A few weeks ago, I attended the second event in Writers @QMUL series, where the delightfully witty and brilliant Anjali Joseph read the opening chapter of her upcoming novel, and was in conversation with our very own Patrick Flanery.

Anjali Joseph is a British-Indian author and journalist. Her debut novel, Saraswati Park, was immensely successful, winning the Betty Trask Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize, and in 2010 she was listed by The Telegraph as one of the 20 best writers under the age of 40.

She is currently working on her fourth novel which is set largely in the northeastern state of Assam in India, where Joseph had been living in for the past few years before relocating to Oxfordshire last year. The opening chapter entitled ‘Everlasting Lucifer’ begins with the meeting of an Assamese woman, Kethaki, and a British Asian man called Ved in an airport lounge and chronicles their subsequent interactions. In this chapter, I really liked Joseph’s treatment of temporality. It felt almost cinematic, with the narrative seamlessly moving forwards in time. She also has a knack for humour. I think it is really difficult to deliberately write something funny because it often feels contrived but here the narrator has a sharp, insightful and natural wit.

During the conversation section of the event, Joseph talked about the pressure to write a certain kind of book. She believes that all writers  feel a certain degree of anxiety attached to their work: “I do some teaching in the creative writing Masters Course at Oxford. I was talking to one student who is from Nigeria, who said ‘I don’t want to write an “African” book’. And I said just don’t. Don’t do it. But it’s a problem. When I was writing my first novel which was set in Bombay I had these worries about what is an Indian novel in English and there were some tacit expectations”.

Moreover, her first book is sweet, and a family story, and some people wanted her to write another one just like that. While her second book, Another Country, is not autobiographical, it does use some autobiographical material. Joseph feels that there is a complication if a female writer does that: “[Another Country] is not particularly explicit but it has a certain amount of sex in it because it’s about a young woman in her twenties. And there was just this thing, and I was talking to a poet-friend, whose wife is also a poet, and experienced something really similar, where people would just say ‘so this book is basically about you, yeah?’ and they would look me up and down. Erm yeah… you sort of think that if I really wanted to find myself somebody for the evening I wouldn’t necessarily go to the trouble of writing a novel. That’s a very long-winded way of going about it’. I couldn’t agree more!

If you are interested in finding out more about Anjali Joseph and her writing, our wonderful friends at Wasafiri recorded and uploaded the whole Conversation on their Facebook page.

MA English Studies graduate Richard Dodwell is presenting his new show PLANES at The Yard Theatre in Hackney Wick from Tuesday 31 January.

PLANES | Tue 31 Jan-Sat 4 Feb | The Yard Theatre, Hackney Wick | £15/£12 (conc)

Tell us about your new work PLANES? How did it come about?

PLANES is a “live tuning” into missing things. By that I mean it’s a live work for theatre that explores notions of remembering and processing difficult experiences, with a live accompanying score by the poet and composer Timothy Thornton. In this case, that difficulty is the suicides of people close to me. Mental Health is in crisis and more and more people seem to be suffering as services are slashed and the world becomes crueler. I suppose, as someone trying to survive, the work emerged to try and harness the truth of both what grief is and how we move forwards—but it’s a tough one! I did a couple of scratch previews of that work, with the help of Arts Council England and Battersea Arts Centre, and then The Yard invited me to present the work as part of their NOW 17 festival of new performance. So I was really chuffed about that.

Who or what inspires you to make theatre work?

Anything and everyone really. I try to make work that’s honest and not too obscured by style and posturing, although inevitably when you “make” something it always runs the risk of being perceived as such. I guess that’s the magic of any kind of art making or creativity—the multitude of ways it can be perceived. I’m not here to moderate or manipulate anyone’s feelings, although I am trying to create a world where people find some sort of connection. I’m hugely inspired by the European avant-garde and the New York experimental theatre of the 70s and 80s. The Wooster Group particularly are a huge inspiration, as is the writer and filmmaker Derek Jarman. I guess I want to make work that documents the experience of being alive, here and now, without too much thought.
 

What was studying English Studies at Queen Mary like? Do you have any favourite memories or tutors?

Fantastic. I have very warm memories there. The English Department is second to none: great teaching, excellent resources and the chance to really engage with literary theory—which has influenced my creative practice hugely. My favourite memory is meeting Matthew, who studied on the MA with me. He was a wonderful friend and support throughout the course, and introduced me to lots of new left-wing and radical revolutionary thought. He was a wonderful person: sensitive, vibrant and hugely caring. Sadly, Matthew took his own life in October last year. I miss him hugely. This show is partly dedicated to him.

For more information about Richard’s work please visit his website here