Show Notes
Eamonn Marra was another amazing person who agreed to perform at the Verb After Hours event which was run last year. Eamonn is a person whose work has made me consistently laugh and cry since I first encountered it a few years ago. He’s an incredibly talented write but also a keen observer and documenter. He captures acutely stuff that is going on - and often going wrong. This comes out just after the third anniversary of the publication of Eamonn’s amazing book 2000ft Above Worry Level This conversation like many Eamonn and I have had went so much further and more interestingly than I expected. We cover so much. We start with a conversation about his performance at the event but we end up talking a lot about living in a world of algorithm, distance and closeness, choosing slowness. Eamonn talks about an article by Nate Rogers called ‘Why Is The Obscure B-Side “Harness Your Hopes” Pavement’s Top Song On Spotify? It’s Complicated’. We also talk about an amazing project Eamonn has undertaken to write about every record he owns. The series is called Every Record I Own I really recommend reading this. In the latest post, Eamonn talks about one of my favourite albums ‘Glass Vaults – Sojourn’ accompanied by this beautiful photo Eamonn and I are almost done with our chat when Eamonn mentions an astounding artist, who I have just discovered and have fallen completely for. Here’s Maxine Funke singing ‘Room in the City’ https://youtu.be/F4JmlgbODjU
More from Better off Read
On the 5th of September this year, i was lucky enough to be in an event at Word Festival called I Wish I Wrote That with an incredibly talented line-up of writers including Jon Toogood. Jon had an event before ours and i watched him perform 'Home Again' on acoustic guitar from the Green Room. Even backstage and through a screen i found myself moved to tears - it's an incredible piece of songwriting that just seems to hit me more and more profoundly. About five minutes into Jon's book signing i needed to go to the foyer and it was wild. One thing became really clear - people love Jon and Jon's book and Shihad. During our event, Jon read a really beautiful piece about Aldous Harding's song 'Treasure'. One of the really great things about Jon's memoir Home Again is the way he writes about music, not just the music he makes but the music he loves.
Helen and i have been friends for a long time. Over the years her work has been incredibly inspiring to me. When i say 'Helen's work' i mean her writing, her activism, her visual art, her journaling, her essays, her thinking, her teaching, her friendship, her family-ship, her gardening and all the other amazing things she does. i also admire the way it is quite hard to separate these 'works' out from each other. If there is such a thing as an artist's life i think Helen is a really great example of that. When we met a few weeks ago, Helen brought along her journal as the object to act as a starting place for this conversation.
September is such an exciting month because it sees the launch of The Valley of Unlikely Acquaintances an amazing novel written by Terri Te Tau and published by Spoor Books
i loved talking to Molly Crighton over Zoom earlier this month about her new novel The Body and the Blood out with Hachette New Zealand
i'm really grateful to Tīhema Baker for speaking with me about his new novel One Day a Taniwha (Hachette) i was a massive fan of Tīhema's last novel Turncoat and i've enjoyed hearing Tīhema talk over the last few years. i was lucky enough to read Tīhema's book last year and i loved it. i reread it for this podcast and i still love it. Maybe even more. It's an incredibly compelling story set in several planes of experience - centrally the waking and sleeping lives. It's an incredibly intelligent and beautiful novel. Through this deft craft i think it makes possible new ways of thinking about fatherhood, work, mental health and how these are effected by colonisation and colonialism. In our discussion i touch on how fresh and cutting edge Tīhema's depiction of fatherhood is. i just can't recommend it enough. This podcast was recorded over Zoom.