Leye Adenle reviews Vauxhall… more

Land – the four green fields of Ireland – is where the symbolism, languages, history, cultures and experience of Irishness converge. The inherited boundaries of ownership, kinship and work culture meet in the land; it is the locus of identity, community, conflict and belonging, and lingers like a red mist in the rebel soul of the emigrant or exile; it is the mood music of the songs and poetry of the Irish peoples. Seamus Heaney was a farmer’s boy, and his break-through poetry collection, Death of a Naturalist (1966), was a dissection of the myths, those old un-dislodged stories and ways of feeling about the nature of belonging to the land that always did amount to trouble. more

Vauxhall is the debut novel by poet and playwright Gabriel Gbadamosi, and indeed one can hear the poetry in the structure of the novel as one reads. more

Gabriel Gbadamosi’s novel ‘Vauxhall’ and Colin Grant’s memoir ‘Bageye at the Wheel’ both feature child narrators who act as go-betweens between black and white worlds. In an evening at the Free Word Centre exploring how blackness can be both defining and limiting for authors, Colin, Gabriel and members of the audience spoke to us about the child characters from their favourite books who made an impression on their lives. Listen

Misspelling all the way, THE SPECTATOR reviews: ‘Vauxhall is a book of rare poetic insight and humour that absorbs from start to finish.’ More

the MI6 spy building, a gay village, the new US embassy, Portuguese cafes, and fast developing skyscrapers raising a wall of glass against the poor, the past and the future of London… More

Another chance to listen to reflections on the male nude in African Art: THE ESSAY on BBC Radio 3 at 10.45pm, Weds 12 June 2013. Listen

BBC Radio 3
Wed 12 Jun 2013
22:45
BBC Radio 3

Gabriel Gbadamosi

Poet, playwright and critic

A Palace in the Slums

Posted: 24/05/2013 11:59 More

A call out to book clubs from The Vauxhall Society, and a puff for VAUXHALL… More

Listening for the children talking away around a table of grown ups… More