Neil Griffiths on TRAUMA: Writing About Art and Mental Health
March 31, 2021
"I was wrestling with what certain states of being feel like as negatives."
Novelist and publisher, Neil Griffiths, joined me to discuss his essay, 'Madness as Such', which is featured
in Trauma: Writing About Art and Mental Health (Dodo Ink).
Neil talks candidly about his essay which reflects on his experiences of depression. Indeed, if you are affected by any
of the themes discussed in today's episode, I've reserved this episode's Rippling Points for a couple of links to charities.
Reference Points:
Books:
Neil's Novels:
As a God Might Be (Dodo Ink)
Saving Caravaggio (Penguin)
Betrayal in Naples (Penguin)
Clair-Louise Bennett - Pond
Charles Dickens - Bleak House
Fyodor Doestoyevsky - Crime and Punishment
Mathias Énard - Zone
Eimear McBride - A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing
Isobel Wohl - Cold New Climate - the inaugural novel of Neil's publishing company, Weatherglass Books
Writers:
Francis Spufford
Essays:
Neil's Review of Francis Spufford's True Stories and Other Essays on Review 31
BUY TRAUMA: WRITING ABOUT ART AND MENTAL HEALTH HERE
Follow Liam on Twitter - @liamhbishop
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Olja Knežević and Catherine the Great and the Small
March 19, 2021
'Where there is conflict, there is always a path to literature...Freedom is an important topic for me.'
What a pleasure to talk to the Montenegrin writer, Olja Knežević about her trans-generational novel, Catherine the Great and the Small (Istros Books). The novel is translated by Paula Gordon and Ellen Elias-Bursać
Rippling Points:
- Lessons from writing in and about a civil war
- Why don't we write about grandmothers more?
BUY CATHERINE THE GREAT AND THE SMALL HERE
Reference Points
Writers
- Rachel Cusk
- Sheila Heti
- Karl Ove Knausgaard
- Olja's first novel - Milena and Other Social Reforms
Ideal lockdown literary listening.
Follow Liam on Twitter - @liamhbishop
Follow the Rippling Pages on Instagram - @rippling_pages
Jen Calleja on Time and Goblins
March 5, 2021
'I want the story the story to be as disorientating for the reader as it is for me...I'm not trying to offer an answer or a safe and complete world...'
The incredibly talented Jen Calleja joins the RP Pod to talk about her short story collection, I'm Afraid That's All We've Got Time For (Prototype Publishing), and Goblins (Rough Trade Books), a personal exploration of 'goblinery.'
Rippling Points:
- That's all we've got time for: setting 'temporal parameters' for writing a story
- Is it really the way it is? Working with and against lessons learned in youth
Buy I'M AFRAID THAT'S ALL WE'VE GOT TIME FOR here
Buy GOBLINS here
Reference Points
Books and Writers
- Jen Calleja's poetry collection, SERIOUS JUSTICE
- Interview with the writer Megan Nolan
- The Complete Short Stories of Leonora Carrington
Films
Artists
Ideal lockdown literary listening.
Follow Liam on Twitter - @liamhbishop
Follow the Rippling Pages on Instagram - @rippling_pages
Katharina Volckmer and The Appointment
February 19, 2021
'It felt liberating to find that voice and put it on paper...Some restrictions can be creative.'
Hello! Katharina Volckmer talks about her debut novel, The Appointment (Fitzcarraldo Editions), a TLS 'Book of the Year 2020', and one critics have called 'a darkly funny untangling of national and sexual identity' (The Guardian).
And what a great way to kick off our 'Finding Room' series with a novel set entirely in one room...
Rippling Points
- Can the restrictions of writing in a language which isn't your 'mother tongue' ultimately set you free?
- How a 'silent' character can be a 'loud' presence.
Reference Points
Books and Writers
Thomas Bernhard - The Old Masters
Siri Hustvedt - The Blindfold
Franz Kafka
Ottessa Moshfegh
Philip Roth - Portnoy's Complaint
Articles
Katharina in conversation with RL Goldberg for the Paris Review
Katharina on 'that strange German silence' that persists over the Holocaust for the Guardian
Ideal lockdown literary listening.
Follow Liam on Twitter - @liamhbishop
Follow the Rippling Pages on Instagram - @rippling_pages
Katherine Horrex and the Growlery
February 16, 2021
‘I do believe that we’re all travellers of a fashion. For the poetic process I personally need a sense of freedom in order to write, and I like to feel free.’
These are some Rippling Pages Pilot episodes published in Summer 2020
Katherine Horrex talks about her debut collection of poetry, GROWLERY (Carcanet).
Rippling Points:
- How 'Growlery', a term from another era, can come to represent the space you write in.
- The challenges of writing or not writing about big contemporary topics like Brexit.
Reference Points
Books
Bleak House by Charles Dickens (Penguin Classics)
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (Hamish Hamilton)
Falling Awake by Alice Oswald (Faber)
Guy Debord and the Situationist Manifesto
The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times and Glorious Times of the Situationist International by McKenzie Wark (Verso Books)
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (Vintage Classics)
Essays
Ange Milonko’s essay on Alice Oswald. (https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020...)
