Burroughs at 100

William Burroughs was born 100 years ago this year and various books and articles have appeared to commemorate his life and work. The introduction to Junky by Will Self for the new Penguin Classics edition is an excellent, clear-eyed introduction to that great book and the complex and flawed man who wrote it. Self appears in this BBC Radio 4 documentary too, but where often he appears in programmes as a radical, shocking from the margins, here he represents the spoil-sport voice of conservatism, arguing, for instance, that idolism served to enable Burroughs the addict. He isn't given much of a platform however, the makers preferring a breathless ride through the life and legend of Burroughs the cultural icon, with Iggy Pop doing a fine and entertaining job as the driver. Not too deep but good fun.

Listen Here

Father's Last Escape

The New Yorker Fiction podcast explores the magazine's short story archive by inviting an author it has published in the past to choose and read a story from that archive.
Here Nicole Krauss reads “Father’s Last Escape,” by Bruno Schulz, published by the New Yorker in 1978 and part of "Sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass".

Listen Here

HearSay Audio Prize: Aran of the Saints

One of the best things about Hearsay last weekend was the awards strand. The festival had an open call for new works of up to six minutes in length without any thematic or stylistic criteria. Various prizes were awarded - the winning pieces can be found in the festival's soundcloud page.  My own favourite was Brendan Rehill's sonic portrait of Inis Oirr, an immersive and highly authored piece that swells and moves through the small, unique world it inhabits.

Listen Here

In Our Time: Kafka's The Trial

In Our Time has been running on BBC Radio 4 for sixteen years but before yesterday had never devoted a programme to Kafka. Here Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Trial:

"Franz Kafka's novel of power and alienation 'The Trial', in which readers follow the protagonist Joseph K into a bizarre, nightmarish world in which he stands accused of an unknown crime; courts of interrogation convene in obscure tenement buildings; and there seems to be no escape from a crushing, oppressive bureaucracy." - BBC

Guests include Ritchie Robertson, one of the main forces behind the excellent recent Oxford Classics editions of Kafka's fiction, which through new translations lift the work out of the slightly patrician editorship of Willa and Edwin Muir, breathing new and mysterious life into the writing for English-language readers.

Listen Here

Soul Music: Strange Fruit

It is never a bad time to explore the history of America's race relations. Current events in Ferguson, Missouri play out within living memory of public killings of black people by white mobs - the bodies hanging from the trees the 'strange fruit' of Abel Meeropol's angry song. Here Maggie Ayre uses the track, made famous by Billie Holiday, as a way in to the dark era that preceded the eruption of the civil rights movement.

'"Southern trees bear a strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the root..." Billie Holiday's famous song expresses the horror and anguish of those communities subjected to a campaign of lynching in the American South. Soul Music hears the stories of people whose relatives were lynched by white racists and of the various forms of grief, anger and reconciliation that have followed. These include the cousin of teenager Emmett Till, whose killing in 1955 for whistling at a white woman, added powerful impetus to the civil rights movement.' BBC

Listen Here

All in Time

Sarah Boothroyd's immersive, impressionistic treatment of her subjects relies heavily on remarkable editing and deep archival digging. Here she takes on no smaller a subject than Time.

"Guided by science and science fiction, All In Time traverses the timeless mystery of time itself."

Listen Here

Wireless Nights

A mysterious, intimate, meandering journey through the world of the night with Jarvis Cocker from BBC Radio 4.

"Jarvis Cocker prowls the dark, finding stories of the night people in a Prix Italia winning series.
Tonight, in an edition which won the Prix Italia for Extraordinary Originality and Innovation - a top European radio prize - the theme is Overnight Delivery. Jarvis boards the red-eye, taking a transatlantic flight of the imagination - peering down at the human dramas beneath as the world slowly rotates - accompanied by Jarvis' own musical selections."
- BBC Website

Listen Here

All those names for the mystery of love

Eoin O'Kelly of the Lyric Feature series played 'Heron' at Hearsay last week, a remarkable poem about that strange bird, the reading by its author Francis Harvey taken from this intimate and delicate portrait by Éamon Little. Harvey was known - but not widely - as a major poet of landscape and place; his Donegal home dominates his life's work. The poet, who was 87 at the time of the recording, died recently and speaks candidly about the prospect of death in the programme.

Listen Here

88 Keys

In the Dark brought their unique ways of listening to Kilfinane last weekend, presenting a wide range of work. The London-based project is best known for its listening events but through the Sound Bank project it has also commissioned a number of original features, such as this piece on the disposal of pianos:

"Weaving the tortured sounds of the destruction of one piano, with thoughts from the proprietor of London’s last piano factory and a series of previous piano owners."

Made by Esther Johnson under the mentorship of another Hearsay attendee, Nick Ryan.

Listen Here

My Father Takes a Vacation

HearSay 2014 contributor Martin Johnson's feature documentary explores his father's sudden and traumatic abandonment of the sixteen year old Martin and his siblings, when he disappeared on a vacation to Ireland. Years later, Martin sets out  retrace his father's journey, learning about the man, the place and himself on the way. A deeply personal programme that subtly opens out to universal themes of love, loss and the need to sometimes step away.
The original Swedish version won the Prix Italia in 2008.

"He stopped at the small harbour towns, cycled to the lighthouses. With him, he had four bicycle bags and a small tent.

Back home in Sweden, he left behind his three children. Three children who a couple of years earlier had lost their mother in cancer.

Today, the children have grown up, but Martin's father has continued to disappear. With the help of three postcards Martin goes on a search for his father. By travelling to the places the postcards were sent from, and to speak to the people whom his father maybe met - maybe then Martin can start to understand his father." - RTÉ.

Listen Here

Ghost Town
From Falling Tree Productions

"A portrait evoking vanishing towns in the American Southwest, blending music, ambient sound and anecdotes from residents past and present."

Listen Here

Gogol's Overcoat

A BBC Radio 4 documentary exploring Gogol's great short work, as discussed by Conor Garrett at Hearsay 2014 - 

"Tim Key spins his own surreal tale of one of Russian fiction's greatest short stories, whilst contending with his own filthy disgrace of a jacket. With contributions from Alexei Sayle and John Motson."

Listen Here

E-flat minor: The Eccentric

From Paulo Pietropaulo's Signature Series for CBC, this short piece is just one of 24 individual works exploring the personalities of the musical keys. The entire Prix Italia winning series is available here.


Listen Here

Memory and Montmartre

A programme from The Lyric Feature on the music, life and shifting cultural position of Eric Satie. As discussed by the producer of the work, Eoin O'Kelly at Hearsay 2014

"Marcel Proust’s long and beautiful novel, In Search of Lost Time, clearly displays the author's passion for music.  His high-society characters spend their evenings in the Paris salons enjoying live performances and then debating the merits of their favourite musicians.  Every major composer living in Paris at that time comes under scrutiny:  Debussy, Fauré, Saint-Säens, Ravel, Stravinsky, Widor, d'Indy . . . the list goes on and on.  So why did Marcel Proust actually remove Erik Satie from his great work?  Curt Adler explores the parallel musical lives of these two fascinating Parisians, with contributions by David Mooney, Head of Keyboard Studies at the DIT Conservatory of Music."


Listen Here

Nobody ever went to America to learn how to kill a pig

A gem from the RTÉ Doc on One archive, as discussed by Liam O'Brien at Hearsay 2014. Not for militant pig-lovers, the programme uses a slow observational style to document the rituals and practicalities of pig slaughtering in rural Galway in 1978.

Listen Here