Interesting talks and interviews etc

Verso

Our ancestors, who relied on their understanding of the land for their survival, held a worldview that acknowledged and celebrated their fundamental interconnection with the natural world. The industrial revolution and our post-industrial society have severed that link and our disconnection is reflected in our agricultural, pharmaceutical, energy and business practices. Maddy introduces permaculture design and grounds the ideas behind it with examples from around the world. These projects demonstrate how we can once again embrace our profound ecological connection and become a “communion of subjects, not a collection of objects”. Maddy also suggests that we need to become transformational heretics and explains how we can actively say “No” to our ecological, social economic disconnection.

Maddy Harland is editor and co-founder of Permaculture, an international quarterly magazine that covers all aspects of sustainable living, from permaculture gardening and small scale sustainable agriculture to green building, low-impact transport and community action. Maddy Harland also co-founded Permanent Publications in 1990, a company dedicated to publishing environmental books and digital media. The company is based at the Sustainability Centre in Hampshire, UK, a former Naval Base and now a thriving educational centre that Maddy helped set up.

Maddy Harland: Transformational Heresy - permaculture & beyond

Writers and artists are grappling with social and political effects of our warming planet by telling stories of fear and dread, of warning and disaster, of encouragement and hope. Written by Bulgarian-German novelist and renowned travel writer Ilija Trojanow, The Lamentations of Zeno is a “topical polemic about global warming and climate change,” an extraordinary evocation of the fragile and majestic wonders to be found at a far corner of the globe. 

It tells the story of Zeno Hintermeier, an idealistic glaciologist working as a travel guide on an Antarctic cruise ship, encouraging the wealthy to marvel at the least explored continent and to open their eyes to its rapid degradation. Now in his early sixties, Zeno bewails the loss of his beloved glaciers, the disintegration of his marriage, and the foundering of his increasingly irrelevant career. Troubled in conscience and goaded by the smug complacency of the passengers in his charge, he plans a desperate gesture that will send a wake-up call to an overheating world.

In this conversation with Ilija Trojanow, he speaks about his research trips to Antarctica, his thoughts on the emerging genre of climate fiction, and the origin of his despairing main character.

Recording and interview by Ethan Cohen.

To read an extract from The Lamentations of Zeno, visit the Verso blog:
http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2647-a-novel-of-existential-dread-an-extract-from-the-lamentations-of-zeno


The Lamentations of Zeno: A conversation with Ilija Trojanow

The Storyteller (Verso, 2016) gathers the fiction of the legendary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, best known for his groundbreaking studies of culture and literature, including Illuminations, One-Way Street and The Arcades Project. His stories revel in the erotic tensions of city life, cross the threshold between rational and hallucinatory realms, celebrate the importance of games, and delve into the peculiar relationship between gambling and fortune-telling, and explore the themes that defined Benjamin. The novellas, fables, histories, aphorisms, parables and riddles in this collection are brought to life by the playful imagery of the modernist artist and Bauhaus figure Paul Klee.

Howard Caygill Professor Of Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University and author of the forthcoming Kafka: In the Light of the Accident (Bloomsbury, 2017), Sara Salih, Professor of English at the University of Toronto, and Matthew Charles, Lecturer in English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies at the University of Westminster, join The Storyteller’s editors and translators, Sam Dolbear, Esther Leslie and Sebastian Truskolaski, for a special event to launch Walter Benjamin’s fiction collected in English translation for the first time.

The Storyteller: Fiction & Form—Howard Caygill, Sara Salih and Matthew Charles join the editors

John Berger has revolutionised our understanding of art, language, media, society, politics and everyday experience itself since his landmark book and TV series Ways of Seeing over forty years ago. 

As the internationally influential critic, novelist, film-maker, dramatist and, above all, storyteller enters his ninetieth year, the latest Verso podcast in collaboration with the London Review Bookshop celebrates his life and work.

Gareth Evans is joined by Tom Overton, editor of Landscapes: John Berger on Art, Yasmin Gunaratnam, editor of A Jar of Wild Flowers, and Mike Dibb, film-maker and director of Ways of Seeing, to explore Berger's art and politics, the evolution of his own way of seeing, and its enduring relevance.

Several books are being published this autumn in tribute to Berger, who is Author of the Month at the London Review Bookshop:
- Landscapes: John Berger on Art edited by Tom Overton (Verso), a companion volume to Portraits: John Berger on Artists
- A Jar of Wild Flowers edited by Yasmin Gunaratnam with Amarjit Chandan (Zed) collects essays by writers including Ali Smith, Sally Potter, Ram Rahman, Hsiao-Hung Pai and others
- Confabulations (Penguin), through Berger's drawings, notes, memories and reflections explores language
- John Berger: Collected Poems (Smokestack)collects Berger's poetry in English for the first time
- The Long White Thread of Words: Poems for John Berger  (Smokestack), edited by Amarjit Chandan, Yasmin Gunaratnam and Gareth Evans
- Lapwing & Fox (Collectif), a series of conversations in correspondence sent between Berger and his friend, artist and film-maker John Christie.

John Berger at 90

1968 was one of the most seismic years in recent history -- Vietnam, the Prague spring, Black Power at the Olympics and protests on the streets of Paris and London. This interview is part commemoration, part reassessment. What remains of that turbulent time and where can we discern its features in our political landscape today?

Tariq Ali discusses May '68 on BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking, February 2018

On #NovaraFM, James Butler is joined by Tony Wood to discuss his new book Russia Without Putin: from the continuities with Yeltsin's disaster capitalism, the rise of the oligarchs to Putin's 'vertical of power' in the post-Soviet state – what future is possible in Russia? http://novaramedia.com/?p=11676

Novara Media Podcast

#NovaraFM: Russia Without Putin?

Podcasts, readings, lectures and events: big ideas and radical discussion from authors and collaborators with Verso Books

The Storyteller: Fiction & Form—Howard Caygill, Sara Salih and Matthew Charles join the editors

VersoBooks