Recording of the week: Mohamed Choukri at the ICA

This week’s selection comes from Steve Cleary, Lead Curator of Literary and Creative Recordings. Tangier, Morocco by Brett Hodnett – used under Creative Commons license CC-BY-SA-2.0 Today’s selection features the Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri (1935-2003), recorded at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, 22 September 1992. Choukri’s first volume…

‘Using your eyes as a pen’ – Black British Poets in Performance

By Dr Hannah Silva, British writer and performer and Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London. Paula Varjack selfie. “What you actually do is you use your eyes as a pen,” David J is telling me how he learned to freestyle, “off the dome.” We’re sitting…

Sir Isaac Pitman – phonography and the phonograph

Sir Isaac Pitman (The Pitman Collection, University of Bath) By Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music When Isaac Pitman delivered a speech to the Phonographic Association in 1891 one would think it was to an assembled gathering of enthusiasts of Edison’s discovery of sound recording in the form of the…

Recording of the week: Winnie-the-Pooh

This week’s selection comes from Steve Cleary, Lead Curator of Literary and Creative Recordings. This week’s recording of the week features A. A. Milne reading from his children’s classic Winnie-the-Pooh. This is a short excerpt from the complete chapter three featured on the disc, ‘in which Pooh and Piglet go…

Andrea Levy

We’re sad to hear of the death of novelist Andrea Levy who passed away yesterday, aged 62. In 2014, Andrea agreed to make a recording for Authors’ Lives which will be made available to listeners in the weeks to come.