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Five for: Jenni Fagan

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Jenni Fagan [pictured at the recent Word Power event with Kevin Williamson & Darran Anderson] answers some of Pablo Neruda‘s questions, from The Book of Questions:

1) Is the rose naked or is that her only dress?
The rose is naked, she took off her dress and sent it to Frank Black.

2) How did the abandoned bicycle win its freedom?
It didn’t, it’s mulched at Peckham scrappies, saw a manky dog pissing on it this morning.

3) Is it true that sadness is thick and melancholy thin?
Sadness is not thick, it is clever, so clever it can consume nations. Melancholy is thin though, it seeps in sideways if you don’t let it in the front door.

4) How did the grapes come to know the cluster’s party line?
It was something to do with ketamine a donkey and a monk. I know there were no witnesses but there is footage of it somewhere on YouTube.

jennifagancover

5) Why do [you] move without wanting to, why [are you] not able to sit still?
If you keep moving they can’t catch you.

Ordinary eyes hate looking. So if you are in the business of looking and even crazier, the business of seeing, then you better get quick on your feet. Witch-hunts and hangings still happen everyday, just less seen and more mundane.

I can’t sit still, the world is too strange and too full and too much, this odd little ball rotating in space, and humans … such funny little islanders, all fucking crazy. I sit still only for seconds. Seconds like when the sun comes up and the light is so golden across the rooftops and through the leaves of the trees, light so pretty you get up again and again to watch it rise.

Urchin Belle by Jenni Fagan is available to buy now from Blackheath Books.

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