Rafiq Kathwari is the first non-Irish recipient of the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and he joins the pod to share his journey and poems. He has lived most of his adult life in New York, but was born, as he puts it, “a Scorpio at midnight” in the disputed Kashmir Valley. No less a luminary than Susan Shapiro has called his poetry “breathtakingly beautiful, piercingly honest, wildly exotic yet universal too, as if you put Derek Walcott, Salman Rushdie and Jhumpa Lahiri in a blender”. We discuss the rich history of his homeland and how it is yet another example of the carnage left in the aftermath of the collapsing British Empire, and the role of madness and mental illness in literature.
Links:
Twitter: @brownpundit
Buy Rafiq’s book here: https://tinyurl.com/y93oyvsn
Christopher Smart’s, Jubilate Agno: https://tinyurl.com/y7s6psh8
Watch The Battle of Algiers here: https://tinyurl.com/ybqaxlw3
The Destruction of The European Jews by Raul Hilberg: https://tinyurl.com/h4xgxm2
A Pint With Seaniebee
Audible Feast’s list of Best Podcast Series of 2017: https://tinyurl.com/ya5yj9vs
Top 12 Best New Podcast Series of 2016: http://tinyurl.com/gps9tn5
50 Best Podcast Episodes list 2017: https://tinyurl.com/y7ryajat
50 Best Podcast Episodes list 2016: http://tinyurl.com/hp83rnw
Release date: February 10th 2018
Runtime: 31m
Recorded: Dalkey
