The Shakespeare and Company Interview
Arts:Books
This week Adam is joined by Don Paterson, multi-award winning, and much beloved poet, and now author of one of the extraordinary and refreshing memoir, TOY FIGHTS: A BOYHOOD. Charting the first two decades of the poet’s life, from his birth in Dundee to his move to London, TOY FIGHTS is a book about many things: music, class, religion, origami, money, mental illness, and family. It’s also about poetry, although perhaps in a more oblique way than the reader might be expecting.
TOY FIGHTS is both uproariously funny, and yet profoundly tender, and manages to be sobecause it is stuffed with that ingredient by which any memoir succeeds or fails—authenticity. It’s also a deeply political book, although one which not only eschews ideology and facile categorisations of class, but vigorously pours scorn upon then.
Buy Toy Fights: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7753105/paterson-don-toy-fights
*
SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODES
Looking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulysses
If you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for bonus episodes and access to complete chapters of Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.
Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandco
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=en
All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.
*
Don Paterson was born in Dundee in 1963. His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, all three Forward Prizes and, on two occasions, the T. S. Eliot Prize. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2009. He is Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews and, for over twenty-five years, was Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan. He also works as a jazz musician.
Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-time
Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
✖️On Art, Alternative Histories, and the Arbitrariness of Life with Catherine Lacey✖️
📚How to Resist Amazon and Why, with Danny Caine📚
On Old Wounds, Finding Peace, and Returning Home, with Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse
🗺️On Sarajevo, Multiple Worlds and History at the Fringes, with Aleksandar Hemon🗺️
❤️🔥Valentine’s Special: Meena Kandasamy on The Book of Desire❤️🔥
On Parents, Grief and the difference between Fiction and Memoir, with Elizabeth McCracken
📚Books of the Year📚
👩🎨Katy Hessel on The Story of Art Without Men👩🎨
📘BLOOMCAST | HOLIDAY SPECIAL📘
🔥Sarah Churchwell on Gone with the Wind, January 6th, and the Lies America Tells🔥
🔔Hunchback of Notre-Dame Special! 🔔
🐋How to Speak to Whales (and other animals…) with Tom Mustill🐋
💋On Love, Loss and Life in New York, with Coco Mellors💋
On Writing the Queer, Indigenous Experience with Billy-Ray Belcourt
🍫Jonathan Coe on Bournville🍫
🍄Psychedelic Storytelling, DIY Magick, and the New Masculinity, with David Keenan🍄
🥊 Miriam Toews on Sweary Matriarchs, the Absurdity of Life, and the Human Imperative to Experience Joy🥊
🎤 Sunday Poetry: Mark Polizzotti reads his new translations of Arthur Rimbaud🎤
🎈William Boyd, The Romantic🎈
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Voice of Mushfik
Lit Society: Books and Drama
Ex Libris
Grimms’ Fairy Tales
The Federalist Papers
Fresh Air
Myths and Legends