‘I’m certainly curious about the world of men, in how they act and why. Through my fiction and my imagination, I can find the nuance, the gaps and the hollows, the contradictions.’
Selva Almada in conversation with Konrad Muller (tr. James Appleby).
Interview | Offer Waterman and Francis Outred on Auerbach’s London
‘In a world where a lot of contemporary art is consumed at the point of making and many artists are very young, we have an artist who is still with us – at 93 years old – with seven decades behind him, still drawing.’
Offer Waterman and Francis Outred discuss Frank Auerbach’s landscapes of London.
Interview | Forward Prize for Best First Collection: Jasmine Cooray and Kelly Michels
‘The concept of limitation definitely had a profound effect on the writing. There have been so many points in my life where I have had to recognise that there will be no resolution.’
The fourth and final in our Forward Prize for Poetry interview series, Jasmine Cooray and Kelly Michels.
Interview | Between Anger and Prayer: Camille Ralphs in Conversation
‘I think my overwhelming feeling writing that poem and reading it out now is one of ‘trappedness’. Anger at being trapped in the world, in a situation which makes no sense, with faculties that cannot make sense of it. The other question is why?’
Shoshana Kessler speaks to poet and editor, Camille Ralphs.
Interview | Forward Prize for Best Single Poem Performed: Leyla Josephine and Michael Pedersen
‘Poetry is always trying to capture the experience of living a human life, which is an impossible task. Poets come close, but of course, always fail. Life is simply too complicated, too individual, too big. But the best poets, in my opinion, are the ones who manage to conjure feeling and keep mystery. And, of course, sprinkle in some humour to not take the whole thing too seriously.’
The third in our Forward Prize for Poetry interview series, Leyla Josephine and Michael Pedersen.
Interview | Forward Prize for Best Collection: Fady Joudah and Sarah Wimbush
‘The Palestinian people have been dealing with variable, accelerating modes of their erasure and absenting in English for nearly a century now. I had to write this book.’
The second in our Forward Prizes for Poetry interview series, Fady Joudah and Sarah Wimbush speak to each other about their collections, […] and STRIKE.
Interview | Desire and Displacement in Sulaiman Addonia’s The Seers
‘It made sense to me that the theme of sex centres itself in my books about refugees, because when people flee from wars, they often leave with few belongings and sometimes without their families. So, in exile, surrounded by loneliness and scarcity, their bodies become a focal point.’
Olivia Boyle talks to Sulaiman Addonia.
Interview | Ella Walker on Pasolini and punk
‘I’ve always loved reading. One source of inspiration for me is Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, particularly ‘The Wife of Bath’ prologue. I loved her gruesome language and her humour. She’s a very powerful character.’
Katie Tobin speaks to Ella Walker.
Interview | Beverley Bie Brahic on Nostalgia and Home by Victoria Modi-Celda
‘One wonderful thing about translation is that the original poem gives you the shape of the beast: ‘all’ the translator has to do is play with the words.’
Victoria Modi-Celda talks to Beverley Bie Brahic.
Interview | Forward Prize for Best Single Poem Written: Vasiliki Albedo and Lisa Kelly
‘I’m moving more towards how a writer frames their work to suggest how it might be received – just as Marcel Duchamp presented readymade objects as art. If you take a piece of found text and call it a poem, it will alter how the reader perceives it.’
The first in our Forward Prizes for Poetry interview series.
Interview | John Barnie on Welsh Identity, Dystopian Verse and the Anthropocene
‘When you are writing you are immersed in the moment. All that matters is the poem.’
Rose Brookfield speaks to John Barnie.
Interview | Eline Arbo on staging Annie Ernaux’s The Years
‘But still, it has this core of universality because it is written in the collective form. We can project our own lives into her stories because she allows us to do so. She invites us in with this ‘we’.’
Eline Arbo on staging The Years, at the Almeida Theatre from 27 July.
Interview | ‘Is writing about climate change a futile act?’: Daisy Hildyard on The Second Body and Emergency
‘For me, there’s something about fiction and the way meaning is not necessarily on its surface that creates room for a depth; a complexity that I can’t achieve in nonfiction.’
Rose Brookfield speaks to Daisy Hildyard about The Second Body and Emergency.
Interview | Shanay Jhaveri on Night Fever: Film and Photography After Dark
‘The book really circles around the multiplicity of experiences of the night. It is a time for hedonism, but also for work and protest. They exist simultaneously and even unfold concurrently.’
Shanay Jhaveri on Night Fever: Film and Photography After Dark, out now with Koneig Books.
Interview | Konstantin Akinsha and Katia Denysova on Modernism in Ukraine
‘This blend of cultural retrospection and daring artistic experimentation, fusing the international visual language of avant-garde art trends with distinctive national themes, characterizes Ukrainian art of the period.’
Konstantin Akinsha and Katia Denysova on In the Eye of the Storm, opening 29 June at the Royal Academy.
Interview | Jamieson Webster on Disorganisation & Sex
‘There’s something so powerful about what he can do with an object.’
Katie Tobin speaks to Jamieson Webster, author of Disorganisation & Sex.
Interview | ‘One word after another’: A Conversation with Hugo Williams by Jamie Cameron
‘‘God, it’s a good job though isn’t it?’ Hugo offers. I tell him I feel the same way. We both agreed: you can’t beat it.’
Jamie Cameron in conversation with Hugo Williams.
Interview | Annie-Rose Fiddian-Green on Breathing With Trees
‘I love the immediacy of the first marks on blank paper. This is often where I can see my own energy coming through.’
Annie-Rose Fiddian-Green on Breathing With Trees, now showing at Brooke-Walder Gallery.
Interview | Michael Deagler on Early Sobrieties by Marina Scholtz
‘Sobriety does get quite uninteresting fairly fast, but if any period of sobriety is interesting, then it’s this.’
Marina Scholtz talks to Michael Deagler about his forthcoming novel, Early Sobrieties.
Interview | Rowland Bagnall’s Near-Life Experience by Jamie Cameron
‘But language often fails at being accurate (if accuracy is even the aim), so I’m also interested in the things that writing can and can’t pull off.’
Jamie Cameron talks to Rowland Bagnall about his new collection, Near-Life Experience.
Interview | Andrea Khôra on RAPTURE by Eric Block
‘I see the role of the artist to be nuanced. While exploring big ideas is one role an artist can take, I find myself hoping to create art that lets the complexity of situations exist within the work.’
Eric Block speaks to Andrea Khôra about her new film, RAPTURE.
Interview | Stitches, Stems and Pockets in the Sublime Work of Danielle Dutton by Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou
‘But that’s often how art works. It’s intuitive. It’s murky. You’re creeping along in the dark until you’re not.’
Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou speaks to Danielle Dutton about her latest collection, Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other.
Interview | Between Fiction and Reality with Amélie Cordonnier by Erik Martiny
‘On social media, Twitter and text messages, I do try to couch my messages in eloquent, pithy words though. It seems important to me.’
Erik Martiny talks to Amélie Cordonnier.
Interview | Phoebe Stuckes on her chilling debut, Dead Animals
‘Our world is quite self-validating at the moment, and not always for the right reasons.’
We spoke to Phoebe Stuckes about her debut novel, Dead Animals, out today.