Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S7 Ep2: Bookshelfie: Hollie McNish

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Award-winning writer, poet and performer Hollie McNish chats about becoming a feminist, swearing in french and why she’s bored of taboos. Hollie is the author of five poetry collections, a new adaptation of the Greek tragedy Antigone, and the co-writer of Offside, a play about the history of women’s football. She was the first poet ever to record an album at Abbey Road studios and she regularly tours the UK and Europe with sold out performances of her work, many of which have gone viral online.  Holly’s raw voice, which won her the Ted Hughes award for new work in poetry in 2016,  often tackles subjects and language considered taboo, and she’s never shied away from topics it’s not easy to write - or talk about.  Her last collection, Slug (and other things I’ve been told to hate) explored subjects women are conditioned to feel shame about - from periods to masturbation, and her new book, Lobster (and other things I’m Learning to Love), shows how we can change that narrative.  Hollie’s book choices are: ** Alfie Gets in First by Shirley Hughes ** The Madwomen's Ball by Victoria Mas ** Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden ** Say Hello! by Rachel Isadora ** The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak  Vick Hope, multi-award winning TV and BBC Radio 1 presenter, author and journalist, is the host of season seven 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 seven? Listen and subscribe now! This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

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slash Toronto. And somebody asked if I was a feminist and I was like, and then she just stopped me and absolutely ripped into me. It was like, what? And then I was like, Holly, look, and sent me these articles. Like, if you are happy that you have this and this and this and this and this, you need to support these calls. I was like, okay, fair enough.

So it was the other female poets basically that sort of, yeah, slapped my ass into shape. 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 am your host for Season 7 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 2024 reading this. Today I am joined by. by the award-winning writer, poet and performer Holly McNish. I'm going to let you pour that water because I can see that you're sort of like lingering waiting. I'm trying to do it really quietly. It's actually a nice sound. It's like ASMR this now. Let's have a little.

Oh yeah. I feel like that recording poems. I was trying to make my voice a bit softer. Holly is the author of five poetry collections, a new adaptation of the Greek tragedy, Antigonee, and the co-writer of Offside, a play about the history of women's football. She was the first poet ever to record an album at Abbey Road Studios, and she regularly tours the UK and Europe with sold out performances of her work,

many of which have gone viral online. Holly's Raw Voice, which one of the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in poetry in 2016, often tackles subjects and language considered taboo, and she's never shied away from topics it's not easy to write or talk about. Her last collection, Slug and other things I've been told to hate, explored subjects women are conditioned to feel shame about, from periods to masturbation. And her new book, Lovster and other things I'm Learning to Love, shows how we can change that narrative.

Welcome to the podcast. Holly, thanks for the water. Oh, no problem. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. We were just chatting about how, you know, we have these books that we love. And so often we're like, I don't know what happens in it. I just know that I liked it. Always.

I'm like that. I was honestly petrified. of doing this and I love this podcast but I was thinking what if they asked me that even to the title of the book I've had interviews where somebody's been like so that book that you were talking about I can't remember the title I can't remember who wrote it or no

I can for this but yeah I feel like it's a bit like a meal you know you eat a meal and I don't necessarily remember all the ingredients but I just have the taste in my mouth left I'm like that with a lot of books I read I don't think there are many that I remember the specific facts for

I say this about people as well whenever I'm trying to give my friends dating advice. I'm like, look, people are like sample products. It's not like a tin of food where you see the nutritional value and you decide you like it. You have to taste it. Yeah. It's the same with a book. Yes, you might know all the details about it, but it's until you've read it and you feel something that you know what it is. It's done to you. Yeah, absolutely. I used to think that when I was studying as well. I remember one of my lecturers saying to me, right, it's really good that you've written about the like feelings for this, but you do actually you have to get the main character's name right because I just kept forgetting in exams.

I was like, I know what I think about it. I could sort of recommend it. But yeah, I'll hopefully remember a few. It's funny you should mention studying and having to kind of digest literature in that way. Because we went to the same uni, we did the same course. Yeah. And I fell out of love with reading in that time. And I was wondering if you felt the same because languages at Cambridge, it was very analytical.

And I almost forgot that I loved stories and I loved characters. Me too, exactly the same. And I think actually my daughter's a teenager now and I hear a lot of people sort of worried about teenagers even stopping reading. There's quite a lot about it, quite a lot of other parents sort of worried about it. But I think I even did then. I was trying to think about like books that I read as a kid and I read loads and I hear a lot of people say, oh, I was a real sort of booky teenager. but I don't think I was.

Like I think after I'd studied all day at school, done on my homework, I didn't want to read. I didn't want to pick up a book. And I had that at university as well. And I hardly read fiction. So when I was thinking, I was like, okay, women's fiction at school and at uni, actually, I don't think I was given many books written by women. Did you fall back in love with reading, though?

Yeah, I have. So I think I fell back in love when I sort of started reading, kids books again to my daughter because I really didn't read fiction before that I think I had this idea that when I was reading a fiction book I was like you said trying to analyse it or thinking that I was

going to be tested on it and I also felt a bit self-indulgent sometimes and I think for my job not for my job but writing poems I write more after I've read non-fiction and I love learning about things. Yeah you're taking these stuff things on board

it then become your pearls of wisdom. Yeah, and I don't think I thought that fiction could teach me anything. And I had this really like this, so, so, but this guilt. I've heard other people, especially women say that, that they had this guilt of reading fiction. Like, it's so indulgent to sit and just read a story. Can you believe it? Just enjoying something. I know.

So bad. What? So bad. It's so awful. So I would read nonfiction because then I was thinking, well, okay, well, this is teaching me something. So I'm doing something as well. But I have fallen back in love with it. I think, yeah, through reading to my daughter.

And have you always loved reading poetry? No. No, I haven't always loved reading it. So when I was younger, I did, like, kids poetry. I loved it. And I've still, like, my first introduction to poetry was a book called, Please, Mrs. Butler. And it was just, like, funny kids' poems.

And it was brilliant. And I really loved it. it was from the point of view of a teacher, sort of hate in teaching. And I think as a kid, I'd never thought that a teacher maybe wouldn't love their job and would love everything about it. And it was like this funny, kind of rude insight into adult minds sometimes, kids' poetry. So I loved it then. And then again, as a teenager, it was studying at school.

It wasn't my teachers were great. I just don't think I thought that you could enjoy. stuff you were studying. It didn't like cross my mind that that was also all right. And I've reread some of the books that I studied and I've really enjoyed them. And the poetry as well, like Seamus Heaney, we, uh, we studied. And I remember sitting in class and saying to my friend, why are we reading poems about potatoes? Like, why are they making us read about potatoes? I don't know any of the history around here, but really like, annoying little kid in the classroom, like, whatever um so i didn't but then i used to print out loads of song lyrics and to learn french i

used to print out a rapper called emce si solah oh my god me too i loved emcee so yeah amazing my french teacher used to play him to us oh really which felt very cool oh that's so nice that's so i saw him finally when i was pregnant i remember i went to see him in london and um yeah it's great i was just there was someone like talking next to me when one of my favorite songs came and I was like, no, I need to. You have to shut up right now. There's a line about your hips in French. I need to hear this line.

But yeah, so I used to print off song lyrics and I used to print off like a whole like Courtney love lyrics as well. And then try and write my own poems around them. So I would say that I did like poetry, but in the form of song lyrics, which I do also think is poetry. And then it's recently really that I've got into, I mean recently in the last like 10 years that I love reading poetry now. Well, let's talk about the texts that you have loved over the. the course of your life. Your first bookshelfy book is Alfie gets in first by Shirley Hughes. Alfie and his mum and baby sister, Annie Rose, arrive home after shopping. While his mum struggles with the push chair outside, Alfie rushes inside and slams the door behind him. So now Alfie's stuck

inside and his mum and Annie Rose are stuck outside without a key. Soon everyone in the street is trying to help rescue Alfie, but he's got a plan of his own. I love this. I love this. Surely whose books are known to celebrate the mundane. What is it about the every day and the way she invokes it in this book that speaks to you? I think it's just the fact that it's such a, I really love kids' books. And I think sometimes kids' books have written, or children's books are written not better than adults, but there's loads of things that I think are celebrated in children's books that aren't in adults' books. I think it's just that taking the absolute every day and just me.

making it into enough for this entire beautifully illustrated book. But also you can sort of see it from both characters' point of view. Like in all of her books, the like parents are there and the adults are there. And the neighbours. It's like that kind of idea of community in her books is brilliant. But that it's enough. Like this book, Alfie gets in person and this little boy looks himself in.

As a child, that is a huge deal. But it's, you know, it's not, it's not like a huge. political treaties. Yeah. And I really love that. And it made me sort of question. I used to, I remember my daughter, like, left one of her toys in the car once at night. And it was raining.

I couldn't be bothered to go and get it. And I was like, oh, it's fine. Like, it's, you know, it's a doll. It would be fine. But to her, it was real. Like this small bubble that gets bigger and bigger as they get older. But this is actually really important to you. And to you, this door is a person.

Like you've been carrying this round with you. It's like me saying to someone, oh, your baby's in the car, it's all right. I'll get them in the morning sort of thing. And I think that's what Shirley Hughes and that's what this story does. It makes me sort of also okay with having this, the kind of everyday life that might have been seen as kind of too mundane or banal to write about or to be great literature. But I think Shirley Hughes takes it. It's like, no, this is amazing. This is enough.

This has everything in it. It has, you know, relationships. It has fear, it has joy, it has the communities, it has the neighbours, the streets. Yeah, it's just like this little bubble of life. And I think most people's lives are like that. And I guess every time I, you know, there's so much atrocious stuff going on in the world that I think most people would probably like this as their life. Well, because the tiniest things can hold the greatest emotions.

And every single passerby has a life as complex and very. vivid as your own even if they're just sitting on the train yeah they're going through it absolutely sometimes when i'm teaching i don't teach poetry a lot because i'm not sure i know how to sometimes but there's so many people when i'm doing workshops that that say that their life isn't exciting enough for poetry but it's like the poem by um it's called the orange by wendy co my favorite oh is it oh it's amazing i don't read it by wedding oh my god it's my favorite it's amazing because the orange is just the most amazing thing oh it's so good and when she's just like, that's good, I've sliced it, I've eaten it, I've shared it,

and that's so nice. I love you. I'm glad I exist. Yes, so nice. It's so perfect, isn't it? Yeah. Well, I feel like it's like that with these Shirley Hughes books. It's just like, this is enough as well. Like, this has everything in it. Oh, that's great. I've just bought the book, the orange. I'm so happy that you have. I'm so happy that you have. And also on your point about when you're little, like the smallest thing can feel so big, always it was losing my mum in the supermarket. Oh, yeah. That would feel. catastrophic, looking back now, I'm like, come on. So I did that on purpose.

Our local saves. Got a loser. Always brings it up. Every time we went there, me and my brother would run away because we got lost once and went to the lost children's area. It's like this massive supermarket. And they announced our names over the Tannoy. So my mum went absolutely mortified, obviously.

And then every time we went back and she stopped going there because every time we went back, we like tried to go around and then ran away so that we could hear our names being read over the Danoit again, but she just looked like this terrible mum. Just to talk a little bit about your mum, because you said that she had read some Shirley Hughes to you as you were growing up, and then of course you read this to your daughter. I know your mum worked as a nurse. How did she help shape your view of the world?

I mean, in sort of every way. I think the main things I remember, she read. read to us every night. She'd worked night shift when I was quite little. And I remember being told, like, not to wake her up in the day, but I always would. And I remember getting really annoyed with her because she would fall asleep, like, halfway through a book. And it didn't cross my mind that would make because she was absolutely exhausted.

And I'd be like, Mom! Or she'd sort of, she'd be reading books in bed and she'd, like, slur into another story that wasn't the story. I mean, my brother were like, can you stop? But I think part of it. from reading, she gave me these little poetry books as well, the first sort of poetry books that I had. She's really amazing and she's really calm. And I think from working as a nurse, just all the, just every day seeing people that needed help or with a range of ailments.

She did loads of different clinics and she was always, not in a bad way, but if I was sort of stressed about something, she'd talked to me about her work. And it wasn't like, oh, Holly, this is nothing compared to this patient that I've got, but I always considered myself really lucky, like really lucky just to have, just to have a healthy body. And she talked about the body all the time as well. Like she's fascinated by the body. And every time I had something, like I remember with scabs, I've talked about it quite a lot in my next book. And she was like, oh, really? Do you have to talk about that? But when I like, I fell over a lot. I went on my bike a lot and roller skates and stuff. And I, whenever I had a scab, I remember my mom being like, isn't it fascinating?

Like that is nature's plaster. Look at it, look at it, healing. And if I picked it, she'd like, no. And like, tell me all these, tell me all of this. And if I had a cold, it'd be like, oh, isn't that snot amazing? Just like clearing things from your body. So just this very deep appreciation, I think, of how lucky. Like every time we go out and eat, she's like, aren't we lucky to be like.

She just feels so grateful for like everything. And I guess with poetry in terms of being, I guess, really nervous, obviously, like most people before doing readings. And I'm almost like, what's the worst that can happen? Like, if I do a smear test and I get it wrong, it might really injure someone. I remember saying that once. But like, really, someone might not like your poem. And I was like, yeah. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. Well, from the body to the mind, Your second book-shelphie book is The Mad Woman's Ball by Victoria Mass, translated by Frank Wynne. All of 1885 Paris is in thrall to Dr. Charcot and his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad or hysterical outcast from society.

Once a year a grand ball is held at the hospital. For the Prisian elite, the Mad Women's Ball is the highlight of the social season. For the women themselves, it is a rare moment of host. a novel that is both a celebration of female strength and a dazzling stylistic to divorce. Now, you've said that you love a novel that is based on a true story, which this is. What is it about this that appeal to you? So I chose this one because it got me back into reading fiction, basically, and that's the thing about it. So this is one of those books, like we were talking earlier about some books and the specific details.

Like there are so many historic details in this book and I think if I had to do a test on it, I would probably fail quite badly. But the feeling that I got after reading this book was that I really just wanted to go and learn more about this topic and more about the sort of history of hysteria, history of neuroscience. And the reason I sometimes I sort of shy away from reading books that are too tragic. Like I get, I used to get really annoyed when I felt like every book that was deemed sort of literary worthy had to have a really sad ending. Like happy endings weren't clever enough, that sort of idea. And this book, somebody told me about it, was when I was touring in France, just doing a sort of four-day book tour.

And I kept seeing this book in French. I read it in the translation. I'd really like to try and read it in the original. but it was just the injustice of it all really and I guess the idea that books can teach me something I think I found there was a lot of female friendship in this book that seemed to well not get the characters through because you can't get through being put in an asylum

but yeah it was just that it was just the kind of shivers that it gave me reading about it and it was like a catapult to questioning everything Like even, you know, the idea nowadays that we're still, it's like, oh, you're on your period or when I was pregnant, I remember people kept saying, I was crying quite a lot. And people kept saying, oh, it's your hormones, you know, when you're pregnant, your hormones are everywhere, which I'm sure is also true. But after reading this book about all these ideas of sort of madness, I guess, that have been put on

women for centuries. It made me question all of that. And I was thinking, is it or is it because I have this actual life inside me that I'm the only person really controlling this and loads could go wrong? And these sort of huge things that women go through that I sort of, I think sometimes belittled slightly by just saying, oh, it's your hormones. I remember, yeah, just so much. And so it made me think about all of that, all the

times I guess periods menstruating had been blamed for me being upset about things or yeah just it was it was just that and I went on to look at all the different reasons that people women mainly but not only women were were put into these sorts of asylums and I think one of them was was reading like at some point in the past just what just just reading just reading just reading like reading as if you think that your brain is good enough to read a book, to read literature. And that was, that was enough or disagreeing with your husband was seen as a sign of madness in certain places at certain times. So it was just fascinating. And I, yeah, I love, I love when books do that. I don't know if everything is like factually accurate. I think I have to remember that about historical

fiction, but it really catapulted me into, into just reconfiguring my mind a bit. And I love that about books. This book obviously has strong feminist themes and I read somewhere that when your poetry was described as feminist, you almost dismissed that. You didn't want to be thought of in that way. What's your relationship been with feminism? My relationship's mainly being that when I started out, I was exactly like that. Like I was like, no, I'm not a feminist poet. And it wasn't because I wasn't brought up in a sort of a household whether women were incredible or the, you know, the men were terrible or anything like that. But I just, it's just that prejudice against the word. I absolutely had it. And I think, I've written about it quite a lot, but I think I was

really, really sexist when I was growing up. And looking back, like, just thinking about all the books that I'd read. And it was only in my fourth year at university that I realized that, I honestly think I'd read about four books by women and all the rest had been men. And it had really pushed into me this idea that, I don't know, that it just wasn't as important. The patriarchy had got in my head, basically. But I remember at university, in our second year, I think it was, we could finally choose other sort of literature, is not just like the set books that we were given. And somebody asked if I wanted to do, wanted to study literature written.

by women. And I said no, because it was like a subsection. Yeah, it felt that way. And I was just like, well, if it was good enough, it can't be as good, if it was good enough. And I really did think it would be just in the main syllabus. So I didn't choose it. And also the only people choosing it were the other girls on my course. And I really thought, well, if it was, if it was at the same level as this stuff in the main syllabus, then everyone would be taking it and studying it. It wouldn't be a subsection. So all of those prejudices, I think were really in my head and also just this idea that a feminist is a, I don't know, a woman that is disliked and the idea of being disliked by people all putting boys and men off reading my books. Yeah, it was just,

it was just knowing that that word had negative connotations that put me off by actually one of my friends, Sabrina Maffoos, who was the woman that I wrote the offside play about the history of women's football. She sort of got me on to do that. somebody asked if I was a feminist and I was like, mm-hmm, and then she just stopped me and absolutely ripped into me. It was like, what? And then I was like, Holly, look, and sent me these articles. Like, if you are happy that you have this and this and this and this and this,

you need to support these calls. I was like, okay, fair enough. So it was the other female poets basically that sort of, yeah, slapped my ass into shape. I mean, you talk about so many issues relating to women in your work. And I'd say rather than taboo breaking for the sake of shock, your poetry, it probes and it questions our ideas of the taboo for women such as motherhood or masturbation. Why is it important for you? Why is it important for you to have that voice?

I think, well, first of all, I normally just write, like I've always written poems as a diary since I was a teenager. Not like loads and loads, but I've always found poetry a lot more freeing. And those were just things that I've thought about. a lot and I guess I've thought about them a lot because they are seen as taboo so it's sort of annoyed me that they're not spoken about but I've just written about like I wrote about masturbation like it was during lockdown that a lot of that you know sort of the early stages of lockdown that I was writing and I was on my own a lot so that's it that was a reason I was worrying about that but they're just things that happen in my everyday life I guess and sometimes I forget that

when you're just sitting at your desk or kitchen table or whatever, writing poems that at some point you're going to then choose whether or not to share these poems and then choose whether or not to publish these poems. So it's not really the writing of them. It's just that then will I share them? And I think after I started sharing things that I was slightly uncomfortable with and seeing how helpful it was for certain people who are shy or who have, you know, I've got a, I'm not saying my family, like, love the fact that I'm sharing those poems

about masturbation. I'm sure they don't. They definitely told me they don't. But I've not got a family that will like disown me for writing stuff. So I'm quite free with my family. That's a real privilege, isn't it? It's such a privilege. And actually if I can do that and if it does help, then I've just started sort of sharing everything.

But yeah, they're just ridiculous. Like the more I write about them. And I love looking into the history of all these taboos. Like masturbation especially, like in schools we teach that like after we teach about penitious sex, which just seems incredible. It's not like that in every country. And just looking at looking at things like that, like the fact that touching your own body has become one of the biggest sort of sins around the world in so many countries and cultures, it's sort of fascinating how ridiculous a lot of the taboo. And I think I keep writing or keep sharing them because they're also really dangerous like from a child protection point of view, like all the things we don't talk about.

have at some point or other put people at risk. So people being ashamed to speak about their bodies or not knowing their body, not knowing their own pleasures, being ashamed of blood, like all of these things. It's not like I love talking about them. I don't love trying to specifically put the word vulva in a poem

so that I can like get used to say in it. But every time someone's ashamed of something, it has actually put them at risk. So I'm sort of bored of the taboos. I find them ridiculous. I find them quite funny sometimes. But I just, yeah, that sort of, that sort of easing the shame and the help that that could be, I guess, pushes me to write about it. It's kind of crazy that when we're at school, sex education only taught us that sex was a dangerous thing that could lead to either pregnancy as a teen or to sexually transmitted infections.

And we only knew, really, that men could orgasm because there was a byproduct. We never knew about women being able to enjoy it, which is so dangerous when it comes to consent. Yeah, it's so dangerous. You're allowed to like it and if you don't like it, then that's not good. Very simple, but we weren't even told that. No, you weren't even told that. And you weren't told any other way to have sex other than the most dangerous. Yeah.

I always found that amazing. I was like, safe sex is a condom on a penis. That's not the safest sex, is it. The safest sex is touching each other with your hands, really and can lead to just as many orgasms. But the idea of discussing that is, like, you could, you could, possibly do it. Yes, it's amazing. It is changing slightly. I think so. Thank goodness. 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. Bayleys is the perfect adult treat, whether shaken in a cocktail, over ice cream, or paired with your favorite book. Check out Bayleys.com for our favorite Bailey's recipes. Well, we move on to another subject that I know a lot of people are scared to talk about. Your third book, Shelby book, is Mrs. Death, Mrs. Death by Selena Godden. Mrs. Death has had enough. She is exhausted from spending eternity doing her job, and now she seeks someone to emburden her conscience to. Wolf Williford, a troubled young writer, is well acquainted with death, but until now hadn't met death in person. a black working class woman who shapeshifts and does her work unseen.

As the two reflect on the losses they've experienced, or in the case of Mrs. Death facilitated, their friendship grows into a surprising affirmation of hope, resilience and love in this much-awaited, tantalizing debut novel from poet Selina Godden, who I know you hugely admire, and you've said that this book is one of the only books that you've reread. So what was it about this that made you keep coming back?

Yeah, I absolutely, I just love Selena. I've seen her perform poetry so many times I've performed with her. And I was so excited that she wrote a novel. And I was hoping it was going to be one of the most poetic novels in her style of poetry that I've ever read. And it was. And it's one of my favorite books that I've ever read. And I was really sort of didn't want to read it because of the theme of death, which is obviously one of the greatest taboos

and one of the ones that I'm least comfortable with and hate thinking of the fact that I will one day die. And I only read it because it was Selena that wrote it. And the reason I love it so much is because it's, I don't know how Selena does it, but it's like this love letter to life by the end of it. Like it just, it's horrendous, like it's traumatising that there's lots in it that relates to Grenfell,

there's lots in it that relates to serial killers. There's so much death in this book. It's talking about how Mrs. Death is just exhausted with all the death. And it makes so many points about history, about feminism. There's so much murder in it. And there's like this one bit where, which just, there's so many lines in it that really, you know, when you read a book and you just have all these sort of quotes that you want to sort of

plaster over your mind so that you can remember them all the time. So there's one that it's talking about if somebody dies by suicide under the age of 40, it's like you've killed a stranger, like you just don't know yourself and it's so the tragedy of it and all these different deaths that Mrs. Death is traumatized by. And one of the things in it is that she said, it's a lot of time travel in it, a lot of deaths obviously from the history of humankind beginning And she says, I really expected it to get better. I expected to have less work to do because we've got so much more medicine now and we can look after people and people don't die from all of these illnesses that they

used to die from in the past. But she says, but I'm actually busier than ever now and talks about all these huge conflicts worldwide or these atrocities, all these killings. It's just so much in this book to take in. But it's also hilarious. Like Mrs. Death goes to therapy because she, she can't handle the fact that she is with every single person in the world that ever dies. And there's bits in it like the way that Selena writes poems,

they sort of leave me just wanting to go and do everything that I've ever wanted to do in life and to help everyone I can and to love as much as possible. And that's what I love about her poems and that's what I love about this book. Like Selena, you have written poetry and also novels. You've written prose. your new book Lobster is out on the 14th of March. Can you tell me a little bit about it and why you've written it? So Slug and Lobster were written together, but then they were split into two books

because they were far too long for anyone to read. So it's the sort of prequel to that. So Slug is Slug and other things I've been told to hate, and then Lobster is Lobster and other things I'm learning to love. So it's like this sort of soppy, more positive version of Slug. But both of them are a mix of nonfiction and poetry, and then Slug's also got short stories in it. But it's just all the things that I've been told to be ashamed of or embarrassed about. And not, my mom's always like, oh God, it was me.

And it's like, no, it's not you. It's the culture, just the culture that you're brought up in or the education that you have. So it's just all those things that I wish I hadn't been at any point in my life embarrassed about. So in Lobster specifically, there's a section on people. So there's a section on like men and the fact that I have been told. to hate men and I've been called a man hater and sort of the idea of just lumping people together into these big kind of balls of hate which I think we do all the time and we do with men and we do with women. So there's a section on that, there's a section on class, there's a section on

motherland because my mum and dad are both from Glasgow. So the idea of being born as the sort of enemy country, like family's country. And there's a whole section on oral sex, which I was worried about putting in now that my daughter's of a certain age. So there are certain things that I'll probably wait to publish for like 10 years. I won't publish them until she's older. But with that, it's really the idea of, like for me, that kind of summed up things that I was told to be ashamed of, like trying to enjoy oral sex or the sort of PR around blowjobs or fallacious, just how horrendous it can be when you're young. I remember like what we learn about that was awful. We didn't learn about conalingas. We did learn about philatio, which is a word that I really like. I've got a poem

about how much I really like that word, hate the word, blowjob. But everything was so, everything that we learned about sex was so kind of negative and also like violent, especially with oral sex and this sort of hatred for your own body, the fact that I think it's something like 3% of women will actually use the word vulva. And if we can't even say that word and you're taught to hate your body, then how the hell are you going to enjoy something like, or so even if you would enjoy it, like just so much shaming and so much history around these things that could be so simple. So there's just lots of topics about that really, but I think in Lobster, it's a more loving side to it. So there's loads of poems about friendship woven through the whole thing,

and which I really loved putting in. They're not, you know, in any specific sections. But yeah, there's a section on happiness. It's a section on the effect of advertising. But all of them are just little essays and then poems in between. So it's the poems that come first from all the books. But then I like nonfiction and I like people sort of knowing where I was when I wrote specific poems and sharing this kind of research or the stories around them as well. Well, on the theme of friendship, happiness and the mantra that things can be so simple,

let's talk about your fourth book that you've brought today, which is say hello. by Rachel Isidora. Kamalita loves to greet everyone in her neighborhood. There are people from so many different cultures and they all like to say hello too. So now Kamalita can say hello in Spanish, English, French, Japanese and many other languages. Rachel Isidora's eye-catching collages are full of kid-friendly details

making Kamalita's neighborhood fun to explore. This simple portrait of a child's day provides a great introduction to the joy of language. So this is actually the second children's book that you've chosen for your bookshelfy picks. Yeah. What made you want to include both? Why did you pick this?

So this one I picked because I still can't work out exactly what makes certain books so popular with certain children. So I hadn't heard of Rachel's story before and I didn't actually know that she'd written, look, like she's done so many children's books. and I got this one out of the library but then had to buy another one because my kid basically like ripped it up

what out of love? Out of love like it is the most ripped book I've ever seen and it was so fascinating and this story I read just like every day for weeks and weeks months and months so I had to buy a replacement for the library but that was why I included it because I couldn't get my head around

what it was that was so clever about this book and when I read it to my daughter there's an ice cream truck at the end that they're getting to and at the end after everyone said hello in different languages to this little girl which I also just loved because it's really horrible when your kid says hello to people and they don't say hello back but at the end there's like there's an ice cream truck basically

and there's a dog and she says hello to the dog and the dog says woof it's a very simple story But this ice cream truck was so exciting for my daughter that she would like scream the words in order to get through the book. But the pages were like just ripped out. I had to like sellotape them back in and then she'd keep reading it. And then she does just like scream at the end for this truck and then scream all the words. Also, obviously it's a beautiful book about people just getting on let's speak all different languages, which I think is one of the most important things that a lot of politicians could do with reading.

Also this kind of fear of other languages. People say, and especially people say that with the prejudice against Arabic. I remember I'm sure it was Nigel Farage was talking about, people talking on a bus and just these assumptions of what people will be talking about when most often they're probably talking about, you know, who's going to get the shopping and stuff, just this fear we have of other languages, of other people, of other cultures. So I thought this was really important book in that sense to read to a kid.

and it was the only one like a lot of people bought me children's books for my daughter that were like quite political like I know there's when she was little so she's 13 now when she was little it was really hard to find any children's books with kids, girls especially

who looked like her that had brown skin and so I would sort of trail the library and I would ask them and quite often when I asked in the library you know do you have any stories with children that aren't white or any stories with children that look like my daughter, so she, you know, sees herself in them, they would hand me like comic about Rosa Parks or they would hand me a story about racism.

I was like, that's not, my kid doesn't want to read about that. She wants to read a story with like a teddy bear and I go, like, and I know that's got hugely better now, but this was one of the only books where it wasn't like, here is a history. of racism written for children because that is in no way what she wanted to read and also for all the white kids around her if that's the only books they were reading it also wasn't helpful so yeah that was another reason i i got this book in the first place then you know demolished it i can vouch for um wanting to be represented but in a way that is just pure celebration like you're just because you exist is valid enough you know seeing yourself on the pages of a book as a little

girl, not because there's an agenda, just because you can, because you can be there, is really uplifting and really special and really important. Yeah. And this book is all about language, as is your poetry, as a poet, and also as a linguist, you know, having studied languages, have you always been attracted to playing a round of language? And I'd also love to know how that then differs when you write, when you perform it, because I know you've got a busy tour schedule coming up.

Yeah. Yeah, I have always been fascinated by language. I don't know exactly why. Like I always wanted to learn another language. I learned French and German just because the school that I went to, that was all you could study. They were the only languages on offer. And I just, I feel like I really planned to move to France.

I really wanted to at one point move to France. And for various reasons, I haven't. But just learning different phrases and different languages, even those two, I feel like it's opened up my mind so much. And now like a couple of my books have been translated into French and one I've started doing gigs in French for the first time. So going to France and reading the poems in French and working with the translator slightly on the translation of the poems specifically.

Like I'm not good enough to touch the prose, but just once they've translated the poems into French, then I'll try to get it into my voice. I just love all of it. I'm trying to learn Spanish at the moment and I'm just enjoying. in it so much and I love the words that you can't translate like and all the words that my books are quite full of sex and swearing like not only there's a lot of other things I was going to say my grandma's in it a lot but that's also quite often about sex because we spoke about sex a lot but the words there's like sexual techniques and positions and stuff that were untranslatable

that I had to have these quite sort of formal meetings about like the word dogging or the word teabagging the guy was like uh we don't understand this phrase in English And then you're trying to work out how to describe that in French. And that was so I love the fact that some of the hardest things to translate are not the big kind of intellectual treaties. They're quite easy with the long words. They're all quite similar in other languages. But it's this sort of colloquial, sexual. Oh, it's absolutely fascinating.

I love it. And you have so much fun with it in Spanish because then every Spanish-speaking country has different ones. Oh, really? And my favorite is Kilombo, which means cluster fuck. But of course, it's the closest I can work out for it. That's it there isn't it It's amazing And I had that in the French translation

I had used the word like Oh shit or fuck a lot Which I like because they're like gender neutral swear words So I've really thought about that in the swearing even But then in French it was like Opretaire They kept changing it to Obruton Which is not quite a sort of like

So female It's very female And there's a lot of people that have a real problem With that being such a like normalized words in French And then I was asking the translator Is there another word? They were like, oh, not really.

And I was like, but does that give it a really, you know, bad idea of this whole book? So all those things, yeah, it's great. Yeah, tea bagging, I think they're very thankful. We've now given that to the world. I love that. We started with Say Hello, but Rachel Isadora talking about language, but moved on to that. We move on now, though, to your fifth and final book today, which is The Island of Missing Trees by Ella Shafak, shortlisted for the 2022 Women's Prize for Fiction.

It's about two teenagers. a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot who met at a tavernor on the island. They both call home. The taverna is the only place that Costas and Defne can meet in secret, hidden beneath a fig tree. The fig tree witnesses their hushed, happy meetings, their silent, surreptitious departures. The fig tree is there too when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, when the teenagers vanish. Mining questions of belonging, identity and trauma. This delivers a multi-layered, bittersweet tale of star-cross love on the divided island of Cyprus. Tell us why you picked this one.

This is the most recent book I've read. I weirdly hadn't heard of the author before and then saw her talking on a panel about Gaza and then went and looked on her Instagram. And she was just so approachable. One of these authors that I realise is a huge author, you know, written loads of books very, very well-known. but still kind of very engaged. And this is only one of her books I've read, but it's my first, hopefully, of many. And I think it was just the idea of how important fiction can be

for giving you an awareness of people's lives who have had lives totally different to your own and how important it is and how beautiful it is and interesting it is to read, stories that you haven't lived through at all. So I think that's one of the things that I most love about fiction is that it can put you right into the heart as much as reading a book can of someone else's experience.

I really like books that you can see so vividly. Like I feel after I read this book, I really felt like I'd read like a picture book of it as well. But I hadn't. And at some points I was thinking, right, go back and check it. Like it definitely was just words on the page. There were no pictures.

But my brain is just, like it's so colourful all the descriptions in this book. And it's, you know, it's traumatic. It's so important at the moment or maybe for all of history. But she's such a poet when she writes or such a visual artist. And there was a bit at the very beginning where she was talking about borders. It's like the horrendous things that have happened historically to do with borders all over the world. But she talks about things that cross borders with no problem and talks about things underground crossing borders. And then there's one image of someone's birthday balloon.

I think it's a red birthday balloon, but I might have got that wrong. But in my head, I'm now imagining it as that. But just this single image of a balloon crossing this border with absolutely no worry whatsoever. And there were just so many moments like that in this book that have just kind of stuck in my head, but really in picture form, not in not in word form. And I think that's incredible. It's a beautiful love story. It's taught me so much about the conflict that I really didn't know much of the history of. But just just that kind of sense and the beauty of the land of Cyprus, of nature, just the way that she's,

looks at the world is incredible and I feel like it's just filled my head with paintings it's like a love story written half from the point of view of a family, a young girl and half from the point of view of a tree I've never read a book it's written from the point of view of a tree before

but now and you know how some books you're like I will never look at a wardrobe filled with fur coats the same after reading line the witch in the wardrobe like they will always be magical Every time I see one of those lampposts, you know, the big old lampposts at night, I will always think that I'm possibly in Narnia. And I feel like that with this. Like I will never, after reading this book, look at a fig tree or a balloon or birds or like there's so many things that I just will remind me of this story and of the sort of hope for peace and conflict resolution.

And then, yeah. What a powerful thing for those images to be so evocative that they afflicted switches in your head and created these lasting images and associations for you. And it sort of changes you, doesn't it? Do you feel like the books and the poems that you've read, the books that you've brought to me today for this podcast, do they have a direct influence on your own creativity, on your own work?

Yeah, definitely. They just teach, I think they just teach you how to be a better writer as well. in terms of that very practical idea. Like my life, they've changed. I think, you know, not every book I've read, but most books change you a little bit, and then certain books just change you so much. I think in terms of writing,

it's all I sort of do to try and become a better writer is read. I think that's the only thing I ever say to people if they want to learn how to be a writer. And I think that's how I learn poetry. Like I didn't study poetry, I'm not saying that you shouldn't. I'm sure that will also help a lot if people actually go and study it,

just by reading other writers and like by reading the island of missing trees just this idea of of including more color and more images after I read that book I wrote just a little point I often write poems while I'm reading books and a lot of my books have my poems like scribbled over them and then I lose the poems because I can't remember what book it was that I like wrote them in which is quite annoying but yeah after reading that I just thought, oh, you need to add more colour and you need to learn more about the world and specifics and not always use the word tree or bird and learn about specific creatures. And, you know, just, yeah, just kind of zoom in the lens a little bit more.

Oh, you have such a successful writing, performing career as well. What would you like to achieve next? Where would you like your writing to take you? At the moment, it's the translations, really. to be honest that I'm really excited. I'm really excited about the book coming out, but I'm loving the kind of challenge of doing things in French. I think I spent years studying French

and then didn't really use it at all for years. So getting back into that and I've got a collection coming out in Spanish in October. So I'm sort of learning Spanish through that. So that is, I think that's, for me personally as a writer with my career, That's the thing that at the moment I'm getting very excited about and just improving really

I really the next thing I'm doing is a collection of like after lobster collection of poems just poems on their own and that's quite exciting after having written these hefty like non-fiction posts so I'm just excited about it all like it's such a nice

amazing thing to be doing Oh Lee just finally if you had to choose one book from your listening as a favourite. I don't know why I would say if you had to choose and then I say you do, but you do. So Holly, you have to choose one book from your list as a favourite, which is it and why? I think it would be Mrs. Death, Mrs. Death, because that is the one that as I walk down the streets, I can just hear Salina's like voice just telling me to love and telling me to live and telling me to do this. But in the most beautiful way, I feel like that's a kind of chorus that's now

surrounding my body all the time, reminding me of death and reminding me not to be a git. And you know what, on that note, not only are you surrounded by that, but every one of our listeners who has tuned into this podcast, just love, just live, just don't be a bit. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

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.