Writers talk about books they love…
The Modern Antiquarian by Julian Cope (Thorsons, 1998)
Cope lovingly walks, maps, draws, and describes the ancient monuments of the UK… so we don’t have to. Classed as a ‘gazetteer’ – ie. something you’d stick in the glove compartment of your Morris Traveller before heading off on excursions – this is more a mind-altering statement of intent about what you can find in the countryside, and who we really are. It’s the book equivalent of a high production values double LP with gatefold sleeve. A wonder. My only regret is that, after waiting in line for ages to get my copy signed at the book launch, I decided to skip and head off to the pub.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North, by Matsuo Bashō, trans. by Nobuyuki Yuasa (London: Penguin, 1966)
I bought this at a secondhand bookshop about ten years ago and dipped in and out of it for ages, until finally reading it all of the way through. It’s a classic hybrid of travel writing, drinking, poetry, folklore and the odd sketch. – written in the 17th Century. The gentle and witty wisdom and overall storytelling genius of Bashō stays with you and for me it’s become a useful template to approach walking and nature writing projects.
Sweet Home by Wendy Erskine (Stinging Fly, 2018)
When Wendy Erskine’s first short story collection came out in 2018 I pretty much absorbed it all in a day before re-reading it. It’s full of exquisitely observed stories set in and gentle, quite beautiful, big-hearted. Kind of post-punk William Trevor, set in East Belfast. I bought Sweet Home for various friends and it also became my gateway drug to a world of Irish writing – Kevin Barry, Sally Rooney, Mike McCormack, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Kevin Breathnach, Colin Barret. Check out the second ace collection Dance Move and her first novel The Benefactors, out June 2025.
Errata by Michael Donaghy (Oxford Paperbacks, 1993)
I had been lucky enough to hear Michael Donaghy read live, and did a poetry class with him a couple of times in the 90s. We bonded over a shared love of traditional Irish music and some private joke about Simon Armitage being an ex-pro footballer (you had to be there). This book changed forever my understanding and love of poetry and I will forever hear Michael’s voice as I read the poems. At first reading the poems seem funny and often puckishly obscure, but the lines stay with you until you revisit and begin to understand the work as music and storytelling in your head.
Hymnal by Julia Bell (Parthian Books, 2023)
Probably shouldn’t include something by a Birkbeck staffer but I’m not a student now so – fuck it. I went along to a talk Julia did in ‘23 and made far more notes (and drawings) than I normally would at a poetry reading. When I finally bought the book – it’s a memoir but in the form of a poetry collection – I got the same buzz I feel at a great art exhibition and had to scrawl pencil notes and thoughts all over the pages of the book. It’s seemingly ‘about’ growing up the daughter of a Vicar in Wales and elsewhere in the 70s and early 80s, but it’s more a book, a primer, about how to see and how to transmute experience, however mundane, into art.
This Is Memorial Device by David Keenan (Faber & Faber, 2017)
Debut novel by Scottish novelist/raconteur/magician/madman. I’ve written about a music scene (shite East Midlands, late 70s-early80s) and so I felt a pull towards this fictional account of a mid-80s Airdrie punk band, Memorial Device. It’s told through the eyes of various band members, fans, and hangers-on and is utterly addictive, with an undertow of mad magic alchemy and teenage hallucinatory spiritual searching. Spawned a social media phenomenon Twitter account @memorialdevice in which fans felt part of a movement and swapped stories of seeing the (fictional) band, plus tour T-shirts. There’s now a beautiful one-man stage adaptation.
Next six…
Silly Verse For Kids by Spike Milligan
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Truth and Other Stories by Sarah Clancy
Animations of Mortality by Terry Gilliam
Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
TIM BRADFORD IS A WRITER, ARTIST AND ILLUSTRATOR – AND HAS JUST COMPLETED AN MA IN CREATIVE WRITING AT BIRKBECK. HIS GRAPHIC WORK APPEARS REGULARLY IN THE NEW EUROPEAN AND WHEN SATURDAY COMES. HIS POETRY HAS APPEARED IN POETRY BUS, ODYSSEY AND THINGS WE SAID TODAY, AND HE WAS RECENTLY LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL POETRY COMPETITION. HE HAS EXHIBITED HIS GARISH WANG-EYED POP FOLK ART PAINTINGS IN THE UK AND IRELAND. HIS BOOKS INCLUDE A LONDON COUNTRY DIARY AND THE GROUNDWATER DIARIES (HE LIKES DIARIES).. .
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