59 min
Episode 17: Chris Beckett talks to Niall Munro Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre Podcast
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- Arts
In this episode, the poet, editor and translator Chris Beckett talks to Niall Munro about his latest book, "Tenderfoot". Chris discusses growing up in Ethiopia and questions of privilege, perceptions of Ethiopia and a responsibility he feels to write about the place and its people. Chris also talks about how he portrays his nascent sexuality and how he reflects on Ethopia then and now after numerous trips back to the country in recent years. Chris has published two collections with Carcanet, “Ethiopia Boy” in 2013, a sequence of praise poems about his childhood crush Abebe, and “Tenderfoot” in July this year. He co-translated and edited the first ever anthology of Ethiopian Amharic poetry, “Songs We Learn from Trees”, also out from Carcanet earlier this year. Chris’s partner is Japanese painter and sculptor, Isao Miura. Together they published a book of drawings and poems in 2014, “Sketches from the Poem Road", after Matsuo Basho’s Narrow Road to the Deep North” which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and led to a wonderful exhibition of sculpture, paintings and paper installation at the Glass Tank at Oxford Brookes University in 2016. You can find the poems that Chris discusses on the Poetry Centre's Podcast page, where there is also more information about Chris and his work.
In this episode, the poet, editor and translator Chris Beckett talks to Niall Munro about his latest book, "Tenderfoot". Chris discusses growing up in Ethiopia and questions of privilege, perceptions of Ethiopia and a responsibility he feels to write about the place and its people. Chris also talks about how he portrays his nascent sexuality and how he reflects on Ethopia then and now after numerous trips back to the country in recent years. Chris has published two collections with Carcanet, “Ethiopia Boy” in 2013, a sequence of praise poems about his childhood crush Abebe, and “Tenderfoot” in July this year. He co-translated and edited the first ever anthology of Ethiopian Amharic poetry, “Songs We Learn from Trees”, also out from Carcanet earlier this year. Chris’s partner is Japanese painter and sculptor, Isao Miura. Together they published a book of drawings and poems in 2014, “Sketches from the Poem Road", after Matsuo Basho’s Narrow Road to the Deep North” which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and led to a wonderful exhibition of sculpture, paintings and paper installation at the Glass Tank at Oxford Brookes University in 2016. You can find the poems that Chris discusses on the Poetry Centre's Podcast page, where there is also more information about Chris and his work.
59 min