Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S6 Ep2: Bookshelfie: Mary Portas

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

Mary Portas discusses books, poetry, her connection to nature and tells us what we can all do to help protect our planet and build our communities. Mary is one of the UK's most well-known and innovative people in business.She made her name turning Harvey Nichols into a global fashion destination, by the age of just 30 she was on the board of directors. At 37, she left corporate life to launch Portas, her own creative company, with the mission to turn businesses into brands, places and spaces people want in their lives. She has been a regular on our TV screens, advised the government on the future of high streets and developed a fashion label. She is the author of Shop Girl, Work Like a Woman and most recently Rebuild: How to thrive in the new Kindness Economy. Mary’s book choices are:  ** Angel by Elizabeth Taylor  ** The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs ** The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy **  Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver ** The Pocket by Pema Chodron Vick Hope, multi-award winning TV and BBC Radio 1 presenter, author and journalist, is the host of season six of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Podcast. Every week, Vick will be joined by another inspirational woman to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and they continue to champion the very best books written by women. Don’t want to miss the rest of Season Six? Listen and subscribe now! This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

We have to be conscious and we have to rise up another way of being. The more we fight this, this systems that have been killing our planet and our well-being. This patriarchy that we have been living under. This isn't anti-men. This is anti-a-system where fame, success, money and profit over anything else is the tenets of the society that we've grown in. The only way we can change this is by a rise in consciousness and people showing other ways and shining a light on that.

With thanks to Bailey's, this is the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast. Celebrating women's writing, sharing our creativity, our voices and our perspectives, all while championing the very best fiction written by women around the world. I'm Vic Hope,

and I'm your host for Season 6 of Bookshelfy, the podcast that asks women with lives as inspiring as any fiction to share the five books by women that have shaped them. Join me and my incredible guests as we talk about the books you'll be adding to your 2023 reading list. Hello, welcome back to the podcast. This year's Women's Prize for Fiction Long List is out now and not to be missed. To discover the 16 brilliant authors and their books, head over to our website wwwwomensprizeforfiction.com.

I am so pleased to welcome the marvellous Mary Porter's to the podcast. today. Mary is one of the UK's most well-known and innovative people in business. She made a name turning Harvey Nichols into a global fashion destination. By the age of just 30, she was on the board of directors. At 37, she left corporate life to launch Portas, her own creative company with the mission to turn businesses into brands, places and spaces people want in their lives. She's been a regular on our TV screens, advised the government on the future of high streets and developed a fashion label. She's the author of Shop Girl, Work Like a Woman, and most recently, Rebuild How to Thrive in the New Kindness Economy.

Welcome to the podcast, Mary. I love you to be here. I have just been having a little chat with you, and you sound very well read. You're advising us on all sorts of books that we could be reading that are coming out soon. You're a big reader. I am, but I'm a dipper as well. So I have a pile next to my bed. I mean, I've always got a really good novel I try and have on the go, or a very, very good.

autobiography or biography I love that mix and then I have poetry and then I have some really good spiritual books or great sort of mentors and thinkers so yeah I'm a bit sort of peripatetic in the way my mind works but I do I do read a lot and I love sharing it I there's nothing better than pressing a brilliant book into someone else's hands and passing that story on as long as you get it back as long as you get it back which actually I'm gonna use this platform to call out a couple of my who still have a couple of my books that they've had for years. Yeah.

I think you should note it down. It's interesting because I was with my pal on Monday night. She came out for supper and she said, have you got Penelope Fitzgerald? I'm sure I haven't. I'm really sure I haven't kept your Penelope Fitzgerald. And then we're going to the shop. And there it was.

And I was so embarrassed because I really try my best to get them back to people. And they're like friends to me. And sometimes I see them on the bookshelf. And I just have that little warm sort of fuzzy feeling. Or not necessarily that. Definitely a reaction to when I read that or should I read that again. I'm not a great reader I'm reading again, but some I am sort of, you know, spurred on to do. And I don't want people taking that.

I want to share it. I want to share the love. It's like sharing your home or a great dinner party, but, you know, don't go off. Oh, and you go home at the end of the night, yeah. Are you suggesting that perhaps we should be keeping receipts? We should be keeping a note. I was just thinking, because I said to Kate, I said, you know, you should just write down. We should have written down what we swap because we do swaps.

So we don't do that again. I thought I should note that. And then my daughter moved out, and I noticed she's because she loves her bookshel. But a lot of my books were on that bookshelf. And I was like, Verity, those are mine. But I read them after you, Mama. I mean, yeah, where do I go with this one? Where do you fit reading in in your day-to-day?

Oh, I'm nighttime. It's nighttime or weekends with a cup of coffee in bed. So that I know I'm relaxed. I couldn't read in the morning. To me, reading, it's my time. It's special. It's relaxation. This is Mary time. And so there's no way I could do it in the daytime.

I've never been that. And I have got friends that do that. They'll curl up with a book at about 3 o'clock. Well, I'd be falling asleep on the sofa. And I'm never one who sits still for very long. Or some people schedule that time. They're like, this is my reading time. It's almost in my diary, like a part of my day, yeah.

Yeah, no. Actually, I don't like anything in my diary, if I'm honest. Not a single thing. No, I take each day as it comes. And my team have had to really get used to this. I mean, there's things I have to put in, but I don't approach a date until it's the day before, and then I'm looking to go.

But if there's anything too much in my diary, I find it just makes my mind go too crazy, so I don't like it. And I think nothing better than a completely clear diary and then thinking, oh, I feel like seeing this person. I mean, they might not be around, but I really love that. This is something I could definitely learn from. I feel like there are just too many tabs open in my virtual desktop.

Yeah. And it does then translate into. to the ICAL, it's packed. It doesn't need to be necessarily. No, it doesn't. And I've really, as I've got old, I got really, you know, good at that. Yeah.

Just being, and from being, I then do, as opposed to doing and not being. I think that's a mantra for life that we can all learn a little bit from. Well, we're here to talk about your favourite books, whether they are on your shelf or a friend or your daughters. And your first book, Shelfy book,

is Angel by Elizabeth Taylor. Not that, Elizabeth Taylor. This brilliant book is written by the English novelist and short storywriter. It follows the fanciful 15-year-old Angel who writes extravagant romantic stories to escape her drab provincial life. After reading Angel's novel, The Lady, I don't know if it's Irania or Irania. It's a name. The Lady Irania. We'll say Irania.

The Lady Iranian. Publishers Brace and Gilchrist are certain it will be a success. But they are curious as to who could have written such a book. an elderly lady, a mustachioed rogue. They are not prepared for the pale, serious teenage girl who is really behind the pages. Tell us about this book. Why did you love it and why did you pick it?

Well, first of all, picking books is ridiculously difficult. It's like Desert Island Discs, and then you go back after and you go, I should have put that one in. But to me, you know, one of the things that you asked is that stuff that had an effect, do you remember it affecting your life? So this one reminded me, Angel of this, you know, my self, as a younger child. She was a terrible liar.

And I was that. And I was one of five kids. And so I remember not feeling seen, really. I was the fourth out of five. And I created these worlds where I wanted to be in. And so much of what I read was in those worlds. And when I read Angel, and she would, she would made out that her, she lived in this wonderful house. But actually her aunt was the cleaner in this house.

And it's just an extraordinary. did the same. I remember, you know, telling people, because I went, I came from sort of an Irish Catholic working class family in Watford and we all went to the grammar school, like me and my siblings and there were the posh girls that were at the grammar school. Their mothers

would turn up in jaguars to drop them off to school and we got off the school bus. And so I would pretend that my father had a jaguar, which he didn't and I would embellish these lives. And Angel just talked to me and I love the character. But what she did that was so

clever and I loved is she created that life and she became a successful writer because she worked herself into it. It was a sort of a path that she opened up by being rather than, you know, it was a path she wanted and so she just opened it up herself and created her success through her writing and ended up very wealthy. And I sort of, it felt similar. Although I realized, you know, all the times that I was embarrassed by coming from this working class Irish family they were far more interesting now that I look back or did and I stopped lying when I was about 19

and it was just so refreshing because once you start telling the truth so much opens up to you and there's no place of fear there's no place where you come to hide. Did you write stories yourself? Did you love words as a child? I loved words as a child and I enjoyed writing.

I also enjoyed writing. performing and so I learned an awful lot through being directed in plays, you know, quite young going and doing plays like Brendan Bayon's The Hostage at, you know, 15 and really understanding subtexts which I would not have had access to. I joined local theatre groups and, you know, did check off and so much so early on and to me language and words was just wonderful. I'm not the best at writing, but I love expressing myself through words and I'm often trying to write even when I'm writing something what I want to put on social I go over it time and time again because the nuance of what language does is just extraordinary and if it's

done wrong if someone's put something up on my behalf and there might just be one word that's wrong it feels I feel injured I know I feel exactly the same words are so loaded yeah they have to be right and if they're not I get quite anxious about it that the significance the meaning could be lost on anyone who misinterprets, but as long as I've said what I wanted to say, then I can't begrudge what's been put out into the world because I still own it. Yes, that's exactly true. I used to write my diary as a child and I stopped completely and I haven't done so again. And part of me, I tried, but part of me I wasn't able to express the depth of what I was going through. And so I didn't want to do it as an other, which is a shame, I think, too. But this is literally why I love

books because when you read the words of an author who has felt something that you have felt or thought and they articulate it in words that you could not find yourself. Oh, completely. Oh, it's so illuminating. That's when you're turning down the page and underlining highlighting. So you're like, yes, you felt it too. I just didn't have the words and now I do. Which is why, you know, even describing this, you know, it's very difficult.

But I think the one with Angel, why I loved it. A, I discovered Elizabeth Taylor as a writer and I don't think enough people know about her. I mean, her writing is fantastic. But B, she was put up against this anger and her mother was so angry with her for lying, you know, that she slaps her. And I had this sort of Catholic guilt, you know, that lying was a sin. And we used to have to go to confession every couple of months, which is ridiculous, these 12-year-old girl going into what was like a wardrobe

with a priest sitting behind. And you'd be saying, bless me, father, for I've sinned. What sins have you done when you're 12? And so your naughtiness and your expression, in the world where you're developing becomes the sin, which is crazy, you know, crazy. You've described yourself in your memoir as something of a trouble magnet. You just mentioned as well the ways in which, you know, you would embellish and lie very similarly to Angel in this book. And there are obvious parallels, there are clear parallels in the way that she creates her own success.

Yes. And the way that you forged your own path has success on your terms. been something that has always been important to you. Oh, I don't think it was on my terms for a long time. Right. Following the death of my mother when I was 16 and my father when I was 18, I felt just lost and I think it was survival. And I think a huge amount of fear.

So I just knew I didn't have a home and I didn't have money and there wasn't that comfort of anyone at the end of a phone, who was your sage or your guide. And so it was terribly difficult. And I just survived. just survived and I think I became a person that I deeply wasn't. I wasn't allowed to express my sensitivity I felt I had to succeed in order to, you know, feed myself and live really.

And so it certainly wasn't on my terms for a long time. And then when I did hit after having my children and had, you know, great success by which time I, you know, as creative director for Harvey Nichols and leading a very lovely luxury life, I actually just realized who I was and worked a lot with that, but just through actually a skill that I felt I had and then was able to go, actually, I'm going to go this road. And that road was a path, always set to anybody who ever comes in or any young women that I talk to particularly when people ask you what your five-year plan or passion is, don't be just crazy, how do we even know this, but let it unfold.

And the ability to let life unfold is just the most beautiful thing if you're able to do it. And I wasn't for a long time, but I was very successful. So it was very difficult to go, this wasn't unfolding. This was me pushing and creating, and as Cheryl Sandberg would have said, leaning in to a system that quite frankly was horrendous,

most business systems are. And so I didn't do it on my term. but I'm certainly on my terms now. And what does on your terms mean? What does that look like? It's more what it feels like. I don't do anything unless it's for my children that goes against my inner frequency or energy

where I know it's not right. So many times in life we ignore those little whispers that are telling us something's not right. And so I try and follow what, is my light, as it were, and let it open up to me in the ways that Rumi talks about. You just let the path open up and you just take one step at a time. You don't create the path because it's all disappointment because you never reach that.

And when people used to say it's the journey, not the end goal, never went, I just go, what are they on about? But it is. It really is. It really is. It's time to talk about your second book now, which is the death and life of great American cities by Jane Jacobs. in this classic 1961 text Jacobs and American Canadian journalist and author set out to produce

an attack on current city planning and rebuilding and to introduce new principles by which these should be governed. The result is a damning but fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short-sightedness and arrogance that has characterised urban planning in the 20th century and beyond.

How can you pick this book? Well I mean look I could have picked I don't know, 20 novels. But I picked things that were so important to me. And Jane Jacobs, when I was asked by the government to look at the high street that were all failing, at the time I was traveling a lot and filming a lot. And I would turn up in towns and see the devastation that commerce had done, that planning laws had done.

So, you know, we went in the chase of money, profit over anything. We have lived in a society. lived in a society where where money, fame and power are the tenets of success. And so I was travelling and seeing these desolate towns where massive supermarkets would build on the edge of town. And I'd get picked up by the taxi drivers because I'd be filming to go and save some independent shop. And I'd turn up and there'd be a boarded up shop.

There'd be a chicken shop. there'd be a basement booze and you'd see these young kids hanging on streets with nothing to do. And they'd say, but, oh, no, the Tesco's had been brilliant. They've built a swimming pool. I've really given back to the community. And I used to think, is that really giving back? Is this what we've got? And anyway, I got approached by the government to look at this and I did so.

And at first, I went in with my financial business head on. How do we create commerce? How do we get retail back onto these high streets? Now, this is a time when it was also, you know, the rise and rise of the internet. Planning laws where they'd let all the supermarkets build out of town because land was cheaper. People could part there for nothing. People were loading up their cars with food, half of which some of them were throwing away. This was before even consciousness was coming.

You know, it was a small group, pressure groups, who talked about how we were living very little else. and I discovered Jane Jacobs and she really just opened my eyes up to what is a fundamental truth that the way we live and where we live our cities, our high streets, it's not about what they sell, it's not about commerce, it's about the social infrastructure and the safety that they give to our well-being. Now you and I live locally to each other and how joyful is it on a Saturday as we know if we want to pop out for a coffee.

It's a community. It's a massive community, right? Or a loaf of bread. Or you're walking down to primord with your dog and you bump into three people or someone. It's it, oh my God, I'm just going to pop into the bookshop. And I'm like, I've got a little account there. So I'll shout into the woman and say, can you order whatever? But she talked about these things.

They might seem trivial, but the sum isn't trivial at all. It's the way most of us want to live and feel safe in this world. and that most urban planning has been done by men who were not at home during the day bringing up those children. We're talking at the 60s here, and let's face it, not too dissimilar today. They're not there. They were making those decisions and we ended up with the ugly, ugly, I mean, do you ever drive to a town and think,

who decided that this retail park on the edge of town is actually where people want to shop? And believe you me, You've got me on this now. I've heard some of the big CEOs saying this is what people want. No, they don't. You've taken away their choice. And so I started to write my report around this.

And I'd go into government and they would say to me, have you met with the CEO of Sainsbridge? And I said, of course I have. But what's he going to tell me about community? Have you met with Sir Philip Green? And I think, sadly, I have. But what's he going to tell me about how we should be living? and she became my goal

and she got vilified and all these men just knocked her but the truth is there the truth is and we saw it during COVID what do we want? We want to feel safe we feel connected when we're in a community where we can live and have our needs met

our daily needs met now if we look at this and look at the trauma that the planet's going through that has to be the future we shouldn't be driving anywhere we should be having all our needs met within 50 minutes of walking or cycling and green spaces. Jane Jacobs, head of the game, and I still hold a light, and hopefully it can be a voice for

what she envisioned. Well, we're recording this actually on a day when we're seeing some of the biggest strike action in a decade, teachers, train drivers, bus drivers, and more joining picket lines today. How do you think that we solve the structural issues that we are facing, that we continue to face that seemed to be getting worse? The honest answer? We have to be conscious and we have to rise up another way of being. The more we fight this, this systems that have been killing our planet and our well-being.

This patriarchy that we have been living under. This isn't anti-men. This is anti-a-system of patriarchy, which I talked about before, where fame, success, money and profit over anything else. is the tenets of the society that we've grown in. Now, if there's anybody today who doesn't realize that that is killing Mother Earth and with us our well-being, then they are in that group who we are seeing,

not who's on strike, but the governments and the systems and the businesses that are still working to that. The only way we can change this is by a rise in consciousness and people showing other ways and shining a light on that. shining a light and saying, you could be working this way.

We've seen so much change happen. We don't show it. And when I did my podcast, Beautiful Misfits, and I'm about to film the Channel 4, I think they're calling it the climate fight. I don't like the word fight. But it's to show great people who are saying, there's another way to live.

And I often talk about it. It's a very simple example. But I say, well, we had the Arcadia group, the likes of Sir Philip Green, who I think he extracted something like 2.0.2. at five billion as a bonus. Ten years ago, that was seen as, wow. Wow.

God, this guy knows what he's doing. And on the other hand, you've got Patagonia that's been going since the 70s, making millions and millions of profit. And the actual owner has said the only shareholder, he's given his whole business over to a trust. And he says the only shareholder is Mother Earth. Yeah.

Now, I think the Arcadia Groups collapsed. We've lost Topshop. We've lost all those brands. This is still going. And I go, so that's what I call a beautiful business of the future. Why can't we do this? So the more we show that there is another way, the more we're conscious and aware,

and that's what's happening. That's why these people are striking saying, do you know what, I don't want to work like this anymore. I don't want to be like this anymore. And our government is just not getting the memo. They're just not getting it. So we need a rising of another way of living. And it's coming.

It's coming, but it needs to come faster. And most of that rising will be around the divine feminine that we suppressed for years, the mystical, the way that we lived connected to the earth. We suppressed that. You didn't talk about that. You were seen as woo-hoo. You know, if you talked about in a business,

if you didn't use the speak about profit first, you know, I've been in this. You were seen as weak. You know, I remember someone in my business sacking our head of buying and saying, don't take it personally it's only business. That's how we looked at the world. You know, we

put these multi, multi-billionaires up there on pedestals. We need to change that. And it is changing. The reason we're talking here, you're feeling it. Yeah, because I feel like we are able to say these things. You're so right in a way that doesn't feel woo-hoo anymore. And I don't care.

And it doesn't matter. We needn't be ashamed. We need and be embarrassed. Every single guest we've on this podcast has said the same thing about different sectors or the different areas of their life in which we need to be having different conversations or looking at things in different ways and we need to question everything. I watched Simon Sharma's brilliant series. If anyone hasn't watched it, do watch it. It's extraordinary and he talks and shows how cultural shifts that change society and so often it came from the arts world.

You know, from the actors, from the music industry. And I went to watch the brilliant film of Nan Golden who went up against. If anyone gets a chance to watch that, it's incredible. And she went up against the big drug companies who were putting all the money into the museums, the sacklers. It's just brilliant. And we need to show more of this. And we don't enough. And the media doesn't enough.

We get the bad news. So people become apathetic. But don't be. Don't be. The more that we all unite together and talk about this and change and stand up and I don't think that's right. The better and the more hope we have changing the world.

On that note, we move on to your third book-shelphie book, which is the cost of living by Deborah Levy. I just loved it. In the second of her living autobiography series, two-time Booker Prize finalist, Deborah Levy, draws on her own personal experiences, including the end of her marriage

and the death of her mother to explore the subtle erasure of women and reflect on what is involved in breaking away from expected gender roles. Can you tell us about when you first read this book? Why did it resonate with you? Well, I've read all of hers and just loved every part of them. I mean, I just think she's one of our greatest writers, extraordinary.

And it resonated with me, you know, because I was going through such a massive change in my life. And so often we sit with what we have and we feel we can't make change happen. And I've been blessed enough to know that I can stand on this earth on my own. And fear in the early days I didn't think I could through loss. And so I surrounded myself with a lot of stuff and a lot of people and a lot of family, which of course is wonderful.

But actually when it comes to it, we have to be able to stand on our own. And I couldn't put him in, but the poet Rilke, who's one of my favorites, you know, often talks about living the questions and that solitude is deeply important to that. And I've sought that so much. But reading Deborah's and how she decided to leave a marriage, and I just had these visions of her struggling on the hill in the rain in North London to this flat that she had.

And her change in life as a woman in her 50s and how she had to, you know, bring her daughter with her. and her identity as a woman, now as a single woman, it just resonated. But she takes these moments that are just so exquisitely described, I can't do her justice other than to say I think she's a magnificent writer. But so much of it resonated with where I had, you know, decided a marriage was over. And you don't do that easily. You don't do it easily.

But you can do it with a, deep sensitivity to the people who you may be leaving and changing their lives. And she talks about that. It just felt secure for me that there was someone else in the world who was going through that. And, you know, I was going through a terribly difficult time with it. And, you know, everything that I'd learned through my kind of philosophical and spiritual teacher went right out the window. And somehow to know that there was this incredible other woman in the world that was changing her life

because that whisper happened inside that said, this isn't feeding your soul anymore. At the core of this book, there is a search for selfhood for freedom. Explores the way in which our past and our pains shape her. Yes. I know that after your parents died, you see you. became a surrogate for your brother. How did that shape you? Because that is a huge endeavour.

Yeah, but I think, you know, it shaped me becoming, there were a huge amount of responsibility I took over the rest of my life, but I thought I always could do it. And it was odd because out of the five children, I was the fourth, and I was the naughtiest one. So I was the eldest, you know, and I wasn't the first girl, and I was...

And so it fell upon me because my eldest siblings were off at university, so I happened to be the one at home with Lawrence. And I don't think I was a surrogate, we were just surviving, you know, but I think what happened was, you know, he was much more a gentle, beautiful soul, my brother still is.

And I just was out there's a few years old, he was 14, God's sake, lost his mother at 14, and then his older abandoned us, you know, years later, married someone else and left us in the family home. Because I was running the house, you know, it was like just crazy. And what I thought, I've done it to stay and I just took on and thought, I can do this.

You know, I can do this. And I did it through marriages. I was like, oh, I can earn that money. Don't worry. If you don't, if you don't, if you want to give up your career and sit back, I can do this. Because I really thought I could and I did. But I talk on such a huge responsibility that, you know, I start my own business. We actually are responsible now for 30 people or, you know, it just became my load of soparandi.

And I'd be lucky enough that I could. do that and have a beautiful life. But actually, when Deborah talked about that, that shaped me, this, don't mind it's going to be all right. Don't worry, it's going to be all right, which I think is one of the most important things we ever want to hear in life from anyone else who anyone else is happy. Don't buy it's going to be. It's just saying that is the most beautiful and comforting. And I didn't get that because of the loss of parents. But I I did it for other people. And it wasn't just, you know, that I'm sounding like I'm some, you know, holy figure.

I certainly am not. But I wanted them to feel. And did you believe it when you were saying it? Did you believe it yourself? It's going to be all right. Yes, I do. I do believe in things. You know, I'm certainly not a Bible reader.

I've been growing up with the Catholic faith I ran for religion as far as I could. But the most repeated line in the Bible is do not fear. Do not be afraid. And yet it's the thing that traps us all. But I love, and even the way she talked about writing and her little shed that she got and where she would go into this place of solitude, it was a time where I was going to it,

and I read it back time and time. It's a very slim book. Yes, she's an extraordinary writer. And that search for freedom and selfhood, is that something that you feel you have now found in your personal life having your career. And yes, I think, I mean,

I'm on the journey, as it were. I have a very rich privileged life, and I mean that with, you know, I've had extraordinary trauma, I have to say, I think I've had a big trauma. I don't like the answer. You know, I think I've been really knocked out in the ring. I sort of sometimes see that big glove come at me,

and it's not just a knock here, it's a knock you out, Portus. You know, two divorces, loss of people. parents. My business collapsed during COVID. I didn't know how. Lots of this, but I've actually sawed as high as I, you know,

just been extraordinary. So I feel I'm in this place of, well, actually, it's a place where I want to feel that this is my life, my life, rather than Mary at the centre of other people's lives. Bailey's is proudly supporting the women's prize for fiction

by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Bailey's is the perfect adult treat whether shaken in a cocktail over ice cream or paired with your favourite book. Check out baileys.com for our favourite bailey's recipes. Your fourth book today is devotion

the selected poems of Mary Oliver. Sheming. Absolutely beautiful. A New York Times bestseller and Oprah's book club pick. The version of the story. We do. It's Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver's personal selection of her best work. The result is this definitive, soaring collection,

which spans more than five decades of her esteemed literary career. What do you love about this poetry? Well, Mary Oliver, for me, her connection to the earth is just phenomenal. And I've spent so many years in urban settings. And boy, do I love my city. I think London is the greatest city in the world, undoubtedly. And I love living in it, and I love the pace. I love the density and the intensity.

I've travelled a lot in the world, but there's something in this crazy city. That because of that suppression, the banks, you know, because creativity comes out. And I just think it is. And I think it's a welcoming, beautiful, incredible place. But I also need to connect to the earth. And Mary Oliver does that for me. I wouldn't want to constantly live. I do have a place in the Slad Valley, in the Cotswolds, when Laurie Lee,

on outside of with Rosie, and it's near Stroud where they're all activists, and I love it, according to me. I had no idea it even sort of existed, but I ended up buying there. And my complete connection with my spirit, my deep rooted self, is when I walk through the woods across the valleys, and I actually feel such a surge through me of that I actually can sit and soul with joy. Well, truthfully, it's the most incredible, beautiful thing to do. And Mary Oliver's poetry takes me there when I'm not there. And it's not done in a whimsical poetical.

It's raw. It's really raw. And how she connects with it. One Pellier I was reading, and she finds a turtle on the beach and she goes out, because she'll go out morning, night, walking, walking. that it laid its eggs and she goes back to see the eggs and it was quite sure she then uncovers

takes to the her and fries it up I was like whoa but she knows I mean God knows how many of those eggs of the turtle had laid but she really she's rooted in it she's rooted in

which reminds me the great title of the book by Sharon Blackie if women rose rooted and I think the more we women are rooted to the earth back to Mother Earth the more our strength

and our beauty and our love and our sensitivity and our creativity will help heal this planet the way that she describes nature more than discretion evokes nature in her poetry is like no one else

and the way it makes you feel what is it that you do to to stay rooted, to stay grounded, to remind yourself of the beauty of our natural world. So what it made me do, and I found my brother doing the same, is we would sit with our coffee at the table, looking out the window, where I might have been reading a paper or doing something and distracted, but we just looked, and it was so delicious. And he got very excited because the woodpecker came and I missed a woodpecker. But there was something that connecting back to nature through that little garden, you know, that I've got in North London.

It's around us all the time and it's just about taking that time and being aware. And I have to find myself during the day, you know, because our brain, our mind goes off. Just connecting back, connecting back to nature, whether I'm walking through North London, through, you know, whether it's Regent's Park,

or just looking at the trees, actually just being aware of what is around you. And the other thing is so much we don't notice. Yeah, we just need to look up some. Yeah. We spend so much time looking down even as we walk. There is a world literally in front of our eyes. So I can tell you now where the three parakeets that they hang to the tree that's three

gardens down, I didn't know that, but I know that now. And we have little woodpeckers that come, but they hang up the roof, two doors down on the big building. I didn't know any of this. And now I feel more connected to my space through the little birds that are outside. And how the blue tits is very interesting this, you know. They nip in quickly to get a piece because if the pigeons come, they will know where they're going to get a bit of the bird feed. And the robins take it off the ground.

They dip down and when all the big birds have knocked it off, they just go in and hoover up. And the robins are the peaky blinders of the bird world. They're little, they get in there and they're quite aggressive. This whole dynamic has been playing out. It's been playing out every single minute of every single day the whole time. We just weren't watching. Yes. Well, we are part of it and we didn't get that.

And yet we did during COVID, I think we really did, that we are all part of this beautiful ecosystem. And that is what Mary Oliver talks about as well. We are connected. We are atomically connected. We are beings like the plant is or the birdies. We are all part of this. And we lost that sentience.

And we are becoming more aware. We just have to make sure that enough of us connect. together. And when you asked about change, how we make that change happen, it won't be one leader or one profit again. It will be many of us becoming aware and conscious and going, there is another way to be and it's beautiful and it's freeing. And we have enough in this world in order to be, to do this now. We have enough. We don't need to be. We get told the economies down. Well, no, that's because you guys set up what the economy. What the economy is.

It doesn't need to be that way. There are better ways of doing it. Exactly. And it was set up in the 30s by economists who didn't take into consideration. All the work that women do in the back to make the world just go around. So it's all got to change. And you know what? People say to me, how can you be so hopeful? Because never in my lifetime have I seen such opportunities.

for either devastation or creation. And when I see the creativity that's going on, it's because we know we're up against it. And, you know, I think we've gone through so many apathetic years of just having stuff, stuff that we thought made us happy, when actually the joy of just looking at that little blue tip nipping in and crubbing something.

And that's where Mary Oliver comes from in my heart. We can create, we can also change, and we can protect. If we talk about protecting our natural world, I've read that one of your proudest achievements you've said today is the creation of 26 Mary's Living and Giving Shops for Shade the Children. I shop in them. I love secondhand. I love pre-loved. Can you tell us a little bit about this, how you see charity shops and second-hand clothes existing in the age of the pressures of fast fashion? Well, I started those about 12 years ago when I saw how bad fast fashion was getting. right at the peak. And, you know, I cut my teeth on selling stuff to particularly luxury brands to people

who just didn't quite need them and hugely highed prices with the stories that went with them that this handbag will make your life better. Well, that's just bullshit. But I was very good at it. And not realizing that I was, you know, killing the planet and part of it. And I went to do a TV show. I did Mary Queen of Shops. and one of the producers said,

would you redo a charity shop? And I turned up to this charity shop in Orpington, where the average age of the volunteers was about, I reckon about 82, 83, and you'd hear the bus turning up outside. You'd, shh, off they'd get every day regularly. And apart, it was hilarious, you know, because I would say to them, you can't put that out.

You know, they'd put stuff out with toys without heads on them, but someone donated it, dear, so it's going up. Oh, my God. Where do I start here? But after months of filming with them, I came to love them because what I saw was this sense of duty and giving back that I certainly didn't have and most of my generation didn't have. And it was also when I saw people coming in who truly couldn't afford,

you know, were coming in. I remember a young mother discovering a tennis racket and getting so excited because it was like 40p and she could give that to a little son. And I just couldn't leave it once I'd finished filming. And the chief exec and the head of retail were two women that saved the children. And I said, listen, I think we could do something bigger than this. Why do charity shops have to be places where people dump stuff and there's only, you know, retired people in it? What have we create what I've learned to do through business, beautiful boutiques that are about donating?

And the more beautiful we make it and we ask people in the community to donate their. time so that they feel it's their shop and we create these spaces that are places of joy. Let's invest in that. Let's call on people to give their time. So I rang around designers, artists and they all gave their free time and we opened up the first shop. And it was so successful. You know, I had great artists and musicians donating their stuff and then say,

can I sell in the shop? Can I get behind them and give hours? And suddenly this opened up and grew and there's 20 years. then we raised 30 million over 30 million to save the children by just saying actually let's not look at this as a dumping, that's a whole charity shop.

Let's look at this as a place of love, respect, recycling and pre-loved. And now it's really taken off because we have to because people are realising we're killing. So my daughter's generation, my daughter doesn't buy anything new. She does take a lot of mine, by the way.

But she doesn't buy anything new And it's part of her DNA that she is aware. A friend of mine Tiffany Dark who used to be the editor of Style magazine for Sunday time. She started buy five items a year. So we're trying to give back and say there is another way. And the big thing that we need to do, you know, coming from a branding and marketing world, is we need to make this sexy and modern so that this next generation are going, yeah, I want to be with that group.

and that's how I feel about the rising of the new way with consciousness. Do I want to be with that old group where it's money and lack of awareness and lack of any kind of love for humanity but this self-interest? What do I want to be with this group? And so for me that's the job and that's what I try and do through all the work that I do with brands and clients now, you know, I call it the giver Fs and the don't give an F's. Do you want to be over there with the laggards or do you want this new world that we need to build? And somehow this has taken off and it's rolling now.

And I call it status sentience as opposed to status symbols. Once it was great to say, yeah, I've got my Proudra or my Gucci's. And now it's great to say, well, I bought that in a secondhand shop. Yeah. Right? I love saying it's rented or it's free-loved. I love it. But we've got a long way still to go, but it is getting better.

But we've got a long, long way to go. But it's this consciousness that's going to be at the heart of it. Unfortunately, we don't have a long way to go because we only have one more book left to talk about. So have your fifth and final book this week, Mary, which is The Pocket Pemmer Shodrin, a treasure trove of 108 short selections from the best-selling books of the beloved American Buddhist nun. Designed for on-the-go inspiration, this collection offers teachings on becoming fearless, breaking free of destructive patterns, developing patience and unlocking goodness. how has it influenced you?

I started on my kind of spiritual journey probably about 15 years ago and I have a friend Lisinda who you kind of once you start on this journey you sort of know other people they sort of you get attracted to them or you meet them and

and she introduced me to Pema this Buddhist nun who would be married twice and you know have discovered through a lot of pain that our true journey is inside. It's our light.

And we just ignore it and we create this outward ego that we're told is acceptable and what's acceptable in society and all the conditioning that we start from a young age and we all follow that

and then when we fall short or think we fall short we feel disappointed we don't feel good about ourselves. And I just read so much of her When Things Fall Apart was the first book I read and I was going through

my first divorce sounds fabulous isn't it and it was just an incredible book which I've given to so many people and I just had this realization that I've got the world so wrong on so many levels and it's a pocket book which I've often given to people

even when I'm out filming I think Michelle Gundagind had when I was filming with her she took one and then handed back a new version to me because if ever I feel I'm just going to that place of anxiety or anger or annoyance or disappointment, I'll just flip it open, there's always some little guidance in there, some

beautiful spiritual guidance that is a truth, that is a truth that gets you back on that path. When we were chatting to you before about what your picks would be and you selected this book, you said that you picked it when you started your spiritual practice 15 to 20 years ago, what was that? What did that look like? What did that mean? It is being. It's connecting to your true self, your soul, whatever that is, whatever we call it. And each day I will read, every day I will read a piece, either whether it's from a poet, whether it's Rilka or one of the great sages like Pema Chodran. And my practice is to be connected to my truth and me. And so that means sometimes and many times in the day being aware that my responses are my outward persona rather

and my true self and that actually my true self is free of everything. There is no judgment. And that every day I can't control any outcome, but I can respond to it. And the way that I will respond to what comes at me in life is how I open myself up to a better way of being and a more deeper, joyful way of being. And whether that's through dealing with pain,

I have my older brother who's very ill at the moment and I try and share that with my sister-in-law on, you know, he's physically ill but his soul is still pure and I try and connect with him on that and it's given me the ability to say this is me and I don't need to live the life the way I thought I needed to live it.

It's been my freedom completely. It's very difficult to express unless someone's been on it or have read it. Have you tried? I've been trying, I think, in the last two years. I'm going to say two years to live in a really quite different way to how I was living before

and I know you've talked about working off an instinctive frequency knowing when something is right and that's exactly the journey that I've been on and it's made a world of difference just zooming out on a daily basis even this morning I had to stop myself I was with my partner and I was running up and down the stairs

because I had so much to do and he just held my shoulders and he went to just breathe doesn't matter it doesn't nothing matters And that sounds so crazy when you say that. And I try and say it to my children. That doesn't matter. None of it matters.

And what matters is your self, your sense of truth. And it's very, it is difficult to explain because there is no particular language to it. But it's been the biggest freeing part of me. And the other week I went into the woods with a shaman. It was amazing. talking about Mary Oliver book. What did you do in the woods with this, Simon? I just connected back

to the earth and we just felt the different energies of the world and I just opened up to just being still and, you know, she beats you into the woods with this connection. She holds a circle of fire

and love for you and you just sit together. And I want to talk more about this stuff because it's so important. It is, you know, actually, what we're talking about here, it's the same as all the prophets, whether it's Jesus,

whether it's the Buddha, whether it's the teachings of the Vedas, the Apanishads, it's all the same. Do not be afraid. You know, our mind is crazy and it tells us what we should be or how we should be and society. And actually, that's not the truth.

The truth is us and our inner self. And I was, the other book that was being very fundamental to that was, you know, Michael Singer's book, The Untethered Soul. And untethering yourself from the crap and the shit that we're told we should be and who we are. You know, falling in love with a woman for me, it's, oh my God, what's society going to feel like? None of that matters. But my Catholic upbringing that would have just inhibited that, prohibited it, prohibited it.

None of it matters. But what matters is love and truth. None of that stuff on the outside needs to affect you unless you let it. Yes. And learning to be still and be at peace is transcendental in its power. I tell you when it really came to me, I was doing a lot of work on it. And when I did the High Street report, the papers went after me, the right wing press. Because I started saying, I don't think the government's taken this seriously.

Oh, but of course. And they went for me. And I remember getting up one Sunday and opening up the papers and there was this full page. and the headline was Mary Queen of Flops. Massive full page. And I remember going into that space of myself and just going, let this go. And my agent ringing me and going,

we can get a press release. I said, I don't know. It doesn't matter. It'll be gone tomorrow anyway. It doesn't matter. Because actually it's not a truth and it's not me. You don't even need to read it. Let it go.

It was just really freeing. And so it's been my saviour. If you had to pick one. of the five books that you've brought today. I know we've sort of meanded into other pieces of literature, other books as well, but of the five that you brought as a favourite, as one that, I don't know,

has saved your life or would save your life, would be your accompaniment for the rest of your life if you could only have one, which would it be? Oh, it'd be Mary Oliver. Yeah. Because she brings in, Mary Oliver brings in the spiritual, the divine, into her work.

That is what her poetry is. And she's a, and I love poetry. My mother loved poetry and she used to read to us. When we were kids, because of five, she couldn't get around the bedroom. And so she sat on the landing with the doors over. Oh, so everyone can hear? Yeah, how beautiful is that? And she'd read, you know, and my brothers go, I don't want that.

And my mum would say, tomorrow night, we'll have your story. And it was just wonderful. But she loved poetry, particularly Irish poetry. So to me, that brings me back to her as well. And I think, you know, poetry, when the world is just unable to do it through prose, poetry takes you to that place that is bigger and more beautiful and more expressive than we could ever hope to achieve through the ordinary written prose. And, you know, I talk about poetry and music as well because I'm a huge fan of music

and so many great musicians are poets, you know, and I think of the words that Nick Cave would write or, you know, you think, wow, or Van Morrison. And this is poetry in music, so, yeah, I think it would have to be, Mary on. I think poetry really is all around us. What perfect place to end. This has been a really beautiful experience. I love talking to you, Mary. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

It's been my pleasure. I'm Vic Hope, and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time.