Tender Buttons

In this episode, we talk to Bristol City Poet Caleb Parkin about taxonomies, ecophrastic poems and the historical exclusion of LGBTQIA+ people from environmental movements and access to nature. We chat about the way our sense of 'nature' is always mediated through culture and the need for irreverence and irony to offset the self-righteousness that can be associated with climate activism. We discuss how queer perspectives can alter the conversation around climate justice and the need for us to sit with uncertainty and unknowingness. 

Caleb's dazzling, slippery poetry collection - This Fruiting Body - is out now from Nine Arches Press.

As a Tender Buttons listener you can get 10% discount on Caleb's book at Storysmith Books, listen in for more details and then head to our page on the Storysmith website: storysmithbooks.com/tenderbuttons

References

This Fruiting Body by Caleb Parkin

Wasted Rainbow by Caleb Parkin

Nicole Seymour

Timothy Morton

Strangers by Rebecca Tamás

Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown 

Hiddenness, Uncertainty, Surprise by Jane Hirshfield

Our theme music is a sample from Flotation by Ben Vince from his album The Purge.

In today's episode we chat to the brilliant Nikesh Shukla about his recent fatherhood memoir Brown Baby. We talk about how to navigate racism and sexism while raising children, the ways in which grief distorts time, subverting the traditional memoir form, representation within publishing, the radical history of Bristol, finding joy and hope in a difficult world and how to contribute to political change in our everyday lives.

REFERENCES

Brown Baby by Nikesh Shukla

Run, Riot by Nikesh Shukla

Coconut Unlimited by Nikesh Shukla

The One Who Wrote Destiny by Nikesh Shukla

The Boxer by Nikesh Shukla

The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shukla

Rife: Twenty-One Stories from Britain's Youth edited by Nikesh Shukla

What is Race? Who Are Racists? And Why Does Skin Colour Matter? by Nikesh Shukla and Clare Heuchan

Brown Baby Podcast

Nikesh's Writing Tips Newsletter

The Good Literary Agency

As a Tender Buttons listener you can get 10% discount on Nikesh's books at Storysmith Books, listen in for more details and then head to our page on the Storysmith website: storysmithbooks.com/tenderbuttons

In this episode, we chat to novelist, memoirist and academic Jenn Ashworth, about her new novel Ghosted (Sceptre: 2021), a brilliant, unconventional blend of crime fiction and horror to find a form that can hold grief, loss and the myriad of ways in which people can go missing. We speak about the complexity and multi-layered dimensions of working class identities, from work to family to notions of belonging, as well as the challenges of writing trauma in both fiction and non-fiction. 

As a Tender Buttons listener you can get 10% discount on Jenn's books at Storysmith Books, listen in for more details and then head to our page on the Storysmith website: storysmithbooks.com/tenderbuttons

References

Ghosted by Jenn Ashworth (Sceptre: 2021) 

Notes Made While Falling by Jenn Ashworth (Goldsmiths: 2019) 

In this episode we chat to Bristol-based writer and researcher Zakiya Mckenzie about decolonising the archives, collective memory and the histories of plants and their relationship to the histories of people. We discuss the inextricable links between land in England and Jamaica and the need for more radical and decolonial ways of mapping stories, land and time than the models left to us by the horrors of empire, as explored in Zakiya's recent pamphlet Testimonies on the History of Jamaica, Vol. 1 (out now with Rough Trade Books). 

You can buy a selection of Zakiya’s work from Storysmith with a 10% discount, tune in to the episode to find out more.

References:

Testimonies on the History of Jamaica, Vol 1 by Zakiya Mckenzie (Rough Trade Pamphlets: 2021)

A collection of Zakiya's writing as Writer-in-Residence with the Forestry Commission can be found here. 

A Chapter in Women on Nature, ed. Katharine Norbury (Unbound: 2021)

A Chapter in The Wild Isles Anthology, ed. Patrick Barkham (Head of Zeus: 2021)

Her BBC4 Production on the Forest of Dean, can be found here. 

Other References:

Dennis Potter: The Art of the Invective, Selected Non-Fiction 1953-1994 (Bloomsbury: 2015)  & his classic TV Series 'Singing Detective' and 'Pennies from Heaven' 

In this episode, we chat to poet and essayist Rebecca Tamás about the figure of the witch, the power of language to manifest change in the world and poetry as a way to speak with not for voices that have been silenced throughout history. We talk about the role of awe and emotion in forging a deeper relationship with the non-human world, climate grief, the loss of language and the impact of late capitalism on our psyches, bodies and planet.

You can buy Rebecca's books from Storysmith with a 10% discount, check out the episode to find out more. 

References

Witch by Rebecca Tamás (Penned in the Margins: 2019) 

Strangers by Rebecca Tamás (Makina Books: 2020)

Spells: 21st Century Occult Poetry Ed. Rebecca Tamás, So Mayer and Sarah Shin (Ignota Books: 2018) 

The Songs of Hecate: Poetry and the Language of the Occult by Rebecca Tamás (White Review Essay, 2019)

Other References

Timothy Morton: Being Ecological (MIT Press: 2019) 

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed Editions: 2013) 

CA Conrad on Somatic Poetry

Illuminations by Walter Benjamin

The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector

The Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde

In this episode we talk to Ren Aldridge, artist, writer and singer in feminist post-hardcore band Petrol Girls about the intersection of her art and politics. We chat about the DIY punk practice of passing the mic, learning by doing, zine culture, the power and limitations of anger & more.

If you would like to donate to the Solidarity not Silence campaign, to help raise funds for women facing a defamation claim from a man in the music industry for statements they made concerning his treatment of women, you can do so here or buy the Petrol Girls track, I Believe Them, here. Solidarity not Silence are also dropping a new single on 4th May via Alcopop Records - This Is Sisterhood. For updates on this follow the Solidarity not Silence Twitter here. 

References

Songs featured in episode: 

In this episode we chat to writer Kerri ní Dochartaigh about her new book Thin Places (Canongate) and its powerful weaving of memoir, history, Irish folklore, language and nature writing. We discuss her childhood growing up in Derry amidst the Troubles, the necessity of expanding our kinship with the non-human world and the ways in which a new generation of writers of landscape are blazing open the field. 

You can find Kerri's book at storysmithbooks.com/tenderbuttons. 

As a Tender Buttons listener you can also get 10% discount, listen in for more details on this... 

Episode References 

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In the first of our Bristol-based episodes, we speak to graphic novelist, musician, educator and all-round local legend Joff Winterhart about the poetry of the mundane, the hinterlands of suburbs and industrial estates, crises in contemporary masculinity and Joff's use of the graphic form. 

Joff's graphic novels are Days of the Bagnold Summer (2012) and Driving Short Distances ( 2017). You can find both of Joff's books at storysmithbooks.com/tenderbuttons. As a Tender Buttons listener you can purchase Joff's books with 10% discount, have a listen for more details on this... 

Joff's band Bucky can be found here: https://buckytheband.bandcamp.com/

Other References:

Lynda Barry's comics are One! Hundred! Demons! (2002), What It Is (2008) and Cruddy (1999) (amongst many others) 

We chat to writer Huw Lemmey about queer desire, shame, a politics of bodily love and ways to fight the British culture war.   

References:

You can subscribe to Huw’s weekly essays on his ‘Utopian Drivel’ substack here: huw.substack.com

His two novels are Chubz: The Demonization of My Working Arse (Montrez Press: 2014) and Red Tory: My Corbyn Chemsex Hell (Montrez: 2019)

His Bad Gays Podcast, with co-host Ben Miller: badgayspod.podbean.com

Other References: Richard Scott Soho (Faber: 2018) Jean Genet Thief’s Journal (1949)

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We chat to Catherine Madden about form, sexuality and childhood.

You can follow Catherine on twitter @CatherineEMIMad and her website:catherinemadden.org/