After a late summer break, Sasha and Venetia return with more weekly Grief Encounters chats, and this weeks guest was an incredibly special one. Stephen Sexton is on the cusp of being one of Ireland's great modern poets, and his debut book has been compared to that of Seamus Heaney in recent weeks. If All The World And Love Were Young, is a beautiful elegy to his mother, who passed away from cancer in 2012. 

Stephen explores her death and other themes of grief through the guise of the Super Mario World, video games that used to consume so much of his childhood. The books narrative takes the reader through the various levels of Super Mario World, whose flowered landscapes bleed into our world, and ours, strange with loss, bleed into it. This episode features an incredible mix of deep conversation about the process of grief, its ever frequent manifestation into the world of art, as well as a few readings of Stephen’s truly beautiful work. 

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Music by: Nctrnm

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