the craft of writing a good short story, delivered with his usual witty candour and no-bullshit proclivities.

DW Wilson’s fantastic collection of short Stories Once You Break A Knuckle is out now.

Bill Gaston’s equally fantastic collection of short stories Mount Appetite is also out now.

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)
  1. Wilson won last year’s prestigious BBC National Short Story Award.↵
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RMSYL 37: Queen Victoria by Leonard Cohen (read by H.J. Hampson)

Posted on August 27, 2012 by | 4 Comments

Heather Hampson reading Leonard Cohen_3I so enjoyed Heather Hampson reading from the International Treasure that is Leonard Cohen that I thought it might be worth commiting to memory some of his favourite songs for my By Heart quest.

You would think, having listened to these songs for two decades, I’d already have by-hearted a fair few, but it would appear that I am one of those people who takes in the aggregate of a song, with only the odd line sinking into the memory bank[1].

How many of Leonard Cohen’s songs truly stand up as poems? Is this because his lugubrious delivery so indelibly pigments the words that one can never recite them again without feeling locked into his rhythms and melody, fettered as it were in the Tower of Song (do-dumb-dumb-dumb/da-doo-dumb-dumb)?

Or did Cohen’s lyrical poems become more watered down and less linguistically adventurous as he transformed into a songwriter? Even the great ‘Anthem‘, with that oft-quoted line about the “crack in everything /That’s how the light gets in” reads off the page a tad light and doggereled at times:

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
has passed away …

This is not the case with Queen Victoria - a cracking poem (but an extremely leaden song).

So what Cohen songs work well as poem for you? Suggestions welcome.

[Heather's novel, The Vanity Game can be purchased for the price of a cuppa from here, and bought in song-form for the cost of an overpriced Skinny Latte on the album Live Songs.]

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)
  1. This is a more affirmative way of saying that I have the memory of a Leonard Shelby.↵
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RMSYL 36: A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka (read by Kevin Porter)

Posted on August 16, 2012 by | 3 Comments

The covenant of RMSYL has always been that of Mo going to the Mountain. Mo to the Mou, if you like.

If you get in touch, and invite me round for a cuppa, as long as you don’t live in Timbuktu, I’ll be there (with a packet of biscuits[1]).

But it’s also pretty darn special when the Mou comes to Mo. In this case, the Mou not only came to Mo, he came all the way from Wo. Wolverhampton that is.

Well, pretty much so. The mountain didn’t of course come down from Wo just for Mo, he also came for Mu and Dü, and ended up listening to a recording of some Dub. But that’s a tale for the next podcast.

Regardless of where the Mou came from, it was a pleasure hanging out in his mountainous heights, depths, and Black Country vowels.

I’m hoping to tempt him down again with a verse-reciting gig in a neo-Gothic chapel for National Poetry Day, where he might wrap those multi-syllabizing, Wulfrunian vocal cords around 60 sonnety lines of Derek Mahon’s ‘Disused Shed in Co. Wexford’ (Mou has been memorising Ma and writing about this the last couple of weeks - a very good read that is too).

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)
  1. From Waitrose, if you’re lucky.↵
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RMSYL 35: Meditation XVII by John Donne (read by Rogan Wolf)

Posted on August 8, 2012 by | Leave a comment

I sometimes wonder what it must have been like during The Depression trundling around with the Lomaxes, father and son, through Memphis and the deep South, making field recordings out of their car window of those bards of the barrelhouse and lumber camp. All the poets that the preeminent white culture had never heard of. And even if they had, didn’t much care for.

John and Alan in the prisons, plantations and tin shacks, recording the likes of Bukka White, Robert Johnson, and Leadbelly. Surely they must have felt themselves pinch-me blessed by their good fortune on a regular basis?

I feel this way too, no more so when able to record Rogan Wolf‘s poetry, which we’ve just begun to archive, Lomax-like, in his tiny, book-cluttered sitting room on Wilfred Owen Street[1].

Wolf is one of those Essential Poets you’ve never heard of. Maybe you’ve never heard of him because he’s spent most of his non-poet working life as a mental health social worker from which the charity Hyphen-21 and its incredible Poems For project have arisen. Or maybe you’ve just never heard of him because Culture with a capital C (or its latter day WWW-dot equivalent) is generally promulgated by those who shout or write the loudest, blog/tweet/FB the most ardently, or have the best literary agents. Talent helps, of course.

Be that as it may, you’ve heard of him now.

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)
  1. You can listen to Rogan’s rather incredible sequence of poems called The Going, from one of our recent recording sessions here.↵
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RMSYL 34: The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein (read by Alom Shaha)

Posted on July 31, 2012 by | 2 Comments

My parents were probably not hip enough to read me Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree.

You can’t really get more hip, as a writer of children’s books (and “A Boy Named Sue”), than have Johnny Cash introduce you thus: “Sometimes he wears a beard and shaves his head. Sometimes he shaves his beard and wears his head. And sometimes he’s lonesome….”

Alom Shaha is also hip. Richard Dawkins with extra heart is how I’d introduce him, and I’m sticking with that after our reading together. I’m also buying my three-year-old niece and one-year-old nephew a copy of his Young Atheist’s Handbook for Chrismukkah, so that they won’t be able to level the non-hip slur in 30 year’s time against me on whatever new fandanglement replaces blogs and websites.

[Intro tune: Latché Swing]

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RMSYL 33: Bones of the Inner Ear by Kiana Davenport (Read by Jarred McGinnis)

Posted on July 26, 2012 by | 3 Comments

I love this photo of Jarred McGinnis reading Kiana Davenport‘s incredible ‘Bones of the Inner Ear’.

Firstly because it captures something of JM-himself Continue reading →

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RMSYL 32: Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas (read by Kit Spahr)

Posted on July 9, 2012 by | 4 Comments

You might notice one or two differences about episode #32 of Read Me Something You Love. Continue reading →

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RMSYL 31: The Spur of the Moment Stroll and Passers-by by Franz Kafka (read by Shaun Levin)

Posted on July 3, 2012 by | 2 Comments

Happy birthday, Franz.

I’m not sure if it’s a birthday present you would have ever wanted, but did you know that you’re all set to be included in the update of the Bible of Psychological Pathologies (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-5)? Continue reading →

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Posted in Kafka, Franz, Levin, Shaun