READINGS
Hugh Lomax
‘Hugh Lomax’ by Bridget Penney was originally published in gorse 6, August 2016, which quickly went out of print. Since then the story has been unavailable. Jonathan Gibbs included ‘Hugh Lomax’ in his 2016 books of the year and also in his own ‘A Personal Anthology’, back in September 2017. ‘A Personal Anthology’, still going strong under Jonathan’s aegis, now constitutes a splendidly various archive of more than one hundred writers discussing their favourite short stories.
‘One of my favourite reading experiences of the year was this piece in the great Irish journal gorse. I don’t know anything about the writer. I don’t want to say anything about what it is that she’s written, or what happens in it. I read it blind, and was very pleasantly wrong-footed, and I advise you to do so, too.’
Thank you, Jonathan! Thanks also to Susan Tomaselli, editor of gorse, which will always be Hugh Lomax’s spiritual home.
‘Hugh Lomax’ on SoundCloud. This recording was made by BP in January 2021.
Book Works presents: Licorice by Bridget Penney
RADIO
Suite (212): ‘Where the Novel has a Nervous Breakdown’
‘This week on Suite (212), Juliet talks to legendary writer and artist Stewart Home about the nine novels – including one of his own – that he has chosen and edited with Gavin Everall for Book Works’ Semina series of experimental texts, “in which the novel has a nervous breakdown”. Joining them are Bridget Penney, author of the first entry, Index (2008) and Book Works’ Lizzie Homersham.’
Originally broadcast on Resonance FM on Monday 15/04/2019.
Montez Press Radio: ‘Introducing Interstices’
Aperture, chink, cleft, crack, cranny, crevice, fissure, gap, hole, hollow, interval, slit, space.
‘The minute spaces between the ultimate parts of matter’ OED.
Interstices are very small spaces ‘standing between’ solid objects. Sometimes so minute the eye passes straight over them, yet a beam of light directed through an interstice has the potential to illuminate in an unexpected way. Interstices simultaneously divide and connect what surrounds them. They can be places for distraction, experiment and potentially radical redefinition. An interstice can also be a tiny interval of time, unaccounted for and uncountable, the transitional space at the end of a breath. On the web, interstitials are those annoying pages overlaying the content page you were expecting to reach. On the map, a border or nobody’s land could be visualised as an interstice; whether it’s safe or dangerous will depend on who you are.
Listen to the theme of Interstices elaborated with readings by Bridget Penney, alongside sample writings, sound and music kindly contributed by Bob Lewis, Katrina Palmer, Ingrid Plum, and Timothy Thornton. Presented with Book Works Editor Lizzie Homersham on Montez Press Radio, broadcast 24 August 2019.
Katrina Palmer reads her story ‘Hills with Things Inside Them’ from The Fabricator’s Tale Book Works, 2014.
A Very Short Introduction to Ghosts by Timothy Thornton, published by Face Press, Cambridge, 2019 and read by Lizzie Homersham.
Bob Lewis sings ‘Halnaker Mill’ by Hilaire Belloc.
This is the start of ‘The Sound Sweep’, a collaboration between Ingrid Plum and Ian Stonehouse, from the album Everything is Becoming Science Fiction, a series of collaborative improvisational duos using the short stories of J G Ballard as source text for a score, conceived and developed by artist and singer Ingrid Plum. A second excerpt from the album, played at the end of the show, is from ‘Track 12’, on which Ingrid Plum collaborates with Graham Dunning.
Watch online: Olga Jevrić ‘Space and time’ TV Belgrade 1982. Production: V. Krčmar, D. Blažević, D. Zupanc.
INTERVIEWS